Are you looking for new Instagram giveaway ideas and tips which you could use to promote your ecommerce store? You’re on the right track!
Actually, I know how hard it is to surprise people with something new when every day you do the same thing – you create unique content, look for new ways of business promotion and try to develop your own marketing strategies.
Even if your imagination is incredible, at some point, you will eventually run out of ideas. Therefore, you will need to find an additional source of inspiration.
In this article, we’ve collected 10 marvelous Instagram giveaway ideas that will help you impress your followers and get the most out of your Instagram marketing campaign!
What is an Instagram giveaway?
An Instagram giveaway is a time-limited contest that helps brands build relationships with their customers and share the information about their products with a larger audience than they originally could.
Let’s say you have an ecommerce store and want to increase your brand awareness using Instagram. Among all the ways of doing it, the easiest one is announcing a contest – you just need to select a prize (something of the products you offer), define the terms and start it on your Instagram page.
Normally, the terms and conditions of Instagram giveaways are so simple that basically everyone in the world can take part in them. In most cases, participants just need to like a giveaway post, follow the Instagram page that announced it, and tag some friends.
Typically, giveaways last from one to two weeks. This time is usually enough to reach a reasonable number of potential clients and be sure that the followers remember about the contest.
When the contest is over, you need to choose a winner by the rules you’ve specified at the beginning (at random, by the number of likes, etc.), congratulate this person and send him or her the prize.
That’s it!
Instagram giveaway statistic to think about
So, why should you be running giveaways, in the first place?
Industry analysis shows that on average, 32,5% of brands launch a giveaway every month. Definitely, there’s a good reason for this!
According to the market reviews, a huge benefit of Instagram giveaway posts is their engagement: it’s 4 times higher than those of regular posts! Some reports estimate that Instagram contest posts receive about SIXTY TIMES MORE comments and 3.5 times more likes in comparison to all other post types!
And these numbers surely explain how Instagram contests help brands grow their following 70% faster: it’s all about the publicity you gain. Sounds like a social media marketing strategy you’d totally try, right?
How to create a great Instagram giveaway: ideas and tips
Before discussing the best Instagram giveaway ideas, let’s see how to create a contest that is easy and convenient for you to manage.
My first giveaway: a checklist
To begin with, let’s go over the steps you’ll need to take!
- Choose a goal for your Instagram giveaway
The first step is defining a goal for your Instagram giveaway.
It can be:
- Generating more engagement on your posts
- Increasing your website traffic
- Getting more followers or email subscribers
- Boosting the quantity of your sales
- Announcing new product arrivals
- Getting more brand visibility
Or any other goal that you want to achieve with the help of Instagram giveaways.
The chosen goal will determine all your further actions, so you should select it carefully and keep it in mind when planning and managing a contest.
- Select a prize
A prize is something that impacts the overall success of your Instagram giveaway. Actually, it has to be something special that people would be eager to compete for. It’s better to offer high-demand products which can’t easily be bought in brick-and-mortar stores.
That’s why we advise you to determine the part of your budget you’re ready to spend on Instagram marketing and don’t go above your limit!
Besides, you have to choose affordable products because you will buy them with your own money. Of course, people will be happy to win an expensive high-tech drone, for example, but this can easily cause you financial troubles.
- Define the contest rules
Once the prize is chosen, you have to make the rules of the game.
When you’re creating your first giveaway, there’s no reason to reinvent the wheel: just use the positive experience of other Instagrammers and brands.
As a rule, contest makers ask Instagram users to do one or two of the following things:
- Like a photo
- Share a post
- Follow an Instagram page
- Tag friends
- Leave a comment
The more actions people have to do, the more your Instagram page is being promoted. For example, if users like a post, share it and tag 3 friends, they’ll increase your reach multiple times.
However, we advise you to limit the entry requirements to three or four steps. Otherwise, there is a chance that people will avoid taking part in your contest because of its complexity.
- Create a great Instagram giveaway post
A perfect Instagram giveaway post will vary widely from one brand to another. The same methods can work for your business and be absolutely useless for others.
However, there are several elements that every Instagram giveaway post should include:
- A bright, color picture of your product
- A short text perfectly announcing your giveaway
When creating a post, don’t write too much text and use bullets or numbers in the caption. All participants must clearly understand what steps they should take to win the prize.
