Why host a giveaway event?

It’s no secret that I am a huge fan of giveaway events.  Working with others in your niche and JV-ing in general can be one of the best marketing strategies around. So when people with the same target audience come together to showcase their offering in one place, it can have enormous benefits for all involved.  Hosting such an event, although hard work can have numerous advantages. Besides building relationships with fellow entrepreneurs in you niche, you also have the access to all the opt-ins coming to the giveaways. This will multiply and grow your list exponentially.  There are however certain aspects to keep in mind when hosting an event like this.

Planning your giveaways

Hosting an event of this magnitude take some planning.  The best is to start planning your event at least a month to 2 months before the actual date.  Decide on the best dates. You might want to keep the event around certain holidays and that would dictate your theme. Otherwise you are free to choose whatever theme that will resonate with your ideal clients.

With your dates and theme in place you can start promoting your event to potential participants. The best places to find participants are Facebook Groups or communities within your niche. You can also send out an email to your list, if you list contain potential JV Partners.

Tools

There are hundreds of different ways to run a giveaway event. As long as you have a page displaying links the individual participants landing pages and some way of tracking your affiliate links, you are good to go. I however have found that using a giveaway plugin for WordPress just simplify things immensely.

My favorites are WPGiveaway and JV Giveaway.  They are both low cost and easy to install and manage.  There are some technical aspects of setting them up but for the most part it is straight forwardyou’re your VA or online manager should be able to help you if you get stuck.

You can use built in themes or get banners and headers from your graphic designer or Fiverr.

You can use the built in opt-in boxes or use a gateway page like Welcome Gate from Leadpages to get email addresses from visitors.

How to organize a high value giveaway

With the increase in these giveaway events it is very important that the event you host is of high value to visitors. The best ways to do this is by

Limiting participants. Too many gifts on one page is just overwhelming. You want your visitor to be impresses but not overwhelmed. I have found the ideal number to be between 10 and 20.

Everyone needs to participate in promoting. It is very important that everyone participates in promoting the page. The whole idea of the JV is to have access to the audiences of all participants. You can have rules like they need to get 50 clicks in the first 24 hours and 200 clicks in the overall period. Having prizes and a leaderboard also encourages participants to promote.  It is also important that participants are not allowed to “buy” clicks.

Provide participants with quality swipe copy.  This will also help them to promote more easily

Gifts need to be of high value. You have to ensure that the gifts offered are of a high value. Because the market are a bit flooded with free items at the moment it is important to offer something that will impress visitor.

Limit the amount of time the event will run. A giveaway should ideally be between a week and two weeks. This adds a bit of scarcity to the gifts and also helps with promotion not getting too overwhelming for participants.

Make it easy for participants to enroll. You can have a video or a webinar explaining in detail how to enroll and what to do to upload their gifts. Also make sure to explain the rules of the giveaway.

Running your giveaway

While the giveaway is running make sure that you keep the participants motivated by following up with them. Ask them how it’s going. Release the leaderboards for everyone to see and remind them of the prizes. If there are people not promoting at all email them and confirm that they are using their correct affiliate link and encourage them by sending them Facebook Ad templates.  Be sure to thank all participants at the end and to deliver the prizes to the winners!

Hopefully this will help you in planning your own giveaway event. This can be a very rewarding experience. Especially if you can grow your list quite significantly.   To receive the Blueprint/Checklist in pdf format enter your name in the opt-in box. You are also welcome to add your comments to the bottom of the page. Do you have any experience with hosting giveaway events, what is your opinions? Also any good tools that you’ve used?