Congratulations… You’ve won a 30-Day free supply of Datesnature powder from Datesnature on FreeStuffsNg.com!
This is the most exciting message that anyone, including Deborah, one of the winners to a quiz once posted on FreeStuffsNg.com, would love to receive.
As your sales promotion comes to an end, everyone waits in anticipation for you to announce the winner. Those who’ve actively participated and did their best expect to win.
At that high pitched level, you sure have a lot at stake.
The challenge is to ensure that you choose a giveaway winner in a way that leaves everybody feeling positive… yes, that includes non-winners and non-participants which may even include the regulators of such events as you have in some countries.
To prevent participants from thinking that you’ve manipulated the results or played favouritism, follow one of these methods:
1. Announce the person with the most points
Deciding who your winners are based on who gets the most points generates more engagement and my favourite.
People feel motivated to spread the word and perform the action you require them to do and people can track their points in most cases.
Let me break it down:
Basically, you can assign a specific number of points for a particular action.
For example, each lead that a participant refers to your promotion is equivalent to 10 points.
Meanwhile, posting a picture of the product with evidence of purchase lets participants earn an additional 20 points.
Wouldn’t your audience be thrilled and keep doing their best to win?
Ensure you assign higher points to actions that are most valuable to your campaign and business.
2. Ballot method
This method of picking a giveaway winner is super simple and classic. Most times , it is done in the presence of live audience.
Write down the full names of each of participant who meets a minimum of the high standard of qualification for the ballot on different pieces of paper, fold or roll each paper, and put them directly inside a container that’s preferably transparent so it is clearly visible to the audience when it’s juggled randomly by one member chosen from the audience.In some ballots , the paper having each name is first folded and placed inside an empty plastic round ball which is clasped tightly to close and then, along with other round balls containing each different name , placed in the transparent container that will be rolled or juggled before the live audience.
Make sure that you don’t get to see your participants’ names.
Now that all they’re all shaken and mixed sufficiently, without looking into the container, pick a piece of paper at random or pick one of the round ball, unclasp and bring out the piece of paper.
You have a winner!
Read the name out loud to your audience.
I recommend that you do a Facebook live streaming video and send out invites for guest on zoom and Google meet while picking the winner. This builds hype and increases trust!
3. Have Multiple winners
Here’s perhaps the most popular form because most sporting events have multiple winners often labelled as Gold (1st Prize), Silver (2nd Prize) and Bronze (3rd Prize)
What comes to my mind whenever I read that a giveaway will have 3 winners?
“I could be one of the winners!”
How about you?
You will probably feel same.
Multiple winners mean multiple prizes which are great for boosting engagement.
As soon as someone entered the promotion, they will be taken to a share page where they learn that there’s a first, second, and third prize after all.
So it’s important that it’s stated from the start.
1st prize goes to the person with the most points, the 2nd prize to the person who referred the 1st prize winner, and the 3rd prize to a random winner is one way to get most engagement for multiple winners.
Here’s why we think this works:
Everyone who participates in the promotion gets a fair chance at winning. Whether you had the most points or not, you can still win.
4. Choose daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly winners.
Do you plan to run a marathon giveaway?
A marathon giveaway campaign is one that runs all the time. And that means more people have more chances of winning.
If someone doesn’t win today, (s)he can still win next day or week or month or quarter!
You decide how often to pick your giveaway winner from any of the methods stated above.
Using the marathon giveaway campaign method has many benefits:
You get new leads continuously. More leads = More Sales (if you have proper follow-up process).
You can vary your prizes, making your entire campaign more enticing.
If you offer just one prize, for example, the free version of your tool, you can gain potential sales if people decide to purchase the paid version or make successful conversions from referral done for you for free obeying the ‘law of reciprocity’.
5. Choose the best entry or popular vote
What about promotions where participants need to submit their best content — such as a photograph or video or audio file?
In this case, it’s clear that the winner is the person who has the best content.
To avoid bias, make sure to have other people cast their votes for their preferred choice of winner. This strategy leverages on popularity.
And since you’re not the one who’s choosing the winner, you get to avoid any negative feedback from the non-winners and voters.
In conclusion, one of the signs of a successful campaign is you made everyone happy – or at the very least, kept people from feeling that they were scammed.
