Last week I was cleaning out my home office and came across a lot of marketing books of which I either had duplicates, or had already read and didn’t need to keep anymore.
It’s such a hassle to sell new and used books on Amazon, and they take so much of the fees that it seems hardly worth the effort. I could’ve just thrown them in a pile for my next yard sale, but instead, I thought I’d see what would happen if I had some fun with them and gave them away on one of my blogs. The experiment turned out to be quite surprising.
The first two books I decided to give away together were ProBlogger by Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett and Blog Blazers by Stephane Grenier, since they were both on the topic of blogging. I wrote a quick blog post about the contest, and all visitors had to do to register was leave a comment and subscribe to the blog’s feed.
On a blog with virtually no traffic and no promotion, this simple contest increased the average daily visits by 3000%! It also had a similar effect on our RSS subscribers. It was so successful that I’m planning to make it a biweekly or monthly contest. Even after I run out of books in my office, I’ll buy new books (which I’d do anyway) or find other valuable giveaways — maybe even some worth much more.
What started as a way to clean up my bookshelf turned into a successful marketing experiment. How can you successfully use a giveaway to increase subscribers, sales, or website traffic?
Give Away Something of Value
Your website visitors probably don’t want your old pair of sneakers. You have to give away something of value for a giveaway to work. It doesn’t have to be monetary value, though; I gave away two books that had been sitting on my shelf collecting dust. The total retail value of the books was under $50. I’d purchased one of them for $17 on Amazon and received the other for free at a conference I attended.
The key is to give something away that your audience finds value in. It could be an ebook of a special report, a coaching call, or a free website evaluation. If you can find something that your audience values, and give it to them for free, you can get them to do almost anything.
Promote Someone Else
By giving away books, I gave myself partners in advertising. By tagging the authors in my blog posts and tweets about the giveaway, I created a compelling reason for them to promote my post in return. Both Darren and Chris, authors of ProBlogger, retweeted my contest to their followers.
If you decide to give away an ebook or special report, consider giving one away that’s been written by someone else. Even if you have to buy it first.
Don’t Ask Too Much
It’s imperative that you don’t ask too much from your visitors. Asking someone to fill out a four-page form just to download a free report is not only excessive, it would result in far fewer entries because the perceived value of the report doesn’t exceed the hassle of filling out the form.
Only ask for an email address, or for someone to subscribe to an RSS feed, or to leave a comment, and no more. The goal here is to build a larger network of people who are genuinely interested in what you have to say.
Set a Deadline
Depending on the contest, and the value of what you are giving away, your deadline may be a day or week from the start of the contest. Make sure the deadline is appropriate for what you are asking of your visitors, who may live in completely different time zones. I ended my contest the day after it started, giving roughly 24 hours.
Consider the Side Benefits
One side benefit for running a contest on a frequent basis is that you gain a chance to interact with one of your readers on a one-on-one basis. It gives one fortunate person a reason to be excited about you, your website, or your company. It’s reasonably likely that several winners will blog or tweet about winning, which grants you even more exposure.
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Isn’t this true in life…The more you give, the more you receive!
Great idea, my problem is coming up with things people would genuinely want to receive. Some of my sites are in B2B niches.