Want to craft just the perfect Instagram giveaway template? Check out our content marketing Strategy!
- Think up an appropriate hashtag for your campaign
Your campaign hashtag is as important as everything else when it comes to promoting your giveaway. That’s why you have to choose a fun and memorable hashtag that’s related to your business and products.
Thanks to hashtags, it will be easier for you to measure your contest success and to see how many Instagrammers have entered your giveaway. Besides, if you add several popular hashtags to your post, you’ll significantly increase your reach on Instagram.
- Create reminder posts
In fact, Instagram giveaways aren’t those things you can set and forget about.
You should regularly remind your followers how much time is left to enter your giveaway and get a prize.
These posts will help you draw more attention to your contest and therefore, get more participants.
- Promote your Instagram giveaway
As more and more businesses are trying to promote their giveaways, the competition is also increasing. So it’s getting harder to stand out from the crowd.
Here are some ideas on how you can promote your Instagram giveaways:
- Announce your giveaway before it starts
- Share the contest link in your bio and Stories
- Promote your contest on other social networks
- Announce the giveaway on your website
- Send email notifications to your customers
In fact, the more ways of promotion you try, the more participants you get. So it’s a good idea to experiment with them and use as many options as possible.
10 brilliant Instagram giveaway ideas: what to ask the participants to do?
Now that you know how to create Instagram giveaways, it’s time to take a look at the most effective Instagram giveaway ideas. Here is the list of actions you can offer your participants to take.
#1 Like the post and share it to win
Ask your followers to like your giveaway and share it with their friends. This way, you can easily expand the reach of your brand – even if 10 people repost your giveaway, it will help you increase your brand visibility.
#2 Make up a funny caption to the Instagram giveaway post
Another Instagram giveaway idea is asking your followers to write a funny caption to your photos. This contest gives your followers a chance to prove themselves and allows you to grow your audience.
#3 Tag a friend and follow the Instagram page to win
Ask your followers to tag one or several of their friends in the comments section so that they could start following your Instagram page, too. This type of giveaway will help you get lots of new followers and significantly increase your brand visibility in a very short time.
When the contest is over, the majority of new followers will stay with you because most people are too lazy to unfollow someone. 🙂 Thus, you will get a large and warm audience which you can target next time.
#4 Upload a creative photo of the store products
If you have enough sales in your store, you can ask your followers to upload creative photos of your products to their Instagram accounts and add a unique hashtag. If it works, you’ll get tons of user-generated content and increase your brand visibility a thousand times.
#5 “Write why YOU should win the prize”
Ask your followers to leave a short comment where they explain why they are bound to win. Choose the story you like the most and award the winner.
#6 Come up with a new slogan for the brand
This Instagram contest is a perfect way to get a snappy slogan for your brand if you still don’t have one. Just ask your followers to think up a catchphrase and write it in the comments section to win a prize.
#7 Find the answers to the questions about the store
Lots of customers don’t know a word about the brands they regularly buy. So you can write some questions about your store and hide the answers on your website pages. This contest will help you attract more traffic to your ecommerce store and improve the SEO ranking of your website.
#8 Write a detailed review of the product(s)
As a rule, people write reviews when they are unhappy about something. That’s why even great companies that really care about their clients may have lots of negative reviews.
To improve the situation, you can launch a contest and ask your followers to write some nice words about your products or your store. You can use the screenshots of these reviews later to promote your website and increase the trust in your brand.
#9 Create a short video review or a story
This Instagram giveaway idea is similar to the previous one. But this time, the participants have to record a video review of one of your products.
Of course, the number of participants will be limited and you won’t enlarge your audience heavily. But this contest will give you a better understanding of your target audience. It will help you analyze the Instagram pages of your real buyers and get an idea of what tricks you can use to promote your products to them.
#10 Like and share the posts during a certain period of time
This Instagram giveaway idea is for those ecommerce entrepreneurs who are ready to work hard and wait long.
To make your followers eligible to win the prize, you can ask them to like and share all your posts during a week or a month, for example.
Of course, it’ll be difficult for you to monitor all the changes and create a great amount of Instagram posts which will maintain your followers’ interest. But this will have a very positive impact on your business.
The participants will regularly visit your page to check if there is something new. So, a constant flow of traffic will be brought to your Instagram page and, most likely, to your website. Besides that, thanks to shares, you’ll reach a huge number of potential customers.
