Contests and Giveaways in WordPress. Ultimate Guide. [+ Contest Prize Ideas]

As a business owner, you can engage with your customers through contests and giveaways to create awareness around your brand. 

Brand visibility can be achieved quickly since 54% of contestants often share the promotion with their friends or family. 

You can also create meaningful interactions with consumers, increase your mailing list, and convert more customers.

But, where should you begin?

There are several plugins that help businesses run effective contests on their WordPress website. 

Most of them are simple to set up and can help you maximize incoming traffic by generating leads or making more sales. 

Let’s take a look at how you can use contests to boost your business and a few plugins you should consider.

Why Do Businesses Use Contests And Giveaways?

Contests and giveaways are a fun and engaging way to get customers excited about a brand. 

They give customers a reason to focus on a business and encourage social actions such as sharing and subscribing. 

Businesses use contests or giveaways to: 

• Increase website traffic
• Generate new leads
• Increase brand visibility
• Grow their mailing list
• Increase social media following
• Boost sales
• Learn more about their customers through surveys
• Collect user feedback

Unfortunately, most businesses prefer hosting contests on social media and end up ignoring their website. By using WordPress plugins, you can enjoy a more wholesome solution. 

Not only will you increase on-site traffic, but you can also share the contest on social media and grow your following. 

How Contests And Giveaways Boost Sales, Engagement, And Brand Awareness

You can use contests to increase brand awareness and audience engagement without directly promoting yourself. 

Sales

Having a giveaway or contest can increase sales immediately and create an opportunity to expand your customer base. 

For instance, if your business is giving away one of its most coveted products, consumers who miss out on the prize may opt to purchase it instead. Plus, you can generate new leads, grow your email list, and target new consumers with personalized ads and sales offers later on. 

Brand awareness

Businesses can increase brand awareness by requesting participants to share the competition to win. It is also possible to share competitions on your social media pages and pair them up with explosive hashtags.

Additionally, you can give away promotional items such as t-shirts, caps, and stationery for customers to use. 

Customer engagement

Businesses can use contests to engage customers in several ways. They can ask people to vote for their favorite entry or encourage consumers to share their opinions and experiences with others. 

Plus, businesses follow up with consumers by sending tailored messages/emails expressing gratitude or sharing information on sales and discounts. This is also a great way to grow your online community for long term returns.

Setting The Goals For Contests And Giveaways

Like any other marketing strategy, contests and giveaways need to have an end goal. Otherwise, you will just be giving out gifts for no reason.   

Think of it this way; if you are launching a new product, your goal is to get potential customers excited and create interest within the market. 

Or you could run a competition to collect user-generated content that gives you a string of fresh content and provides perspective on how the product is used. 

Some common goals for you to focus on include:

• Generating leads and sales. 
• Increasing engagement
• Improving brand awareness
• Growing your social media following
• Growing your email listing
• Getting more subscribers 
• Producing more user-generated content

Remember, goals vary from one business to the next based on business needs.  

Ideas For Contests And Giveaways

Depending on the objectives of your giveaway, contest your marketing campaigns can take various forms. 

 Below are a few contest marketing campaigns techniques to help boost your brand. 

Polls: Polls are great for gaining market information by asking customers to answer multiple-choice questions to get a prize. 

Quiz/Trivia: This is a great way to gauge your customer’s knowledge by asking brand-related questions. It makes people feel smart and accomplished, especially if they win a prize.  To make it more engaging and fun, consider including easy and difficult questions. 

Giveaways: Giving away promotional products or free services can increase user engagement and brand loyalty. However, to limit the number of participants, customers need to meet some basic requirements to qualify. The winner is then chosen through a random method of selection to ensure fairness. Preply regularly runs a giveaway to give their students a chance to win 100 hours of language learning lessons. Participants can enter the draw by taking lessons on the platform. Each class, a participant, takes is equal to 1 draw entry.

Best Practices For Setting Up And Executing C&G

Running a C&G is a great way to reach out to potential customers. To avoid filling up your database with passive observers, you need to create an effective plan and include a follow-up strategy. 

Here are a few suggestions to help you out.

Use Time-Bound Offers As Incentives

Time-bound offers create a sense of urgency that pushes consumers into making purchase decisions quickly. 

This marketing tactic triggers the fear of missing out (FOMO). It is paired with scarcity marketing which makes consumers believe that only a few items are remaining. 

Your business can make a time-bound offer successful by creating a compelling offer, pushing the giveaway on multiple channels (not just WordPress), and maintaining a strict deadline. 

Define Your Target Group

The most successful marketing campaigns often target a specific group of people. Before running your contest, create a profile of the ideal customer. Include their age, gender, lifestyle, education level, average income, and career. It will prevent you from wasting resources on consumers who would never buy from you. Consider asking qualifying questions to check if the participants fall under the preferred profile. 

