Giveaways – Should You Be Launching One?

Giveaways – Should You Be Launching One?

Hello everyone, it’s us at OpenMinds HK back at it again with another video! Today we’re here to talk about something that everyone has seen before, but nobody ever admits to signing up for: Giveaways.

Giveaways are a popular way for businesses to quickly gain brand awareness, and maybe even snag up a few followers along the way. But should you be considering launching a giveaway campaign to boost your business? It’s not as straightforward as it seems.

Here are three things you ought to consider before you sign off a chunk of your marketing budget.

1. 1. 1. If you’re planning to buy ads to advertise your giveaway, you need to deep-dive into the platform’s Terms and Conditions to see if there would be anything in there that would hinder your giveaway campaign’s objective. For example, Facebook Ads has a policy that prohibits Low Quality or Disruptive Content. That might not seem TOO relevant to you at first glance until you see what the policy considers as “low quality” or “disruptive”. The policy lists “Engagement Bait” as one of the hallmarks of a low-quality ad, which the policy defines as “Ads with spammy content asking people to engage with it in specific ways, such as requesting likes, comments and shares”. If participation in your Giveaway requires people liking and sharing your Page or Content, and you mention this in your ad copy or visuals, then Facebook is likely to either heavily reduce your ads’ reach or just disapprove the ad altogether.
      2. In Hong Kong, depending on how your giveaway is structured, you may need to apply for a Trade Promotion Competition license before you are legally allowed to run your giveaway. As an example, if you plan to have the winner of your giveaway be selected at random, then you will need to apply for this license in order for your campaign to be legally compliant.
      3. Lastly, rules and regulations aside, let’s think about what this giveaway campaign will mean for your brand. As mentioned, while giveaways are an easy way to quickly attract attention to your brand, it might also negatively impact your brand image and equity, especially if you are positioning your brand to be a higher-end, luxury product. We know better than anyone that it takes a long time to build a brand, and damaging it with one giveaway when another strategy could accomplish similar sales objectives would be a shame.

That’s it for today’s video. If you have any questions about this video, or about digital marketing in general, or you just want to talk shop, feel free to message us anytime!