Giveaways: Advantages and Disadvantages

Giveaways are one of the Marketing strategies that aim to promote a brand’s product or service, with the goal of increasing not only their sales but also their brand awareness. Brands usually use Giveaways together with digital content creators who promote the product/service to their network of followers.

In today’s article we have some 3 advantages and disadvantages of giveaways, as well as 3 tips to make a good giveaway.

Advantages

1. Lead generation: giveaways are a great way to attract new leads as it catches the attention of people interested in our brand
2. Increase in the number of followers: the most common tactic used in giveways is to force them to follow the brand page in order to be able to enter the contest. 
3. Increased social engagement: Giveaways are a great way to increase your engagement among current followers.

Disadvantages

1. Short-term followers: after the giveaway is over, many of the participants who did not win the prize end up unfollowing the page because they were only interested in the prize and not in the page’s content. This is one of the biggest problems with giveaways
2. Decreased engagement: the instagram algorithm values ​​the relationship of followers with page content more than with the number of followers. Thus, the increase in the number of followers can lead to a decrease in engagement, related to the previous point – there are many people who follow the page just for the purpose of the giveaway and when it ends, they can even continue to follow the page but do not interact with Is it over there.
3. Fake accounts and scams – when the giveaway prize is very appealing (e.g. the latest iPhone version), many of the participants create fake accounts to increase their chances of winning the prize. Another problem is that giveaways draw the attention of the dishonest who clone their profile in order to interact with their followers and ask them for confidential data (e.g. financial data) in order to supposedly receive the Giveaway prize.

3 tips for a good giveaway

The Instagram algorithm is programmed to offer the best possible experience to its users, having renounced the chronological presentation of posts and focused on the presentation of content that it considers of higher quality (that is, with more engagement). In this sense, we give you 3 tips to make a good giveaway:

1. Define your objective: as in all marketing actions, it is essential that you clearly define your objective for the giveaway, be it to increase the number of followers, increase traffic of your website, etc.
2. Choose your prize well: choose a prize that matches your niche of activity, to avoid the “ghost followers” ​​who are only interested in the prize and will not add anything to your profile.

Set the end of the giveaway! Defining the closing date is essential to confirm the last participation, but also to provoke the feeling of FOMO – Fear of Missing Out (fear of being left out, in Portuguese), which will encourage participation.