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I’m currently running my first giveaway ever for my business. I’m in the process of running a giveaway where the prize is a free ticket to The Financial Blogger Conference in Orlando. I happened to have an extra ticket and rather than selling it, I decided to see if I could run a giveaway to build my list.
Since I’ve never done this before, I decided to do some research for some tips on how to properly run a giveaway. Here’s what I found.
Have a prize your market wants.
I expect my giveaway is going to be quite popular just because of the prize. A basic pass for FinCon is already valued a $299, but that’s not why it’s so highly sought after. The prize is highly valued because it’s THE conference for personal finance bloggers. It’s also one of the best blogging conferences out there – period. And, of course, it helps that it’s in Florida this year.
As you can see, this prize is a good one that fits with my market. Tons of new bloggers out there want to go to this but may think the ticket price is steep. I also have plenty of followers and readers who would love to go to this.
The key is to know what your market wants. You can easily waste your time on a giveaway that gets no results simply because you didn’t pick the right prize.
Use Rafflecopter to run the giveaway.
If you want an easy way to run a giveaway, consider using something like Rafflecopter. With their “Grow” plan, you can integrate the giveaway to your email list. You would make “join email list” as the first option that is required to unlock the rest of the entries.
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In addition, Rafflecopter makes it easy to run a giveaway legally. You can use their template for all the legal things required to run a giveaway. And finally, Rafflecopter uses Random.org to help you choose a winner at random.
Promote! Promote! Promote!
Since the prize for my giveaway is rather large, I plan to run a giveaway for a few weeks. This gives me plenty of time to promote it heavily. This is what I’m planning on doing so far:
- Reminding my current email list at least once a week
- Posting it on Instagram stories every day. (Instagram is my most active account.)
- Writing about it on my personal Facebook page each day
- Tweeting about it
In addition to my own promotion, I also require contestants to promote the giveaway to gain entries. This includes liking my Facebook page, tweeting about the giveaway and sharing an image on Pinterest.
I’m also considering emailing other personal finance bloggers to share it with their audiences. Since the point is to give someone a chance to attend FinCon, they may be inclined to share it.
Final Thoughts
One easy and effective way to build an email list is to run a giveaway. With a solid prize, the proper tools and a marketing plan, you’ll watch your email list grow.