How to hold a contest and giveaways on Facebook

You have more than decided, you want to hold a raffle to get your Marketing Strategy on Facebook off the ground and increase the number of followers for your company page. You have verified that it works for your competitors and you don’t want to be left behind. But what do you have to do to create your Facebook giveaway?

You have just landed on the page indicated to answer all your concerns. If there is something that works very well on Facebook, it is certainly the contests. Why do they work so well? Because they help you…

• Increase your community of followers
• Get more organic reach and engagement with your posts
• Increase your database
• Build customer loyalty
• Attract new clients
• Achieve more traffic on your website

What do you think if we go through all the steps you should take into account to launch your Facebook contest?

Let’s go for it!

Getting started with your Facebook giveaway

Before leaping off the cliff with your first Facebook giveaway, it is essential that you do not overlook the most important aspects of carrying it out. This way everything will go smoothly!

• Set the objectives of your contest
• Know your audience to be clear about the prize of the draw on Facebook
• Be clear about Facebook’s policies
• Define your budget

Set the objectives of your contest 

It is useless to launch a contest if you do not have clear objectives. What do you want to achieve with your Facebook raffle? Do you want to increase your fan community? Do you want to increase the interactions of your publications? As you can see, every contest needs prior planning.

We’ll give you some ideas to make it more clear:

• Get brand recognition
• Increase followers
• Promote a product or service
• Achieve more sales
• Convert your fans into subscribers or clients

Do you know your audience? 

Are you clear on who your target audience is? Now, what can draw them in or attract their attention? Discovering the behaviour and likes of your followers, clients or purchasers is the key to developing your Facebook giveaway.

Knowing all these details will give you an idea for what prize can most likely hook your target audience.

For example, if your company page is a supermarket, the best option will be to offer a gift card or a product related to what the supermarket sells as a prize. Don’t you think?

What if you give away a product that has nothing to do with your brand? In this case, you would not be specific to your target audience and you could attract users who simply participate in different promotions and who do not consider themselves potential customers.

Be clear about Facebook’s policies on sweepstakes and contests

Do I have to take into account Facebook’s policies to carry out a contest? Yes, as you do not want Facebook to penalize you, you better take a look at the rules of this social network to get a better sense of Facebook’s policies. In case you forget later, enter this link now and look in the promotions section.

Define your budget

What kind of budget do you have to launch your giveaway? To avoid last minute unforeseen events and the occasional headache, it is essential that you establish a budget for the entire contest, which includes:

• Cost of the prize
• Advertising the contest on Facebook Ads
• Cost of the tool to make the drawing in the event that you do it with an application
• Other actions

❇️ PLANNING WILL HELP YOU SUCCEED

Before creating your giveaway on Facebook, define the strategy and budget

How to make your giveaway on Facebook: it’s time to get down to work

You have already set your goals, you are clear about your target audience, the prize you are going to offer, you have defined your budget…Now, what is the next step? It’s up to you to get to work with the creation of the contest, but before you do, you might ask yourself how you are going to design it?

You have two options:

Create your contest for free by publishing it directly on your Fanpage, as if it were any other publication on your page.

Get help from external applications that connect directly to Facebook such as:

EasyPromos

Surely you have heard of it, This is one of the most used Facebook contest applications. Why is it one of the most used? Because, thanks to EasyPromos you can:

• Increase and retain your followers
• Design your own campaigns that have customizable registration forms
• Keep the policy of Facebook at bay
• It’s affordable. It has a free contest option and has plans that adapt to all budgets. What more could you want?

Antavo

This tool is well known to the vast majority of Community Managers. It allows you to carry out a wide variety of giveaways and contests: questions, photographs, videos, drawings, gifts, coupons, etc.

• Its main feature is that it has 25 languages and different pre-designed templates. The price is $199 a year.

If you are wondering which of the two options is the most recommended, our opinion is that both are equally valid. Choosing to carry out your contest with a publication or on an external platform will depend on your interests and budget.

Types of giveaways on Facebook 

What type of promotion or contest are you planning to carry out? Our advice is that if you want to reach more users, make it as simple as possible. Some of the most common are the ones we have compiled below:

• Photo contest: ask participants to upload their photos on a specific topic..
• Text contest: participants have to write a text about a specific topic.
• Giveaway: choose the winner randomly
• Voting for photos or videos: users upload a series of photos or videos and it is the fans themselves who vote.
• Promotional coupons: it is about distributing coupons with promotions among your followers.
• Questions: Ask your followers questions about a specific topic or product.
• Games: where the contestant is asked to perform a certain action or to solve a riddle.

Legal basis of the giveaway or contest 

Once you are clear about Facebook rules, you have to describe the legal basis for your contest. What happens if you do not include a legal basis with your promotion? In addition to being required by Facebook, it will free you from the occasional headache with participants of the giveaway.

What should these legal basis contain? Consider the following: 

• Contest mechanics
• Start date and end date
• Age restrictions, countries or false profiles
• How you will contact the winner or winners
• Validation of the participants

Promote your contest

It goes without saying that if you do not broadcast your contest it won’t go very far. So, let your imagination run wild and spread it across all channels within your brand’s reach:

• Facebook Ads
• Spread on other social networks: Twitter, Instagram…
• Post it on the blog or website
• Do email marketing.
• Work with influencers

If you want to get as much reach and outreach as possible, anything you can think of is welcome!

Gold flourish: measure the results of your draw on Facebook

Once you have finished the contest you are left with the most important part of the whole process: measuring the results of your campaign. Has the contest worked? Have the proposed objectives been achieved?

How can you find out all of this information? If you want to do it quickly and easily you can use Metricool. Enter the platform, define the start and end date of the contest and get the following data without complications:

• Nº of fans obtained
• Scope of the contest
• Measure the hashtag use of the contest
• Nº of clicks
• Nº of shares, reactions and comments
• How many have participated in the contest

This last step will help you discover if this strategy improves your results on Facebook and allow you to move forward with your next contests or giveaways.

Tell us, what type of contest are you planning to launch on your Facebook account? We want to know your opinion regarding giveaways and what works best for you.

Now is your time to start! Create a contest on Facebook and tell us about the results.

Laura Montells , 05 May 2021