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How to Create a Giveaway Contest that Drives Traffic to your Site

Do you want to drive more traffic to your website? If the answer is yes, then you should consider creating a giveaway contest. 

Online contests are super fun and everyone loves getting the chance to win a cool prize. So, use that to your advantage. A successful giveaway contest will get people excited about your business and they’ll rush to your website to enter. Plus, while they’re there, they’ll probably check out what else you have to offer. 

But, creating a successful giveaway that gives you a massive surge in site traffic isn’t easy—it has to be done right. 

Here’s how to create a giveaway contest that drives traffic to your site. 

Determine the goals of your giveaway

Before you jump into running a giveaway contest, you should first determine what goals you want to achieve with your giveaway. 

By figuring out the goals of your giveaway, your giveaway will be more focused and you’ll be able to track and measure the success of your giveaway easier. 

Of course, driving traffic to your site should be one of your main goals. But, there are a number of other goals your business can achieve by running a giveaway, some of the most popular ones include: 

  • Increasing brand awareness
  • Growing your email list
  • Boosting your social media following
  • Gathering user-generated content for social proof
  • Generating sales

Choose 1 or 2 goals for your giveaway that align with your business goals. 

For example, a blogger may want to create an online giveaway to get more email subscribers and grow their following on Instagram. On the other hand, the main goal for a business may be to generate more sales of their products. 

Once you’ve chosen the goals of your giveaway, it’ll be much easier to get the results you’re looking for. 

Choose a giveaway prize that your audience will love

To create a lot of buzz around your giveaway contest and drive loads of traffic to your site, you need to choose an awesome giveaway prize.

If your prize is lackluster, users won’t make the effort to enter your contest at all. It’s important to choose a prize that’s valuable to your target audience. So, toss that $5 coupon aside and come up with something a little more appealing. 

Some of the most common giveaway prizes are: 

  • Cash
  • Gift cards
  • Free products or services

A cash prize will please any winner, but if you want to promote your own products or services, giving them away as the contest prize would be a better idea. 

Choosing a prize that’s relevant to your business will also help you attract more of your ideal customers. 

For instance, Yoga by Candace chose a prize that any yogi would love—a yoga retreat package that includes a backpack, yoga mat, yoga mat strap carrier, bathing suit, and more. 

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Choose the giveaway prize carefully because the right prize will lead to a super successful giveaway contest. 

Set the giveaway rules

Sure, rules might not be fun but you need to set them for your giveaway. Setting giveaway rules will make sure your giveaway is organized and fair. 

Before you set the specific rules for your giveaway, you need to decide what type of giveaway contest you’ll hold first. For example, will you run a classic giveaway where users simply enter for a chance to win? 

Or, will you run a giveaway that requires users to submit something in order to enter? 

A famous example of this type of contest is Starbucks’ White Cup Contest. Users had to submit their cup design for a chance to win and this let Starbucks gather a ton of user-generated content

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For your first giveaway, running a classic giveaway is much easier to manage. Plus, you’ll likely get more contest entries because users aren’t required to submit anything to enter. 

After you decide what type of contest you’re going to run, you also need to set rules like: 

  • Who can enter: Are there age or location limits?
  • Entry methods: Can users enter more than once?
  • Dates: When does your contest start and end?
  • How to pick a winner: Will winners be chosen randomly or by some other criteria?

Once you’ve set the rules for your giveaway contest, it’s time to start creating it. 

Use the right tools

Now, it’s time to start building your giveaway. Telling users to send you an email or leave a comment on a post to enter the contest will be disorganized and difficult for you to manage. Plus, it also doesn’t help you drive traffic to your website. 

So, you’ll want to use the right tools in order to create a successful giveaway contest. 

RafflePress is one of the best WordPress plugins for giveaways on the market. Not only is it powerful, but it’s incredibly easy to use. 

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In no time, you can build a stunning giveaway contest landing page for your website using their drag and drop giveaway builder. 

You can add an image of your contest prize, a short description of the prize, and you can customize the look of your contest by choosing background colors, button colors, fonts, and more. 

But, one of the most important features that RafflePress offers is their verified bonus actions. 

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Bonus actions give users extra entries to your contest for completing bonus action items such as joining your email list, visiting a page on your website, following you on Pinterest, or sharing your giveaway with their friends and family. 

As you can see, these verified bonus actions will help you reach your giveaway goals easily! 

RafflePress offers a free and premium version of their giveaway plugin and other cool features include viral giveaway templates, 1-click entry and fraud protection, marketing and CRM integrations, tracking and retargeting, and more. 

Promote your giveaway contest

Now that your giveaway contest is created, all you have to do is sit back and wait for the contest entries and the website traffic to start rolling in, right? 

No way! 

If you want to drive traffic to your site, you need to promote your giveaway contest. And promote it a lot! The more people that see your giveaway, the more entries and website traffic you’ll get. 

One of the best ways to promote your giveaway contest is by sharing it on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram

For instance, take a look at this giveaway promotion post from Sourpuss Clothing. It includes an eye-catching image of the contest prize, a caption with the giveaway details and rules, and they also added #Giveaway to widen their reach. 

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When you create social media posts to promote your giveaway contest, don’t forget to include a link to your giveaway landing page so that users can easily enter and a link to your website to drive more traffic. 

To make your social media post look professional you can use one of the sales posters by Design Wizard. This way you can create a compelling visual easily in a matter of seconds.

There are a number of other easy and free ways to promote your giveaway contest as well, you can:

  • Submit your contest to sweepstake and contest directories
  • Create a blog post to announce your giveaway
  • Promote it on the homepage of your website
  • Send a message to the subscribers on your email list
  • Share your giveaway in online forums and communities 

Remember, start promoting your contest weeks before it goes live. This will help you create a ton of buzz around your contest and your brand and it will also help you get a ton of entries on day 1. 

All that’s left to do now is pick a lucky winner when the contest is over! With these tips for how to create a giveaway contest, you can get your customers and audience excited about your business. That means more engagement, more website traffic, and more sales for you.

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By Syed Balkhi

Syed Balkhi is the founder of WPBeginner, the largest free WordPress resource site. With over 10 years of experience, he’s the leading WordPress expert in the industry. You can learn more about Syed and his portfolio of companies by following him on his social media networks.

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