Who doesn’t love a great ticket giveaway? They’re the perfect way to massively boost your social media engagement, drum up some real excitement for your event, and reach out your influence to generate powerful and effective leads.
Most industry leaders nowadays would agree that ticket giveaway contests and social media ticket giveaway campaigns are among the most effective methods for interacting with fans and followers, and creating some authentic, organic buzz among your online communities.
What’s more, people absolutely love getting involved in contests and competitions, and they’re sure to see your events company or brand in a more positive light once you’ve announced the prizes you’re offering!
Creating a ticket giveaway campaign is one of our favourite aspects of this industry. It’s one of those parts of the job which is based on real positive, real energy, and gives us the chance to check out the enthusiasm and creativity of our followers.
However, if you want your ticket giveaway contest to catch fire and go viral online, there are plenty of steps you’ll have to follow first. It’s one of those aspects of marketing and promotion which needs to involve a fair few different best practices… but once you’ve got the formula down, it can be a highly impactive approach with the power to make your ticket sales and engagement go through the roof.
Get it wrong, however, and you can find yourself wasting plenty of time and energy on something which never really gets off the ground.
As always, here at Ultimate Experience we want all of your efforts to pay off in a big way. As such, we’ve put together this article, which is jam-packed full of best practices, great ideas, and suggestions for ticket giveaway campaigns which have been tried and tested among several industry giants. Get ready to find out how to bring this winning formula to your event, and discover how ticket giveaways can make all the difference for you!
Factors to Bear in Mind for Your Ticket Giveaway Campaign
Your Objective
Naturally, before you set out on any kind of campaign or project, you need to think carefully about your goal. By understanding what you want to achieve, you’ll be able to streamline your efforts and methods in order to reach higher levels of effectiveness.
For example, if you want your ticket giveaway to help you gather email addresses and leads, a traditional sweepstake does the job perfectly. Want to promote your event to new audiences? Set up a ticket giveaway contest which focuses on sharing material on social media, or tagging friends and inviting new members.
Type of Ticket Giveaway Contest
There are lots of different ticket giveaway campaigns to choose from, and you’ll need to select yours based on a number of different factors. Do you want your contest to be easy to enter, and result in a wide social media reach? A sweepstake will probably suit your needs perfectly.
Want to encourage higher engagement from your fans, and give them a chance to show off their talents and enthusiasm? There are caption contests, photo competitions, and all kinds of contest types to consider. Think about the vibe and themes of your event, and think carefully about the contest type which suits these best.
Methods of Entry
There are more ways to set up contest entries than we have space for here, and plenty of top social media management tools will help you establish your contest specifics, if you’re interested in going down that route. These range from the quick and easy (traditional sweepstakes, hashtag contests and tagging friends), to the more complex (submitting creative projects, writing stories, or making short films etc).
Your choice of entry method depends partly on how much time you have to sift through submissions, as well as the scale of your contest and the type of ticket giveaway campaign you’re running.
Rules and Regs
As with everything in life, ticket giveaways are governed by a whole load of rules and regulations you’ll need to brush up on. Data protection rules, CAPTCHA guidelines, minimum age regulations… the list goes on and on. Be sure to be on top of the rules in your jurisdiction, and don’t make the mistake of falling foul of the law or general best practices.
Set Up a Timeline
Another key part of any campaign is the timeline. Competitions and contests should take place comfortably in advance of the event itself – you want to leave plenty of time between the opening and closing dates, in order to encourage as many entries as possible.
What’s more, you’ll need time to build up your social media campaign, contact the winner, and make sure your promotional materials have time to hit all the right targets. Draw up a realistic timeline, and then stick to it as closely as possible!
Social Media Ticket Giveaway Ideas
There are literally hundreds of ticket giveaway campaign ideas out there – some of which could be used for almost any event, others of which are more specific. Here are some of our absolute favourite contest types and top tips. Check them out below!
The Photo Competition
We love photo contests here at Ultimate Experience. Why? Because they’re great fun to judge, and they really encourage a high rate of participation and engagement. After all, competitors really enjoy being creative for brands or social media pages they like, and what’s more, their original (and often highly unique) content can be used by you for future campaigns.
Everyone’s a winner! You can even find dedicated third-party apps like Wishpond, which have been specially created to help with this kind of campaign.
source – blog.hubspot
Hashtag Contests
One of the absolute easiest contest types out there, the hashtag contest allows your followers to not only get involved with your giveaway simply and quickly, but also promote your event on their Twitter and Instagram networks while doing so. Make sure your event has a unique and recognisable hashtag that can be spread around social media, and pick out the best use of your hashtag from among your fans!
Add a Countdown Timer
Slap a big countdown timer on your social media pages and website, and you’ll instantly create a powerful sense of urgency and importance around your contest. The closer your countdown ticks towards zero, the harder and faster those entries will flood in!
Curate a Prize Package
What’s better than one prize? A whole bundle of prizes, of course! Competition fans simply love the idea of receiving a prize package – there’s something childishly brilliant about the idea of a huge box of goodies arriving on your doorstep, just waiting to be unwrapped and dived into.
Your package could be full of items from your event sponsors, or include donated gifts from partners and clients. Even better, you could add some of your own corporate ‘filler’ to make that package bulge even more!
Share Your Best Entries
If you’re running a creative contest (eg. a photo competition, short film contest, caption contest or poetry competitions etc), it’s a great idea to drip-feed your followers a favourite entry per day, just to give them an idea what the competition is looking like.
What’s more, by doing this you’re also creating an all-important sense of urgency around your giveaway, and also demonstrating that – against popular belief – you are actually looking at your entries!
Use Your Cover Photo
Once your ticket giveaway is underway, you want to promote it as much as possible. One highly impactful way of doing this is by using your social media banners and cover photos – these are often the first thing that fans and new followers see on your social media pages, and so by promoting your campaign there, you can ensure maximum engagement. Also, add a link to your contest or campaign page in your bio, too, as this will help drive traffic to all the right places.
Ticket Giveaway Contests: The Key to Top-Notch Engagement and Promotion
As we’ve seen in this blog, ticket giveaways can be a hugely effective and enjoyable way to ramp up engagement and create the kind of organic buzz that really makes a difference. There’s something fundamental about human competitiveness which you’re tapping into by running such a campaign… and everyone loves to be a winner, right?
At Ultimate Experience, we love coming up with effective and lasting ideas for promotional campaigns, and we’re never left unimpressed by the sheer creativity and ingenuity we come across in our communities. Want to know more about what we can do to promote your event? We’d love to hear from you soon!