10 Giveaways Ideas For Your Summer Marketing
Learn how to make the most of summer shopping with a giveaway campaign!
Summer is around the corner, and it's the time when people are shopping for holiday clothes, fun new outdoor hobbies, and planning vacations.
It's a prime opportunity to run a summer giveaway campaign, which is a super effective way to grow your social media following, boost engagement, generate leads, and drive sales.
Running a well thought out giveaway is an awesome way for businesses to capitalise on the summer season and push their stores and products forward and attract customers.
Here are some of the best summer giveaway ideas and our top tips on how to run them.
Depending on the value of your prize and the actions you want to drive, there are various ways to run your campaign, from something like a high effort video contest to a quick and easy comment to win.
Running a comment to enter giveaway is an an awesome way to increase post engagement. They make your content more visible and attract new followers by by driving interaction.
All you have to do is create a post featuring the giveaway details and ask participants to comment on the post to enter.
You can ask for any random comment, or ask for a response to a question that might be valuable to your brand. This could be something like 'what's your favourite colour of our new design?'
Keep an eye on the comments and use a random selection tool like Gleam Quick draws to pick the winner.
Asking commenters to tag a friend to enter your giveaway is a great way to take advatage of the social networks of your current followers.
Ask participants to tag a friend in the comments to enter. This not only increases engagement but also spreads awareness about your giveaway and brand.
Each tagged friend becomes aware of your business, brand, and the giveaway, which will lead to new followers and increased brand visibility.
Run a like, follow, or re-post to enter contest.
Ask participants to like your post, follow your account, or share the post on their own feed or stories for a chance to win.
This is another way to boost your visibility and helps grow your follower base, as shared posts reach a broader audience and likes and follows are great for increasing engagement.
Host a sweepstakes where participants complete powerful actions for a chance to win.
You can ask users to complete various actions, like subscribing to your newsletter or following you on social media, for a chance to win.
This helps you collect valuable customer information, such as email addresses, and encourages engagement across multiple platforms.
Plus, the process can be automated, saving you time from manually verifying each entry.
Try it our with this easy template:
A photo contest is an excellent way to gather user-generated content, which you can then use in future marketing campaigns.
Organise a summer themed photo contest where participants submit their best summer activity photos. You can also use this opportunity for brand promotion and ask users to include your product in their photo.
Post the contest details across all your socials and provide a unique hashtag for entries.
Try out our Photo Contest template.
Hosting a summer cocktail recipe contest is another great way to collect user-generated content. Just participants to submit their best summer cocktail recipes on the Gleam submission form or in the comment section.
Promote the contest through your social media channels, encouraging participants to share their entries, which can help extend your brand's reach.
You can then post all the best recipes on your own feed which provides great, new summer content.
Running a holiday video contest asking participants to share their favorite holiday moments can generate a lot of buzz and excitement around your brand.
Videos are engaging and highly shareable, helping to increase your reach and engagement.
Again, post the contest details and provide a unique hashtag for entries.
This is a great competition to run on Instagram Reels or TikTok
A summer virtual scavenger hunt boosts engagement and time spent on your socials, plus it can drive traffic to your site.
Hide summer-themed items or codes on your social media or pages of your website and provide daily clues on in your stories or feed to guide participants.
As they find these items, participants submit their answers through the Gleam landing page, in the comment section, or via DM, to enter the giveaway.
If people answer correctly in the comment section, it can spoil the answer for everyone else. It's also tricky and time consuming to manage entries via DM.
This method keeps your audience engaged over an extended period, increases interaction with your content, and familiarises participants with your products or services.
The continuous engagement and exploration can lead to higher conversion rates as participants become more invested in your brand and offerings.
A summer reading giveaway is an excellent way to boost your brand's engagement and increase your follower base as people love a good book whilst lounging in the sun.
Offer a collection of popular summer reads as prizes, create a visually appealing post featuring the giveaway details, share it across your social media platforms, and you're set!
Encourage participants to enter by completing various actions, such as following your social media accounts, subscribing to your newsletter, or tagging friends in the comments.
Use a tool like Gleam to track entries and randomly select winners. This method not only increases your social media engagement and follower count but also drives traffic to your website and builds your mailing list for future marketing efforts.
Partnering up for a summer giveaway is an effective strategy to boost engagement and reach new audiences.
Collaborate with complementary brands to create an appealing prize bundle and share the giveaway details on all participating brands' social media platforms.
Ask participants to enter by following all participating brands, tagging friends, and sharing the giveaway post. This is a great way to boost engagement and grow your following.
The main benefit of partnering up though is increased visibility. Partnering with multiple brands means your giveaway will be seen by a much larger combined audience!
Use a tool like Gleam to manage entries and select winners and drive more powerful actions like signing up to your mailing list. Try out our Partner with Brands Template.
Once you've set up your campaign, you need to encourage participation with an awesome prize!
Beach items, such as high quality beach towels, make for a good summer prize.
Designer sunnies are a high value idea.
Suncream will be a real crowd pleaser if you're a skincare focused brand.
A fancy beach umbrella is a fun and unique prize.
A cooler you can take to the beach or BBQ will be really useful during summer.
Give away a complete set of hiking gear.
Nice camping equipment will be a high value prize, include loads of essentials.
People will be shopping for new swimmers so it's a great idea to use this interest to drive entries into your giveaway.
Some nice flip flops are a great prize that appeals to almost everyone
Hats with cute designs can be a great prize that you can target at any age group.
Vouchers or shopping credits are an awesome idea as they give people a bit more flexibility to choose what they would love to win from your company or website.
A picnic basket with some tasty treats included is a perfect summer prize.
A BBQ along with some other goodies is a really awesome high value prize.
Some funky yoga mats are a good prize if you're a fitness related brand.
Travel vouchers are a really great and high value prize as you not only win a holiday but you have the flexibility to choose where you want to go.
Some nice new luggage for entrants summer holiday packing.
A garden hammock is a nice summery idea.
Summer tech items, like as a waterproof Bluetooth speaker, are perfect for summer activities like hanging around the beach or pool.
Furniture is a great prize as people will be hosting barbecues and spending more time outdoors.
Paddle boards are another great high value prize if your target audience are outdoorsy and sporty.
A GoPro is always an excellent prize and people can use it to video their summer events and experiences.
An Ereader is a perfect summer prize for lounging around in the garden or by the beach.
Festival tickets are great as there's loads of popular summer festivals on over summer. Plus it's often hard for people to get tickets themselves so it will increase the value beyond the monetary price.
Gardening supplies are great as people want to soak up the sun in the garden.
Fun beach games like paddleball and garden games like Swingball are perfect and on theme.
A fun and comfy inflatable for the pool or beach
Outdoor pizza ovens to make delicious homemade pizzas are great for when people are spending time in the garden with friends.
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Charlotte Czarnota
Charlotte is a Growth Intern at Gleam. Share this post if you got something out of it ☺