How to Create Followers With Right Instagram Giveaway? 7 Unique Ideas to Boost Traffic

We easily identify big brands by having a quick glance at their logo. But when it comes to small businesses, we don’t even know them. Small businesses often lose in the sea of competitors. Instagram Giveaway is a surefire way for small brands, marketing agencies, restaurants, clothing stores, and influencers to entice niche audiences to their fledgling business in a short period of time with little effort.

If you are soon going to run an Instagram contest or giveaway but not sure where to begin, then take a look at these examples of Instagram giveaways to get great results.

Instagram giveaway helps you to reach your niche audience for your business type. Even attract new customers, boost Instagram followers & website traffic, build brand awareness, email lists and generate massive engagement. 

As per research by Tailwind app, a giveaway on Instagram can boost your followers 70% faster in 3 months compared to if you don’t host a contest at all.

Instagram Giveaway Examples to create buzz over internet

Instagram Giveaway Idea 1: Christmas/Festive Giveaways  

You can easily boost traffic, engagement, social media followers, and sales by about 100% through hosing a festive-themed giveaway. You can run a Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween, or Easter giveaway. Festive time prizes may include cash, gift cards, holiday goodies, gift cards, hamper of your products, coupons, food, Christmas tree, or grant wish.

The Girl Boss Factor $5,000 Giveaway (https://www.instagram.com/the_girlbossfactor)

The Girl Boss Factor partnered with other 6 relevant brands to host a cash giveaway during the Holidays. Collaborating with other brands not only increases the prize pool but also reach.

Users were required to take the following actions:

• Like/ Save/ Tag Friends on the giveaway post
• Follow All the sponsors of the giveaway
• Repost the giveaway image to their feed with the hashtag #thesisterhoodcashgiveaway (optional)

Pros:

• Increase user engagement
• Boost your Instagram followers 
• Repost increase the reach of your giveaway 
• Repost + unique hashtag helps to track the entries
• Tagging friends offer new leads and an audience

Instagram Giveaway Idea 2: Event-Based giveaway

You can sponsor a giveaway during Super Bowl, concert, Food Festivals, Grammy, back to school, Oscar, NFL, NASCAR, or other sports events to increase your engagement. Event Themed giveaway prizes include a free trip to the event, tickets, free snacks for a party, an event watch party, or a meet and greet with the celebrity or player.  You can also offer prizes like TV, jerseys, caps, gift cards, home theater systems, autographed merchandise, hampers, or a prize package of your products. 

Sip’d Super Bowl Giveaway (https://www.instagram.com/p/BeeH7BphhZl/)

As Super Bowl giveaways draw massive attention, Sip’d took advantage of it and hosted a creative Super Bowl contest to engage their fans. Users were asked to guess the Super Bowl II team’s final score in the comments in order to win a free month of Sip’d coffee. Guessing the score is a fun way to get engagement on your page.

Pros:

• Attract sports niche audience
• Build relationships with your audience
• Comments boost post engagement and customer base

Instagram Giveaway Idea 3: Seasonal Giveaway

You can celebrate the change of the seasons: summer, winter, fall, or spring with a giveaway or contest.  The prizes should help your audience to get ready for the season. You can give away a seasonal bundle, your products, trip, cash, gift card, barbeque grill, self-care products, spring cleaning services, passes to seasonal activity, and more.  

 Collegexpress Summer Giveaway (https://www.instagram.com/p/By-MYq6nbxr/)

Collegexpress kicked off the summer season with a caption contest to keep the audience fixated on their Instagram page. The caption contest not only incites creativity but also boosts contest engagement. Collegexpress uploaded a wacky photo and asked the users to caption it. The creative, and unique caption won a $25 Amazon Gift Card.

Users were required to take one of the following actions:

• Follow Collegexpress on Instagram and leave a clever caption for a wacky photo in the comments
• Follow Collegexpress on Facebook and leave your caption in the comments on the pinned post
• Follow Collegexpress on Twitter and tweet us your caption using #CXSummerFun
• Email your caption to feedback@collegexpress.com (You can use #CXSummerFun for the subject line!)

Pros:

• Boost followers and engagement of Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter simultaneously 
• Collect user emails for your future marketing campaigns
• Incite creativity of the audience
• Using the company’s branded hashtag increases brand awareness and contest entries.

