Mastering The Art Of Giveaways

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Over the past 4-5 months we began experimenting with giveaways. We've done 16 of them. Some got a few hundred impressions. Some got over 270,000 impressions.

Yes they're hit or miss, but they've been effective to grow Super Send from $0 to $6k MRR in ~6 months.

Here are my stats over the past 90 days

on Twitter:

On Linkedin:

In some ways I'm hesitant to share this secret sauce. I think there's a window for these to work, and it's now. This will not work forever. It is a hack for social media algorithms not yet sophisticated enough to handle it. But one day soon I believe Twitter and Linkedin will catch on and it will stop being effective. What will always be effective though is providing value. And a giveaway when crafted appropriately is just a packaging around an outstanding value proposition. Something free for a follow.

So in an effort to provide value, let's get into what makes a giveaway irresistible.  

Utility

This might be obvious, but the giveaway has to be useful. If it's a link to a new product or something that doesn't immediately provide value to the viewer, it ain't gonna work. I mean, try it, and prove me wrong, but this goes against the whole idea of a giveaway. You're giving away utility. This isn't a penny for your thoughts, in 2023 this is massive value for absolutely $0 and MAYBE a follow or some engagement. That's it. That's the game.

In some ways, "giveaway" is a misnomer. This should be thought of more like "engineering as marketing" than a traditional "giveaway".

Examples of great utility:

• Curated lists of things (tools, resources)
• Scripts / hacks for something immediately useful.
• Free chapter in a book.
• Email templates
• Notion template (competitor analysis, project management checklist, etc).
• Checklists
• A Report

Examples that serve you instead of a potential customer:

• Sign up to my thing (app, newsletter)
• Engage for a discount
• Enter a chance to win

People do self serving giveaways all the time and to some extent they still work. Direct promotional giveaways are not the topic today. I want you to try giving away something of real utility.

One implications of the kind of utility I'm talking about is quality over quantity: A well-crafted, high-quality giveaway is more likely to be shared and appreciated than multiple mediocre ones. Invest time and effort into creating a single, outstanding giveaway.

Givewaways must be actionable: Ensure that your giveaway provides actionable steps or tools that potential customers can immediately apply to their businesses. By demonstrating your understanding of their challenges and offering practical solutions, you'll create a positive impression and build trust.

Secrecy

Our best giveaways have been scripts. Scripts to pull leads from google maps. Scripts to pull leads from linkedin. I think scripts work because they're inherently hacky. And data scraping has always been a kind of grey area. It makes sense you don't want to just have a blog post with this info on it. It could cause some problems for you. So there needs to be a reason. I'd say the utility component is far more important than this one though. But still. When we've asked people to sign up for our blog to view the post our results have been terrible.

Another angle on secrecy is exclusivity: To add an element of intrigue and appeal, make your giveaway exclusive to your social media followers or newsletter subscribers. This will encourage new followers and make your existing audience feel valued. You can say this in the giveaway. Something like "only for people who follow me" etc.

Patience

The first few didn't work. I believe our first hit was on attempt 3. Then a few more duds after that. Then most recently, 3 wins in a row. We're trying to step up our pace and do them once a week.

Continuously test and refine your giveaways. As with any marketing strategy, testing and refining your giveaway is essential to its success. Monitor engagement metrics and feedback to identify what works best, and adjust your approach accordingly. This is otherwise known as cringe mountain. Climb it.

Helpful Tips:

• Twitter threads and Linkedin posts are similar. I start with Linkedin and then whittle down my Linkedin post and turn it into a twitter thread. I post twitter first. Then I do Linkedin.
• Asking for a like or a follow is no different than saying "like and subscribe" on youtube. It's not a dirty word. Ask for what you want!
• You've certainly heard this before. Give away more than you are comfortable with. We gave away a free email finder for Super Send. It cost me real $$ to do that. The result? 200 signups in a day. Worth it.

Examples: