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How brands use social media giveaways—and the key benefits

by | Jan 24, 2019 | Marketing, Public Relations

Depending on your brand and products, a contest giveaway on social media can be terrific way to drive site traffic and customer engagement. But which platforms are brands using most? According to a new survey from digital campaign platform Easypromos, Facebook giveaways are the most popular type of contest on social media—25.7 percent of respondents carry out giveaways exclusively on Facebook. However, a more common strategy is to run giveaways on both Facebook and Instagram: 45.5 percent of brands use both networks to organize contests.

In total, 92.6 percent of all survey respondents organize giveaways on Facebook, which continues to be the most popular choice for brands. Instagram is the second most popular, used by 67.5 percent of survey respondents. However, only 6.1 percent of brands run giveaways exclusively on this network.

Twitter comes in third, used by 20.6 percent of brands. But most brands only run giveaways on Twitter in combination with other social networks, as 13.5 percent of brands regularly organize giveaways on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Overall, 66.8 percent use more than one social network to run giveaways and promotions.

How brands use social media giveaways—and the key benefits

Simultaneous and combined giveaways

More than half (55.8 percent) of brands run simultaneous giveaways on multiple social networks, mostly on Facebook and Instagram (43.1 percent). A further 10.9 percent run contests which combine followers from Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, while 4.7 percent organize simultaneous giveaways for Facebook and Twitter. And 44.2 percent of survey respondents never run simultaneous giveaways.

Easypromos has seen a new demand from giveaway organizers, often social media managers and marketing strategists. “Brand communities on social networks are not as divided as we think,” said Carles Bonfill, CEO of Easypromos, in a news release. “Social media giveaways started on Facebook, but now they are common on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. And community managers and social media managers have been very innovative in their efforts to join forces and treat these communities as one.”

How brands use social media giveaways—and the key benefits

“The regular use of giveaways depends on the maturity of the brand’s social media strategy, on the product or service which it sells, and its capacity to create and share incentives,” added Bonfill. “Everyone loves prizes, and everyone is on social media. That creates an opportunity for brands to organize regular giveaways on social media, to have a lively and engaged community online.”

That’s one reason why the concept of the multi-network giveaway has become so popular, and why the leading platform for online giveaways and contests has created a new app to support brands which run giveaways across multiple social networks. When brands were asked for the main reasons why they run simultaneous giveaways (or plan to do so), the most common motivation was to satisfy all their online communities (41.6 percent). Making the giveaway easy to design and plan was also a strong incentive.

How brands use social media giveaways—and the key benefits

Frequency of giveaways

About a third (32.5 percent) of brands organize one giveaway a month on average. Almost as many brands (28.6 percent) organize less than one giveaway a month, but run several contests throughout the year.

Main benefits of social media giveaways

Increasing followers is still one of the main motivations for organizing giveaways, although Facebook no longer permits contests based on likes. But 64.8 percent of survey respondents list this as one of the greatest benefit of social media giveaways. The other most popular benefits are increasing brand visibility (62.2 percent) and increasing social media engagement (58.7 percent).

Half of the brands surveyed regularly invest in publicity for their giveaways, and 33.9 percent will invest more than 50€ per giveaway. Another 16.9 percent will pay to promote every giveaway, but spend less. And 5.2 percent of giveaway organizers only invest in publicity sometimes, while 14 percent will not pay to promote giveaways at all.

Read more about the study on the Easypromos blog.

How brands use social media giveaways—and the key benefits

Richard Carufel
Richard Carufel is editor of Bulldog Reporter and the Daily ’Dog, one of the web’s leading sources of PR and marketing communications news and opinions. He has been reporting on the PR and communications industry for over 17 years, and has interviewed hundreds of journalists and PR industry leaders. Reach him at richard.carufel@bulldogreporter.com; @BulldogReporter

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