Giveaway Contest Ideas to Boost Your Audience

Nothing draws a crowd like free or discounted stuff, and everyone loves to be a winner. That’s why companies are turning to giveaway contests as part of their next big marketing campaigns. But what’s the best way to get these fun prizes items out to the public, and what merch works best for promotional giveaways? We’re here to help you out with our fun giveaway contest ideas to help you boost your audience. 

Merch Ideas for Contest Giveaways

When you’re puzzling out big giveaway challenge ideas and you want to draw a large audience, you want to make the prize as appealing as possible. But what kind of merch should you be giving away? Here are a few popular merch ideas that will help you get that audience engagement you need. 

Products and Services

If you already sell products, your audience would love nothing more than a way to get those high-quality items at a reduced price or even for free! Take whatever surplus inventory you have and put it up for grabs as part of your next big giveaway contest idea. And don’t think you have to give out a free tv or refrigerator, a free box of apples from a grocer or set of pillows from a furniture store is enough to get the hype going.  

This works just as well with services. A free massage, a reduced price on plumbing repairs, or a free week-long gym membership is all it takes to get people excited about your giveaway. Let this promotional giveaway double as a chance to show off your products or services while building hype around your business. 

Promotional Swag

What do a pen, a tote bag, a coffee mug, and a tennis ball all have in common? They could all have your custom logo on them! Promotional products like these have been a classic marketing technique for ages, and the options for promotional merch are only growing with time. Because of that growth, it’s easy to find promotional products that can be used in your next giveaway challenge idea. Some of the more popular items that have been trending for giveaways include: 

• Custom Bags and Backpacks: What works better as free stuff than something that can help you carry more stuff? Bags and backpacks are both fun and functional, something that your winners will want to use almost every day. They’ll be carrying it around as well, which means your logo will be traveling right along with them.
• Personalized Stainless Steel Straw Sets: Eco-friendliness is becoming more and more important to consumers, and you want to make sure that they know your company is on the same page. Reusable items like stainless steel straws not only help eco-systems stick around, but it ensures your logo is going to stick around as well.

• Promotional Tech Gadgets: We are living in an increasingly technological time, and if you want to make sure your logo is on something that customers will keep around, make your promotional products relevant. Pens with attached stylus ends, phone holders, and wireless speakers are all techy items that customers will enjoy using regularly with their own home tech.

Gift Baskets

Gift baskets are popular for fun giveaway contest ideas because they are made to have a little bit of something for everyone. A good gift basket should always include something to eat and drink along with some other fun and functional items. You want to give a variety of gifts that relate back to your business or promotion in some way. For example, a local gym could make a gift basket including a branded water bottle, towel, nutrition bars, and a logo t-shirt. A flower shop would want to includes flowers and chocolates in their gift basket, and so on.  

Gift baskets are especially popular for giveaway contest ideas made to fundraise for charities because you can get a lot of your gift basket items donated from other local businesses. No matter what you include, however, don’t let the promotional opportunity pass you by. Make sure to include something with your company’s logo on it so the basket won’t be the only thing left to remind your contest winners of who to thank for their big win. For more ideas on gift baskets, check out our blog post on corporate gift basket ideas. 

Where and When to Give Away Your Merch

Now that you know what to give away, the next big question is where. The truth is that any big promotional event that you put together for marketing, fundraising, or general public engagement is a great place to add fun giveaway contest ideas. To help you get the ball rolling, here are some specific instances where you can create some company buzz with your own big merch giveaway. 

Social Media

With so many consumer interactions happening online now, social media has become the hub of all things company engagement. With many companies struggling to find new and exciting ways to keep their audience engaged with their social media platforms, some cool new giveaway challenge ideas can go a long way to help build the hype. 

Make sure your promotional contest lasts at least a week. Because this is all happening online, you don’t have to worry about people “leaving” before the event ends. Post pictures of the prizes, engage with participants, and get as many likes and shares as you can before the event ends to help build your online presence. That way, you get tons of social media engagement all for the price of a single giveaway prize! 

Company Events

Planning to host a community fair or fundraiser, or maybe just joining an industry gathering with your own booth? Get people to stay through the entire event with a raffle! These giveaway challenge ideas may only give you one day of audience engagement, but you can bet your customers will be talking about their big win for weeks afterward.  

If you’re the host, make sure you’re giving out a lot of prizes for maximum customer engagement. You can structure it with one big raffle prize to draw in participants, then a few gift baskets and finally a large number of individual promotional products. The more people that leave feeling like winners, the more your brand is going to spread by word of mouth and by the visibility of your logo on their prizes. 

Internal Contests

If you’re giving out big products, service discounts or company branded swag, don’t leave your employees out of the fun! Internal giveaway contest ideas can be used to encourage an increase in productivity and even boost morale. Motivate your teams with productivity challenges, or just have your own raffles or contests to help your employees feel more engaged and excited about work.  

One great example of this is in the sales industry, where salespeople will often have incentives to make the most sales on the team. You can do the same in customer service, where the employee with the most tickets resolved in a week can earn some company swag or discounts. While being successful at work is always a big motivator for good employees, everyone loves a tangible prize to validate that success. 

There are a lot of great giveaway contest ideas out there that can help you improve customer and even employee engagement with your brand. Getting that engagement can make a major positive impact on your brand awareness, and the prizes themselves can go even further to get your brand seen. Any company has the capability to put together a giveaway contest or raffle of some kind, and doing so can do a lot of good for your marketing.