Setting Up for a Giveaway Event
Set Up the Page for the Giveaway Event
Like sales copy, the giveaway event should have copy that promotes the offer. You want to inform, educate and excite your audience about what they’re about to receive.
You’ll want to include some simple instructions for what they need to do to get their free downloads. The more complex you make it, the worse off your event will be.
Terms and rights will need to be included in some instances. For example, if you’re hosting a private label rights giveaway event. Each marketer might have different terms, so those should be listed with each offer.
Start with a catchy headline and maybe a sub-headline before launching into a bit of storyline for the sale. Beside each offer name, include a picture of the marketer, tell what their offer is, give the specifications or details of their offer, and provide the link to where they grab it.
The promotion should have some sort of time scarcity. You don’t want to leave it wide open forever. If you have plenty of advanced notice and build a lot of buzz, then you should be fine doing a 24 hour to 7 day giveaway event, max.
Create graphics for the sale just as if you were launching an info product. That means a minisite feel, ecovers for the offers if applicable, and even promo banners for the event.
You might want to create a set of swipe files for the event too. This makes it easy for the participants to either use it as is or as springboard content that they can tweak and blast out to their list.
Promote the Event
You can’t just make the event go live and expect people to find it via the search engines. Your page would need time to get indexed and ranked for domination. So you need to manually promote it.
Building a buzz should take place shortly before the event and every day thereafter by every member who is onboard for the special giveaway event, not just by one person.
Come up with a daily promo idea such as asking people (your list, your social networking followers), “Who’s your favorite?” Discuss the various participants and get their feedback on which offer blew them away.
Share that feedback with your audience online and bill that favorite as a “can’t miss” free download to drive more traffic to the giveaway.
Discuss specific offers in more depth like a review – or offer a tutorial for them. So for instance, if you were in a PLR giveaway event, and there was one pack for a 35-page eBook, you might do a lesson on how to repurpose that person’s giveaway freebie.
You’re showing your people (your blog readers, etc.) how to get more mileage out of this event, and that will hook the people who heard about the offer but passed over it because they were unsure how to put it to good use.
Social networking sites will need to have a buzz about your event. Whip up posts for Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook (as well as Pinterest). Make sure you provide a call to action that says they should visit the event and share the post with others!
Host a webinar with the participants of the giveaway. Invite everyone’s list to the event and then have each person do a short presentation. If you want to up the ante a bit, do a Q&A afterwards.
Have everyone in the event blog about it. Each person should email their list a link to their blog to read about the event and get more details, in addition to linking directly to the event itself.
Choosing a Cross Promo Instead of a Giveaway Event
Picking one marketer to cross promo with is another option. You don’t have to have a big group of individuals initially. Sometimes it’s hard when you’re relatively unknown with a small list (or no list at all) to get people to agree to be part of your event.
So if this happens, just try getting one person to agree to an event.
If you have a list yourself, and are trying to grow it, choose someone with a list approximately the same size as yours. If you have no list, then choose someone with a bigger list and make an unbelievable free offer just for their list.
Why would anyone want to come onboard for this type of exchange? Because your offer is going to be so awesome, they’ll be providing something great for their list.
What you’ll have to do is explain this to the potential joint venture partner and go above and beyond in what you create for their list. In fact, try to tailor it to their subscribers’ needs.
The JV partner will probably also want to know what kind of marketer you are. If they’re established, then they probably get requests all the time for promotions and other deals.
They’re looking for someone ethical. Why is this important? Because they’re about to put their own reputation on the line and recommend that their subscribers sign up with you.
If they send them to the jaws of a scammer, they’ll be the one blamed. So somehow, prove to the prospective JV partner that you’re on the up and up and that it’s safe to engage in a cross promotion with you.
You can do a free event, or if the prospective partner won’t go for that, see if he or she will possibly entertain the thought of letting you give their list a different kind of perk – a discount on a paid product.
Coupons are also special and show a list that you’re working on their behalf to get them good deals. Make it a special offer so that it’s not just the same discount everyone else online gets.
Giveaway and cross-promo events can be a great list building activity. It forces you to give it your all and showcase the best that you have to offer to the paying public and they’ll be more loyal from that point on.