27 Brilliant Giveaway Contest Examples To Make Your Own

Content Strategy, , ,

Victoria Taylor — July 21, 2019

— July 21, 2019

27 Brilliant Giveaway Contest Examples To Make Your Own

Engagement, traffic, and now sales are low, which means you might be ending the month far worse than you started it.

It’s time to come up with something quick and effective to recover your numbers: why not run a giveaway or contest?

When giveaways are done right, they can bring massive results and even help your brand to go viral. One way to ensure your own giveaway does just that is to make it a foolproof lead machine.

To be the best, you have to learn from the best. So we found the most brilliant giveaways and contest examples you can use today.

It’s time to run a giveaway that gives back to you!

27 Brilliant Giveaway Contest Examples To Make Your Own

Scott Bailey is a certified foodie with a massive following. He provides product reviews, grilling tips and pointers in all things barbeque. For Father’s Day, Scott decided to host a “Holy Grail of Dads” contest with a prize of steak and burgers valued over $ 1,400 to one lucky dad. Now that’s a lot of meat!

To enter, you had to nominate your dad, describing why he’s worthy of the meaty prize.

Main Takeaway: Know Your Contest Audience

The image of the meat used for this contest was a good option; it’s almost like a hit of the quality of the prize being given away. It also appeals to anyone who loves a good steak.

This contest is a great example of incorporating your product or brand’s lifestyle in your giveaway to attract the right audience to your business.

Since Scott already had a following for his barbeque recipes and product reviews, it was no surprise to his audience when he offered a prize of quality meats to his barbeque enthusiasts to cook it the way they liked, and attracting other meat lovers even if they weren’t fans of barbequing at all.

2. Lego Space Theme Contest

Lego makes fans feel a part of the ongoing story the brand tells with each theme. A part of their strategy relies heavily on user-generated content campaigns, which are second-to-none. Fans are even serious about promoting Lego ideas in the past, all at absolutely zero cost to Lego itself.

Main Takeaway: Create a Community With Your Giveaway

64% of marketers said that increasing audience engagement was crucial for their social media marketing strategy.

People are also ten times more likely to buy from you when they realize that your brand is active online, even if they’ve just discovered you.

Your community members become your online advocates and top shoppers for your brand. That’s why big brands invest so much into building an online community. To start building your community, you can use Sumo’s guide on How To Build An Online Community From Scratch.

27 Brilliant Giveaway Contest Examples To Make Your Own

Running Warehouse was founded in 2005 by a small group of experienced runners who wanted to offer the best products and shopping experience to their fellow running enthusiasts.

They occasionally run giveaways called “Freebie Fridays” where they give away new or popular running shoes on their social media pages.

This month Running Warehouse decided to give away the New Balance Fuelcell Rebel running shoes.

Main Takeaway: Describe the Value of the Prize

You don’t need to offer products worth a million dollars to pique someone’s interest.

When you list the benefits or features of your prize, you’re showing off how amazing your products are and why they’re worth winning.

In this giveaway, Running Warehouse wrote about how the shoes’ design was inspired by the 5280 which Jenny Simpson used to win the 2018 5th Ave Mile, the professional midsole design, bouncy cushioning features and how amazing this lightweight running shoe is for longer races and faster-paced training.â €

With a product description like that, it gives viewers the idea that these aren’t just any running shoes up for grabs; it’s a running shoe fit for a professional runner.

4. Duck Dog Goose Caption Contest

27 Brilliant Giveaway Contest Examples To Make Your Own

Goose is an adorable insta-famous dog who shares his day-to-day adventures on Instagram. With over 33,000 fans, Goose and his owner decided to host a caption contest, and the winner would get a duvet from popular dog bed brand, Molly Mut.

Main Takeaway: Ask Readers To Vote

You can ask contestants to caption a video or an image. Just be sure to let them know if there’s a word limit or guidelines that they need to follow to make sure that their caption qualifies.

When it comes to voting, I find that allowing other people to vote for their favorite caption takes the pressure off of choosing the winner on your own.

Wishpond’s caption contest tool makes it easy to build and run a photo caption contest on Instagram, Facebook, your website, and more. If you’re ready to start a caption contest today, just click here.

