We often talk about why influencer marketing is important, but we rarely bother to acknowledge that these campaigns require so much planning. Thus, we’ve come up with a little guide to help you run successful influencer giveaway campaigns.

Each year, we see more brands implementing an influencer marketing strategy to reach out to specific audiences and keep them engaged. Research shows that about 84% of millennials don’t like, much less trust, traditional marketing tactics. Instead of salesy pitches, they would rather listen to the opinions of their favorite influencers.

Brands usually team up with influencers to run marketing campaigns such as social media giveaways, which are beneficial to all parties involved.

Establishing a Goal

An influencer marketing campaign that involves giveaways can help you achieve all sorts of business goals. For starters, you can increase activity on your social channels. You can drive traffic to your website, improve brand awareness, and ultimately increase conversions.

Listed below are some of the goals you might want to consider when you’re running influencer giveaway campaigns.

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Increase website traffic

You might want to drive more traffic to your website or a specific landing page using your influencer giveaway. If so, influencers can help you reach a wider audience and encourage more people to join. Let’s say you’ve learned to embrace YouTube influencer marketing. You can host a giveaway and require participants to sign up for a newsletter or fill out a form found on your website.

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Improve activity on social channels

Giveaways can increase activity on your social accounts. If this is your goal, then your campaign should require participants to like a post or subscribe to your channel. You may also ask your audiences to leave a comment or tag you in a post they created.

By partnering with an influencer, you should see more people participating in the giveaway. Consequently, you should see more activity on your social media pages than the usual.

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Promote products and product launches

If you’re looking to promote upcoming products or events, you may do so through social media giveaways. You can use your latest goods as a prize. You may also opt to do a discount code giveaway if you can’t afford to offer an entire product for free. Either way, it’s a great opportunity to share your new goods. You can market your products without resorting to traditional methods.

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Improve brand loyalty

You can leverage the attention you’re getting from your campaign to build brand loyalty. Through contests or influencer giveaways, you convey specific messages about your brand values. In turn, you can encourage target audiences to engage more

Choosing a Prize

When it comes to choosing a prize for your contest, it’s important that your influencer giveaway is relevant to your brand and valuable to your audience. Sure, no one can resist a free iPhone, but when you run a beauty line, you’ll only attract audiences from varying demographics. And only a few of your participants might be truly interested in your channel.

Here are some giveaways you might want to consider:

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Game codes for Steam or other platforms

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Gift cards

(e.g. Amazon gift cards)

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Redeemable subscriptions for services

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Sponsored products

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Merchandise (shirts, stickers, other small items, etc.)

Food for thought:

A great idea to turn an influencer into a true advocate of your brand is to design custom-made brand merchandize inspired by this influencer. Video game companies go even further and create in-game items for celebrity gaming influencers. A great example of this is shown by Epic Games and their “Icon Series” of Fortnite skins for influencers like Ninja and LoserFruit.

How to Run a Giveaway Hosted on YouTube

YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine, where millions of people share and watch content online. When it comes to YouTube influencer marketing, as mentioned, you can run a giveaway to drive user engagement or promote products.

You can ask an influencer to host contests or giveaways on their YouTube channel. They would have to explain the mechanics of the giveaway and require audiences to perform a certain action in order to participate.

Here are some examples of the actions Influencers can ask their followers to perform within the YouTube platform in order to qualify for the giveaway:

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Watch a YouTube video

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Like a YouTube video

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Leave a comment

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Subscribe to a YouTube channel

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Share a YouTube video

Managing the entire process can be overwhelming especially if you’ve got thousands of participants. You can avoid unnecessary stress by using apps, which feature YouTube actions that are fully integrated with YouTube API.

Here are some of the apps we recommend:

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Comment Picker. Designed for YouTube, it does exactly what its name says. It generates a random winner from all the comments on the YouTube video.

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SocialMan. Another tool you can use is SocialMan, which assesses YouTube actions such as watch a video, comment on a video or subscribe to a channel to qualify users.

How to Run a Giveaway on Twitch

Another video streaming platform you can ask Influencers to host your giveaway on is Twitch. Much like your YouTube influencer marketing technique, a Streamer may require participants to carry out certain actions to qualify for the giveaway. The winner will then be selected randomly and announced during a stream. Streamers can reward winners with prizes like skins, game codes, and DLCs.Use some of the following actions for your Twitch-hosted giveaway:

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Sign in with Twitch

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Subscribe to a Twitch channel

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Authenticate with Twitch

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Engage in a Twitch chat

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Enter a keyword in a Twitch chat

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Enter a random number

For Twitch-hosted giveaways, Influencers can use one of the common bots used on the platform, like Nightbot. Nightbot offers a variety of different tools in its online dashboard that helps set up and manage a giveaway.