Instagram Giveaway Idea 4: Special Day Giveaway

Hosting a giveaway during special days like Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Valentine’s Day, 4th July, or New Year gives your audience another reason to celebrate. Prizes can be included like dinner, spa gift certificate, vacation, jewelry, tickets to the party, vouchers, gift basket, cash, trip, gift cards, clothing, tech prizes, photoshoot, kitchen tools or appliances, and more.

 Hannah Harvesting Health Giveaway (https://www.instagram.com/p/CJ_iUV3p1Zs/)

Hannah Harvesting Health, a food blog partnered with other food bloggers to launch a giveaway and gifted one winner a Peloton bike + accessories. Health and fitness giveaway during New Year has great potential to attract new customers and increase followers as most people tend to take Fitness New Year’s Resolution. Hannah Harvesting Health also gave winners a chance to opt for cash if they already own a Peloton bike.

Users were required to take the following actions:

• Follow All the sponsors of the giveaway 
• Like the giveaway post
• Tag friends in the comments 
• sharing on your story and tag all of the sponsors (optional)

Pros:

• Increase engagement
• Tagging friends provide new leads and grow your audience
• Boost Instagram followers 
• Sharing the giveaway in the story increase brand awareness and the reach of the giveaway 

Instagram Giveaway Idea 5: Milestone/Product Launch Giveaway

Celebrate a new product launch, brand milestone like an anniversary, or social media milestone with a giveaway. A milestone giveaway not only builds brand goodwill but also shows your appreciation for followers. Prizes can be included anything from a motorcycle and cash to your brand hamper.  If you launching a new product, then provide a complimentary discount code to all entrants. This will boost website traffic and sales.

VIP Ticket Giveaway (https://www.instagram.com/p/B8hkYt6n9qg/)

The Houston press celebrated the new additions to their Menu of Menus restaurant lineup with a giveaway. A giveaway together with your product launch helps to promote your new product. One lucky winner scored a pair of VIP tickets to the food event to enjoy free food, beer, wine, cocktails, music and entertainment, and more. 

Users were required to take the following actions:

• Follow Houstonpress on Instagram
• Tag friends in the comments 
• Include what restaurant users are most excited to see from the list of restaurants available at menuofmenus.com/restaurants

Pros:

• Like and tag increase engagement
• Boost your Instagram followers 
• Tagging friends in the comments generate new leads
• Increase website traffic and sales 

Instagram Giveaway Idea 6: Photo Contest

Running a photo contest is a fun way to boost Instagram engagements, and brand reaches among the target audience. It also helps to gain user-generated content for further marketing. A photo contest can be done at any time of the year. You can give away any type of prize such as tech prizes, gift cards, cash, vacation, makeover, bike, etc.

 Caretaker Landscape Photo Contest (https://www.instagram.com/p/CKo7s8ErWCm/)

Caretaker Landscape took advantage of the popular contest, cutest pet photo contest. Most Americans own a pet in their family so you can generate an endless pool of user-generated content. The winner was selected by voting. The winner was rewarded with a $50 Visa gift card for him/her and a $50 PetSmart gift card for their furry friend.

 Users were required to take the following actions:

• Submit their Cutest Pet Photo along with pet name via messenger/direct message on Facebook or Instagram
• Follow Caretaker Landscape on Facebook and Instagram
• Finalists need to share their submissions on their story and encourage followers to vote on the original post

Pros

• Increase Facebook and Instagram followers simultaneously
• Photo submissions generate UGC 
• Boost brand awareness and business discoverability
• Voting further boost the engagement of the contest 

Instagram Giveaway Idea 7: UGC Contest

Small businesses can run a name selection or logo design contest for their brand to get creative data from users at a mere cost. This not only cut business costs but also build a strong relationship with users.

 Peaceful Valley Slogan Contests (https://www.instagram.com/p/CJyxkqnFA3y/)

 Peaceful Valley got their audience involved by asking them to submit a unique slogan for their next Bumper Sticker. Users were required to email their short creative slogan to marketing@groworganic.com. The user with the best slogan won a $100 Peaceful Valley gift card.

Pros

• Generate UGC 
• Boost brand awareness  
• Grow Email List   
  

Hopefully, the list of Instagram examples we shared has helped you to understand what you should take away from each of them. In this article, we included 7 Instagram giveaway examples to see different types of giveaways along with their benefits. Regardless of your business type, you can try any of them to launch your own giveaway and reach your goals.