5.Lay’s “Do Us a Flavor” Contest

In 2017, Lay’s hosted a contest asking its fans to name a new flavor for their Lay’s Chips brand for a chance to win one million dollars! More than 8,000 comments and 5,000 shares later, they picked Ellen Sarem, who submitted the idea ‘Lay’s Crispy Taco’ potato chip

Main Takeaway: Use Your Giveaway To Get Product Feedback

If you’re looking for a new product or flavor for your brand, instead of racking your brain to reinvent the wheel, look to your fans. In fact, customer feedback is listed as one of the top 5 Social Media Opportunities that You Can’t Afford to Miss.

6. Tampa Bay Buccaneers Giveaway

For all the die-hard sports fans, Tampa Bay Buccaneers hosted a giveaway to get free shipping for sportswear for a limited time only.

Main Takeaway: Offer Free Shipping

Since free shipping is so enticing to shoppers, why not host a giveaway where the winner gets free shipping on a certain amount of orders or for some time (i,e; Free shipping for three months)?

CPCstrategy did a study and found that 73% of customers see free shipping as a critical component in their purchase decision.

They found that when a site had free shipping, it encouraged 93% of shoppers to buy even more compared to sites that didn’t provide shipping offers.

7. Bloom Baby High Chair Contest

Bloom is an ecommerce store founded by four dads who design meaningful innovation and contemporary baby products. Bloom decided to host a giveaway for their best selling high chair “The Fresco”.

This contest landing page was designed with a Wishpond Social Media Contest Template.

Need help with your social media contest ?

Book a free call to learn how our team of contest experts can help you create high converting contest ads today.

Main Takeaway: Add a Sense of Urgency To Your Giveaway

Instead of the standard “We’re doing a Giveaway, join today!” post, say “Only 3 hours left to win this giveaway, get in before it’s too late”. Adding a bit of urgency in your giveaway caption can give viewers the FOMO (fear of missing out) so they’re more susceptible to click to enter.

Think of your giveaway as a mini landing page and each contestant as a lead (because they are). You can use Brian Tracy’s tips for Developing A Sense Of Urgency

8. Ringly BFF Giveaway

27 Brilliant Giveaway Contest Examples To Make Your Own

At Ringly, jewellery meets technology, helping users track fitness activities, mobile alerts from their phone and aiding in guided meditation.

To sweeten the deal of their giveaway, Ringly decided that they should give away two of their Ringly products to the winner and their BFF.

One way to make your giveaway more fun and engaging is to offer a “shared” prize. A shared prize is giving the winner a prize for themselves and another person or friend.

Not only does it make giveaways more fun, but it doubles the chance of entries because it ups the chances that people will share it with their friends.

Main Takeaway: State How You’ll Select The Winner

When you stated how or even when you’ll pick your winner, it allows participants to know how they might be selected if they win. Remember, your contest isn’t over until the winner gets the prize.

With Ringly’s social media contest, they selected more than one winner. This type of winner selection can be a great snowball effect for your engagement and builds excitement on your brand online because followers will have more chances to win.

If you’re not sure how to pick the winner for your social media contest, you can try one of these Six Brilliant Ways to Pick An Instagram Contest Winner.

9. Domino’s Piece of the Prize Giveaway

27 Brilliant Giveaway Contest Examples To Make Your Own
Domino’s decided to host a contest rewarding 50 members with a $ 10,000 check, and 10 of those winners would receive a “super fan experience” trip to Domino’s world headquarters in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

All contestants entered by posting a picture proving they were superfans of Domino’s using the hashtag #PieceofthePieContest.

Main Takeaway: Get User Generated Content from Your Giveaway

This type of giveaway helps you to build trust and credibility with your potential customers because you’re showing real customers who enjoy your product.

After the giveaway, you can use the images submitted as UGC (User Generated Content) to show off on your Shopify site and your social media platforms.

10. Backcountry #GoatWorthy Contest

Backcountry is an online clothing brand that sells outdoor gear, so to help with brand awareness they created a contest to bring in more sales and UGC (User Generated Content). Contestants simply had to share pictures of their own best-ever experiences with the simple tag #goatworthy.