Simple Twitch Giveaways is a simple Chrome extension that Streamers can use to run a fair giveaway. With this tool, Twitch Streamers can track the progress of the campaign, see live stats and make announcements in-chat.

Streamlabs Giveaway is another tool Influencers can use to ensure that their gameplay won’t be affected by interactions with viewers of the stream. Giveaways are a part of the larger loyalty system offered by Streamlabs, which allows viewers to gain points for viewing Influencer channel

How to Host Your Own Giveaway

Brands can also share and promote self-hosted giveaway as part of their influencer marketing strategy. Aside from the usual social media hubs, you can host a giveaway using 3d-party apps that let you host competitions and giveaways.The Gleam giveaway tool has become a favorite among many Brands and Advertisers launching giveaways. It has proven to be quick and reliable for giveaway entrants and has become one of our favorites. Gleam is an audience-focused suite of apps that can be integrated with websites, social media, and even YouTube and Twitch.  Unlike other platforms, Gleam.io verifies the entries to social networks (where allowed). This reduces the number of steps required to enter & drives higher quality entries into your campaign.

Here’s how you can host your own giveaway using Gleam:

1. Sign up at Gleam.io for a free plan.
2. Select the Competition menu from the sidebar.
3. Click on New Competition.
4. Set up your giveaway campaign by filling in a few details (e.g., name of the contest, start and end dates, and terms and conditions).
5. Fill in user details such as the minimum age of participants.
6. Specify how users can enter your contest (e.g., email, YouTube, Twitch). Select what they need to fulfill to participate, such as subscribing to a channel, watching a video, or commenting on a video.
7. Name the prize and identify how many people can win it.
8. Hit Save.

Complying with Policies and Guidelines

Did you know that you have to adhere to certain rules to run social media giveaways on YouTube and Twitch?If you weren’t aware, you ought to review each social media platform’s policies and guidelines on contests or giveaways. Don’t waste an excellent influencer marketing strategy by neglecting to read the rules. Follow all the rules, and you should be able to run it successfully.

YouTube

Review YouTube’s contest policies and guidelines if you intend to run an effective giveaway on the world’s second largest search engine. Here are some of the important policies included in the guide:

1. You must establish Official Rules which contains the following factors:
2. Links to YouTube’s community guidelines; and it must specify that entries who don’t adhere to the rules will be disqualified
3. Indicates all disclosures required by federal, state, and local laws
4. Complies with YouTube’s Terms of Service
5. You are responsible for your giveaway—from the creation of the guidelines to its execution and administration.
6. Your rules must specify that YouTube isn’t a sponsor of the contest and that the platform isn’t liable for any challenges related to the contest.

All of the contests and giveaways you run on the platform must adhere to these rules. Remember that these rules were implemented not just to protect YouTube, but to protect your business and your participants as well.

Twitch

Earlier this year, Twitch launched a series of updates to their moderation and enforcement policies, including their community guidelines.Here are some of the rules that Twitch requires you to follow:

1. You may carry out your giveaway to the maximum extent permitted by law.
2. You have the sole responsibility for all aspects involving your giveaway such as ensuring that the giveaway complies with all applicable laws, executing and managing the giveaway, etc.
3. You must specify that Twitch isn’t a sponsor or co-sponsor of your giveaway.

Be sure to check out the guidelines before you start creating your influencer marketing campaign. Twitch once announced that the new policies are a first of many improvements. Hence, if you intend to leverage this platform to reach your target audience, make sure to regularly check for revisions and additions to their policies and comply with them.

Conclusion

When you’re creating a giveaway, it helps to remember that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all option. You’ve got to think about your goals before anything else. Once you’ve identified what you want to achieve, you may choose the best strategy that can lead you closer to your goals. Let’s not forget—you must review the social media channel’s policies and guidelines involving giveaways. You must also make sure you comply with all of the applicable laws.

A giveaway is arguably the most effective way to launch an influencer marketing campaign. Even if you’re running on a limited budget, an effective giveaway should have a tremendous impact on your brand. It improves your reach. It creates buzz around your upcoming products or your brand. Plus, it’s not as tedious as other digital marketing tactics. You can enjoy engaging audiences, and you might even turn a one-time buyer into a lifetime customer.

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