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?'

Tip

Keep an eye on the comments and use a random selection tool like Gleam Quick draws to pick the winner.

comment

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.

tag

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.

like

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:

  view 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.

Tip

Try out our Photo Contest template.

fun

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.

cocktail

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.

Tip

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.

Caution

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.

  view template

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!

read

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. 

  view template

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!

Tip

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.

partner

Once you've set up your campaign, you need to encourage participation with an awesome prize!

Suncream will be a real crowd pleaser if you're a skincare focused brand. 

A cooler you can take to the beach or BBQ will be really useful during summer. 

Nice camping equipment will be a high value prize, include loads of essentials. 

Hats with cute designs can be a great prize that you can target at any age group. 

Gardening supplies are great as people want to soak up the sun in the garden. 

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Author

Charlotte Czarnota

Charlotte is a Growth Intern at Gleam. Share this post if you got something out of it ☺