11. JD Island Life Giveaway

JD is a UK clothing brand that proudly states itself as “the undisputed home of sports fashion”. To celebrate the launch of their new ad campaign, “Island Life”, they decided to host a giveaway asking people to comment on their favorite in the tweet below:

Main Takeaway: Push Your Ad Campaign with a Giveaway!

Need help getting more views and engagement with your online ads…without the big budget?

Use it for your next giveaway. You’ll be pushing organic viewership and allowing potential customers to see what products you have to offer.

27 Brilliant Giveaway Contest Examples To Make Your Own

Kassa held a giveaway with products of their bestselling markers along with their new Rose Gold Marker. To enter, users had to tag a friend.

Main Takeaway: Promote Your Product Bundles

You already know that social media contests can provide you with customer reviews and add product bundles to the mix. It can also be one of the best ways to see organic positive product feedback, like which products are a fan favorite amongst your followers.

Giveaway product bundles feel more of a real treat when compared to just winning a single product. Consider grouping up your bestsellers for your next giveaway and start seeing the engagement for your giveaway grow faster than ever before!

27 Brilliant Giveaway Contest Examples To Make Your Own

For Father’s Day, Dr. Pamela decided to give away an igloo to anyone who commented below their most embarrassing dad story. (Needless to say, we all have a few embarrassing dad stories to share.)

Main Takeaway: Host Seasonal or Holiday Giveaways

Holiday contests are one of the best ways to boost brand awareness, social media engagement and sales, not to mention how much people love the fun of winning.

Planning ahead is the key to creating a successful holiday giveaway. Feel free to use all your social media platforms or just one, the choice is yours. The use of various social networks will help you become more in sync with the holiday. You can use Wishpond to create a landing page for visitors to enter and manage your contest with ease.

You can also take a look at these 8 Holiday Contest Guides with Examples, Ideas and Best Practices to help you get started.

27 Brilliant Giveaway Contest Examples To Make Your Own

Banging Bites involves two foodies capturing all that London has to offer in local and international cuisine. After reaching 1,000 followers, they decided to give their food-loving fans the chance to win a two-course meal and drinks for two.

Main Takeaway: Use Emojis In Your Captions

Give people the chance to win tickets for a night out or a major event to enjoy their holiday to the fullest. (Just ensure that the tickets you give away are for events your audience will genuinely enjoy.)

You’ll also notice a few emojis in the contest caption. As simple as it sounds, social media posts with emojis can increase your number of likes by 57 percent and comments and shares by 33 percent. A smiley face emoji goes a long way.

27 Brilliant Giveaway Contest Examples To Make Your Own

Pi Yoga Apparel hosted a giveaway in celebration for their new summer collection. All you had to do was click the link in the bio or swipe up in their IG stories to enter to win prizes valued at $ 3,500 plus Wanderlust Festival Tickets.

Main Takeaway: Add Your Giveaway To Your Instastory

Instagram Stories are used by 500 million users every day, and one-third of the most viewed Instagram Stories are from businesses. They are a great way to promote your giveaways often.

When you run your giveaway on Instagram or Facebook (since Facebook stories also exist), you can add your giveaway’s URL to your story and use this to drive traffic to your giveaway.

Still not sure how to use Instagram to promote your giveaway or grow your brand?

Don’t worry, I’ve got 15 Powerful Instagram Marketing Secrets for you to use to start tapping into amazing Instagram growth and sales.

27 Brilliant Giveaway Contest Examples To Make Your Own

No.7 is a US-based beauty brand that offers serums and cosmetic products. They pride in their spot-on beauty treatments.

For their day-to-day content and giveaways, they mainly use Influencers with a large following who regularly purchase and use their products so that their followers get honest reviews.

Main Takeaway: Use Influencers to Promote Your Giveaway

Just like with a product launch or marketing campaign, influencers can also be used to help spread the word about your giveaway.

With the combined efforts of your influencers’ massive following and your own, you now have a better chance at reaching more people on social media and in the digital space.

You can use this Essential Guide to Getting Started with Influencer Marketing today.

