Raspberry Lemonade Shea and Cocoa Butter Cold Process Soap

By: soapdeli

Giveaways are fun. They create excitement and can be a great tool for getting consumers to visit your online shop. The more traffic you can bring to your shop, the higher your chances of making a sale. And while all giveaways don’t mean sales, what they do equate to is great exposure, name recognition, and possible sales down the line. Running a successful giveaway, however, can be trying and I know a lot of indie business owners who have been disappointed by how little traffic their giveaway has yielded. Because of this I’ve decided to share my tips on how to run an effective giveaway for promoting your shop.

Decide on a prize. First and foremost you need to decide what type of item you’d like to offer as a prize. While it’s tempting to offer that bracelet that never sold and sat in your shop until it expired, this is not the type of item you want to give away. Look over your shop or inventory and pick a product that has gotten a lot of positive attention. Even pick an item that you have sold and re-create something similar. Why? Because you want people to want to take the time to enter your giveaway and most will only do this if you’re offering a product they like and can use. Think about who your target market is and what they would want. Also, be sure to keep in mind the retail value of your prize. People like big prizes – things they wouldn’t necessarily be able to afford or justify buying without knowing the business or the product. Further, the broader the appeal of your prize, the more entries you’re likely to receive as well. Remember that if you can’t get consumers to enter your contest, then you’re missing out on potential new traffic sources for your shop. Then decide on a prize.

Host your contest. Now that you’ve decided what you’re going to give away, you’ll need to decide how to host your contest. If you have a blog or website, that’s the best place to start. Not only will you increase traffic to your blog and potentially gain new followers, but you can set the terms you want for entering your contest as well. Don’t discount having other sites host your contest for you though. Other blogs and sites often have different audiences which ensures you are reaching new people and not the same ones over and over again. If you don’t have a blog, now would be a good time to start one with the giveaway giving you a big introductory push. There are free blogs that cost little to nothing such as Google’s free blogging platform, Blogger. I highly recommend using Blogger for a first time blog as it’s easy to work with and will automatically be indexed by Google.

Setting up your giveaway. Setting up a giveaway really isn’t difficult. Writing the copy is the easy part .After all, you already know everything there is to know about your product. However, what you do need to think about is what you want to gain from the giveaway. Do you want to increase traffic, gain sales, expand your social network? All of these are important things to consider. Personally I’d never pass up the opportunity to expand my social network through sites like twitter and facebook. Friends share things that interest them with their friends and so on, which can lead to a lot of indirect marketing the larger your network grows.

Read More Here:  Be sure to check out the rest of these great tips.

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