How to find local competitions and giveaways

Want the best possible chance of winning a prize? Rather than entering nationwide prize draws with thousands of entries, instead focus on finding local competitions to enter. A meal at an independent restaurant, tickets to a comedy night, or a prize that needs collecting from a local shop – all these giveaways will get a fraction of the entries that national comps get – so of course your chance of winning is much higher! Local businesses love running giveaways, but they aren’t usually very good at promoting them. Here’s how to track down those low-entry comps using both traditional methods and online search expertise.

1. Out & About

Don’t restrict your comping to online activities -it’s much more fun when you get out and about looking for the word WIN!

• High Street: Make a habit of checking window posters and counter displays. Independent cafes, florists, jewellers, estate agents, and beauty salons regularly run giveaways.
• Shopping Centres: Sign up for your local shopping centre’s email newsletter, download their app if they have one, and check for seasonal promotions like treasure trails or selfie comps.
• Local Newsletters & Magazines: Pick up free magazines from libraries, cafes and supermarkets and look out for old-fashioned postal entry forms in local newspapers.
• Events & festivals: Keep an eye out for the word WIN at school fetes, food festivals, business networking events and county shows. Sponsors of regional shows often run giveaways for free tickets leading up to the event, and businesses love running QR-code draws at their stands.
• Resident perks & apps: Check if your local council offers resident discount cards or walking incentive apps (like BetterPoints), which feature member prize draws.
• Experiential and pop-up events: Popular at larger train stations, shopping centres and supermarkets, there might be goodie bags or the chance to win an instant prize. If you live near London, the Southbank is a popular location. Look out for news about local store openings too – Homesense, TK Maxx and Lidl have given away vouchers and prizes to the first customers on launch day.

2. Websites

In your browser, create a bookmarks folder for your favourite local websites – then set a reminder in your calendar to check them regularly for new competitions. If you’re unsure about using Bookmarks, see my blog post How to use Bookmarks in Chrome and Safari.

• Local media: Use the Media Info website to search for your county or town to get a list of local newspapers, radio stations and magazines – visit their websites and socials to look for comps.
• Prizes for kids: Let’s Go With The Children and Primary Times run lots of local competitions – simply choose your region on the website to see relevant content.
• Comp websites: Search for the name of your local town or area on competition listings websites too.
• Lucky Legends: the Lucky Legends member forum has 13 regional categories where members share lots of local low-entry giveaways!

3. Radio

Local radio stations run comps on air, on social media and on their websites. There’s a great list of stations on the RadioCentre website – or if you’re a Lucky Legends member, you can search our extensive Regional Radio database to find local stations and links to all their social media. It’s easy to tune in – ask Google or Alexa to ‘stream Spirit FM’ (for example) or check if the station has a mobile app. There are lots of ways to enter on-air radio comps – register online in advance, text a keyword, call the studio, or even send a WhatsApp voicenote. Find out more in How to Win Radio Competitions

4. Online searches

Mastering search tools and AI can help you find local businesses and giveaways.

• Ask AI Tools (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, etc.): Use AI to discover local resources or comps. For example: “List 10 independent cafes, florists or vintage shops in [Town/City] that have active social media pages.” or “What local magazines, regional radio stations or websites in [County] host reader giveaways?”
• Google Maps: Zoom in on your town on Google Maps, tap on local independent businesses, and head to their social media links to see if they’ve posted a recent competitions – search for ‘hair salons’ in your local area, for example (I also use www.treatwell.co.uk to find top rated local hair & beauty salons!)
• Advanced Google Search: At www.google.com, try using the words win, competition or prize and combine with your local town, city or county. When you get results, click Tools then change Any Time to Past Week to see recent results. You can find lots of Google search tips in my post How to search Google for competitions
• Search social media using Google: add ‘site:instagram.com’ to your Google search to restrict results to Instagram.

5. Social Media

Make sure you follow all your favourite local businesses on their social media channels, and engage with their content so you’ll be the first to see when they launch a competition. When you find local businesses on Facebook or Instagram, you’ll also be shown related pages – check these to see if there are other local business profiles you could follow.

• TikTok Nearby: Open TikTok and tap the Nearby tab at the top of your feed to see videos from local businesses and creators in your immediate area who may be running local promos.
• Facebook search: Search Facebook for [Town Name] Win Competition and filter your results by Recent or the current year to see the latest content.
• Instagram algorithm: Interact with local businesses by commenting even when there isn’t a competition running, teaching Instagram to prioritise local content in your feed. You can also fine-tune what you see by going to  Settings > Content Preferences > Your Algorithm. Add local towns and cities to the list. You can use search to look for local comps too, but there’s no way to filter the results by recent content.

6. Local Comping Clubs & Tagging Buddies

Comping is more rewarding when shared! Joining or starting a local comping club gives you an instant network to swap tips, share prizes and celebrate wins together. A lot of local businesses want competition entrants to tag multiple friends in order to enter, so having a few local friends who are also into comping is essential.

• In-person Comp Clubs: Groups usually meet up monthly at a member’s house or local pub/café to swap tips, share their wins and organise mini raffles and quizzes. Check superlucky.me/compclubs to find a club near you or get tips on starting your own.
• Facebook groups: There’s a list of Facebook groups for local compers at superlucky.me/facebook-groups-for-compers/ – some are more active than others
• Compers Connect: Check our database at superlucky.me/compersconnect and search for compers in your local area to tag. You can also add your own details to the database.