27 Brilliant Giveaway Contest Examples To Make Your Own

Jewellery Company Teenie & Fray sell jewellery with the promise that one tree is planted for every order placed. They hosted a giveaway with Influencer Jamiswan,. The giveaway provided a detailed guide on how to enter and announced that the winner would be selected at random and tagged in the giveaway post as well as in an IG story!

Main Takeaway: Write Clear Instructions for Your Giveaways

Don’t let visitors guess what they should do. Tell them.

If you want them to share your page to enter, say so, then show them where and how. Give them clear, step-by-step instructions.

It also makes your job more comfortable because you’ll have fewer people reaching out to you asking how to enter, because you placed all the information there.

27 Brilliant Giveaway Contest Examples To Make Your Own

RAK is a Porcelain company that provides chefs and cooks professional porcelain plates and cookware. Their contest above asked viewers to comment below how they would decorate their new embossed deep plate.

Main Takeaway: Use Videos In Your Giveaways

It’s always best to use videos for your contest because it’s proven to drive more entries: social media posts with video have 48% more views and engagement. Try to use a video for your next giveaway to drive more interaction with your viewers.

If you’re thinking of adding a video to your next social media contest, take a look at these 6 Awesome Video Contest Examples.

27 Brilliant Giveaway Contest Examples To Make Your Own

Beach Waver sells popular, award-winning rotating curling irons that are, dare I say, making waves on social media. Beach Waver products are loved by fans worldwide and even used by Victoria’s Secret models.

They’re known to use popular lifestyle and makeup influencers as brand ambassadors for their hair products. For this contest, they used influencer Justy Najarmula to launch their new hair care line with Good Vibes Moisturizing Shampoo and Conditioner.

Main Takeaway: Use Giveaways To Promote Your Product Launch

If you have a new product, you can use a giveaway to get the ball rolling and have fans running to your social media and website pages.

Your product doesn’t have to be new to get people excited. Make your contest prize your brand’s best seller, and you’ll be able to spark interest in viewers who have never tried your product, and now have the chance to try it for free.

27 Brilliant Giveaway Contest Examples To Make Your Own

When the two organic brands Teaonic and Olio E Osso hosted their first product giveaway, giving two lucky winners the perfect self-care combo, engagement on their pages skyrocketed. Fans of the two brands came together on Teaonic’s Instagram page and brought their following with them.

Main Takeaway: Brand Collaboration

Brand collaborations are a great way to get attention, cut your giveaway promotion in half and gain just as much in followers and engagement, not to mention more sales. Collaborations work so well that they’re listed as 1 of 7 Instagram Marketing Techniques to Foster Your Sales.

You’ll have to make sure that it’s a brand that complements your own. It’s also important that you see this collaboration as a networking opportunity for future projects beyond giveaways.

27 Brilliant Giveaway Contest Examples To Make Your Own

Whether you’ve reached a hundred, a thousand, or even a million followers, hosting a giveaway is always a good way to celebrate.

Guess what? You can also host a giveaway when you’re on your way to reaching your follower goal.

That’s what TeBella Tea Company did when they were on their way to reaching 10k followers on Instagram. They announced that they would give away a non-variable SMEG USA kettle with TeBella products.

Main Takeaway: Use Giveaways To Celebrate a Win

While you’re on your way to reaching your goal with social media followers, you can announce ahead of time that you’ll be hosting a giveaway or contest. This helps your current followers to get ready for your upcoming giveaway.

27 Brilliant Giveaway Contest Examples To Make Your Own

This Rawesome Vegan Life is a vegan lifestyle recipes and tips brand, so it was only natural for them to run a giveaway where one lucky winner would get a set of MARPHYL gorgeous sea salts!

Main Takeaway: Add a Giveaway Restriction

In the caption, Rawsome Vegan Life stated that the only US and Canadian followers could enter the giveaway.

Placing age or location restrictions on your giveaways allows your followers to know which followers are eligible to enter.

This is relevant if you’re only able to ship your prize to specific locations, or if there are age restrictions on your products. Placing restrictions on your Instagram giveaway campaign (such as in the caption or the official contest rules doesn’t just help you legally, but it also helps to make it easier to filter out entrants from locations or demographics you don’t serve.