Promote Your Best Seller

Promoting our favorite product is a very strategic marketing move. By giving consumers a chance to win their favorite products, you can increase engagement and foster brand popularity. 

Plus, using your best product or service allows consumers to share positive experiences and talk up the brand. It is like having a mini advertisement that highlights the brand’s benefits.  

Keep Track Of All Contest And Giveaways

Monitoring contests allow you to track key metrics and better understand the contestants and their interaction with the process. 

The information identifies which content, prizes, and messages consumers resonate with. The data can be used to design more effective contents that drive sales and customer engagement. 

Post User-Generated Content (UGC)

About 85% of consumers say that visual UGC is more influential to their purchase decisions than brand self-promotion.

It offers a higher engagement rate and increases brand loyalty. Once consumers visualize themselves using and enjoying the product or service, they are likely to stay loyal. 

Think of user-generated content as a viral referral. Consumers can post pictures of themselves using your brand.

Top 3 Contest And Giveaway Plugins For WordPress

Not all plugins are equal. They each come with different features. But while some may enhance your website, others can make your WordPress site slow and ruin customers’ experience. 

To help you out, below are three WordPress giveaway plugins with their features and prices.

RafflePress 

The plugin has a mobile responsive design. It also works well with CRM software, lead generation software, other WordPress plugins, and social networks. 

It comes with a simple drag and drop builder and built-in templates to simplify the creation process.

It can be connected to email marketing platforms so you can grow your email list. It also allows you to connect to social media platforms to share your giveaways and contests to increase your following and boost your website traffic. 

Additional features:

• Email verification
• Success tracking
• Fraud protection to enhance fairness
• Retargeting
• 100% mobile responsive
• Rule generator template

Pricing 

RafflePress comes in four packages with different prices and features. They include: 

• Plus- $49
• Pro- $99
• Growth- $199
• Ultimate- $449

ShortStack

ShortStack allows you to tailor your marketing campaigns for maximum engagement and lead generation.

The platform comes with professionally designed contest templates that also come with extra CSS options. You can host photo contests, sweepstakes, and voting contests. 

The platform enhances fairness by validating codes before contestants can redeem prizes. Participants can either submit a single code, or a unique mix of numbers and letters. 

Additional features include:

• Campaign popups
• An all-in-one campaign dashboard
• Analytics
• Hashtag promotions
• Email scheduling and follow-up 
• Ability to collect user-generated content
• Embeddable contests
• Built-in Analytics

Pricing

The platform offers four packages based on the number of entrants and features. 

• Business at $99 a month
• Agency at $249 a month
• Brand at $499 a month

Gleam

The Gleam platform is a robust plugin. It comes with a setup wizard that connects to your social media profiles and email service. Additionally, you can create a separate giveaway landing page to promote your contest on social media.

The platform has an easy to use dashboard with four different apps;

• Instant rewards. Businesses can drive up their sales as users can get quick prizes by performing specific actions.
• Running competitions. You can set up your contest in 3 minutes.
• Email capture. People can include their email addresses  
• Social gallery. You can use user-generated content to create beautiful galleries 

The platform can be used on all devices thanks to its responsive widgets and a mobile-friendly user experience. 

It also uses random selection to make giveaways fair and allows participants to refer their friends using referral links. 

Pricing

You get to choose between three packages:

• Pro Plan at $97/mo
• Business Plan $397/mo
• Premium Plan$ 997/mo

Alternatively, you can purchase individual apps for as little as $29.

Bonus Section. Five Best Contest And Giveaway Prize Ideas

The type of reward offered during a contest can make or break your campaign. Luckily, all you need is to make the rewards worthwhile. Just make the prizes relevant to your target audience and avoid generic rewards that attract freebie seekers. 

So what prizes can you offer?

Your Most Popular Product Or Service.

The best way to create value for contestants and market your product is by offering up your most popular product as a reward. 

Customized Products

Customized products make unique and special gifts. You can reward contest winners with personalized items with their names printed or engraved. 

Personalized rewards create a unique experience and encourage customers to use and show off and recommend your products. 

Gift cards.

Everybody enjoys a gift card. It is a flexible reward that allows contest winners to choose their preferred products from your store. They are less expensive and can hold a small monetary value, allowing you to distribute them to multiple winners. 

Money 

Just like gift cards, monetary rewards give people a choice. But when it comes to monetary rewards, you have to make it worthwhile. The contest winners can choose to spend the money on your products or something else. Financial rewards tend to attract more people and get them talking about your business or company. 

Limited Edition 

Limited edition products create a sense of urgency as people rush to win the coveted prize. It increases traffic and results in more leads and registration. 

Get started today!

Hopefully, this post has helped you figure out what WordPress giveaway plugin fits your needs. Remember, it all comes down to what you want to achieve, your budget, and your long-term plans?

As you prepare for your next contest or giveaway, remember to select a plugin that cuts down your work and helps you achieve your goals.