27 Brilliant Giveaway Contest Examples To Make Your Own

Everwell collaborated with seven other health brands to make the ultimate product bundle for their followers. In the caption, they provide an easy entry method and stated that the winner would be announced on June 6th by 3:00 pm.

Main Takeaway: Include the Start and End Dates of the Giveaway

When you’re hosting a giveaway or contest, you have to let people know what dates the campaign starts and ends on Instagram. Participants need to know how many days they have to enter and when the giveaway ends.

The last thing you want is someone entering to win your giveaway, when it ended weeks ago!

For more on the type of rules your giveaway might need, you can read The Complete Instagram Giveaway Rules Guide (With Examples).

27 Brilliant Giveaway Contest Examples To Make Your Own

Milk Dot & Lovely Candy Co gave their followers a sweet treat with this giveaway collaboration, with sweet treats, gluten free snacks and toys appealing to their mainly mom-centric audience.

Main Takeaway: State That Instagram Is Not Associated with Your Instagram Giveaway

Another promotion guideline by Instagram states that companies or brands must acknowledge that your Instagram contest or giveaway is not sponsored, endorsed, or associated with Instagram in any way. For obvious legal reasons, Instagram wants to avoid any blame if someone feels wronged by your giveaway.

If your giveaway is on Facebook then you also need to follow Facebook’s Contest Giveaway Rules so that you’ve covered all your basis if you should run into any legal issues or customer frustrations.

27 Brilliant Giveaway Contest Examples To Make Your Own

Cala Beauty has been creating natural beauty and personal care products since 1982. It’s listed as one of the best K-beauty products online. Recently, it decided to run a giveaway for its Cala Beauty sheet mask.

Main Takeaway: Use Amazing Product Shots

Use a photo that will drive engagement to the giveaways.

Think about it: Most social media users see visuals everyday, even before they read captions, especially for image heavy platforms like Instagram or Facebook.

Research from Skyword found that if your content includes compelling images, you can get an average of 94%more views than a boring image.

In fact, some 22% of online product returns are because an item looks different than the photos. When you use a great product image for your giveaway, it’s the first impression potential customers have of your brand and product.

Need help with taking the best giveaway images? You can use this guide for 7 Steps to Creating Picture-Perfect Product Images.

26. OFRA Cosmetics Giveaway

Main Takeaway: Use A Branded Hashtag

OFRA decided to use the following branded hashtag for their giveaway contest. Alongside asking followers to like their tweet, they also asked them to repost it with the hashtag #OFRAxTALIAMAR since the two were running the giveaway together.

It’s easy to come up branded hashtag because it can be similar to your brand name, which may seem like an obvious choice, but you’d be surprised at how few brands do this. Try to make sure that your hashtag isn’t overly complicated or too long, or it might turn people away from using it online.

27. The Beauty Spy Giveaway

The Beauty Spy is an Instagram account that discovers new, emerging and exotic beauty trends, especially from Korea. Also known as K-beauty, Korean beauty products started to trend heavily in keywords and Google search in 2016 and consumer interest has skyrocketed in 2018 since its 10-step’ routine skin care kits took over social media.

Main Takeaway: Tag The Brand In Your Giveaway Images

If the prize you’re prompting for your giveaway isn’t your own, then it’s best to tag the brand so that people can find your contest on their page.

It also helps to add authenticity to your product. Just as a verification badge shows that your brand is yours, so does tagging products of the owners.

The Rundown

There you have it, 27 brilliant giveaway contest examples you can use to make your own.

Don’t just read this article: take notes on some of the things you’ve missed out on with your past giveaways or takeaways to bring to your next campaigns.

I’m not going to lie; giveaways do take some work if you want to be flooded with entries and see massive growth hit your social media pages and website.

Still want some expert advice on how to create a brilliant contest? Our friendly Wishpond marketing experts are ready and waiting to help you get started. Click here and book a free webinar to see what we can do for your social media contest. We offer a range of choices, templates, and promotion tools.

27 Brilliant Giveaway Contest Examples To Make Your Own

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Author: Victoria Taylor

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