Where to promote a competition
Are you struggling to get the word out about your new prize draw, competition or giveaway?
My popular list of UK competition websites offers advice on where you should go to enter competitions, but if you’re running your own competition, where should you share it to ensure its success? This post offers a few pointers!
Before publicising it, ensure your competition or prize draw looks genuine and professional – at the bare minimum there should be an obvious closing date in all your communications, but a full set of terms & conditions (or a link to them) is required by the CAP Code and will help you gain the trust of your entrants.
If you’re unsure about what is required, read my blog posts Essential Terms and Conditions for a competition and 13 mistakes promoters make when running competitions for tips on getting everything right first time.
Don’t rush into sharing your giveaway before you’ve checked everything is correct and CAP compliant. If it’s an Instagram comp, check my ten tips for running Instagram giveaways – the ASA are clamping down on poorly adminstered comps!
Add your competition to specialist websites and forums
Compers are people who love to enter competitions – and although your first opinion of them might be negative, without including them in your plans, you’ll struggle to get much interest in your prize promotion. Compers help to spread the word far and wide, and can become loyal customers and great brand ambassadors if they like what you’re doing!
In the UK it’s FREE to add your prize promotion to:
- The PrizeFinder
- Loquax (forum registration required)
- Competition Database (website registration required)
- Latest Deals (website registration required)
If you give enough notice, Compers News magazine might be able to squeeze it in to their next print issue – get in touch via editor@compersnews.com.
Two other big UK competition resources are the MoneySavingExpert and HUKD (Hot UK Deals) forums, but as self-promotion isn’t allowed, you can’t add your own comps. Even if you politely ask a forum member to add it for you, you risk it being deleted and getting a ban if you’re found out. But don’t worry – if your comp is widely promoted elsewhere, the likelihood is that it will end up on one of these forums eventually.
If you’re outside the UK, check my list of worldwide competition sites.
Advertise in your newsletter
If you send out email newsletters, make sure you promote your competition in that!
Share on social media
Share on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook using hashtags like #win, #giveaway & #competition (use #UKgiveaway and #UKcompetition too) – you can also add #FreebieFriday or #WinItWednesday to your posts. Just because your giveaway is on Instagram doesn’t mean you can’t advertise it on Twitter or Facebook too – just be sure to include a direct link to your Instagram post or profile, so it’s easy for people to get straight to the competition.
Advertise your competition in your Instagram stories – if you don’t have enough followers to include a direct link to the comp, send people to the ‘link in bio’ to enter – you can either change this link temporarily to go directly to your competition, or use a free tool such as Linktree to add several links to your bio.
Use the facility to pin a post to the top of your Facebook page or Twitter profile so people can spot it. Tag me in your comp or DM a link to @superluckydi, and I’ll retweet to my followers or share in my Insta story.
Consider sharing a link to your prize promotion in Facebook groups relevant to your business, or to the prize. For example, a comp to win a meal at a local restaurant would probably be appreciated in a local community chat group. Always check group rules before you post – and make sure you engage in the group too, rather than dropping a link and then leaving.
Ask your prize sponsor if they would help you by sharing the competition – adding your post to their Instagram Stories or retweeting it will get the giveaway in front of a whole new audience.
Add to blog giveaway linky lists
If your prize promotion is hosted on a blog, it’s free to add it to my own monthly Blog Comp Linky lists (please include a closing date!)
Promote again just before it closes
Share the link to your competition again a few hours before it closes – the sense of urgency and FOMO will encourage people to take part!
Finally, if you have a marketing budget and want your promotion to be seen by more than 20,000 keen compers, I can offer a featured post here on SuperLucky, a banner ad in my newsletter, or a simple share on my Facebook page/profile/group, where engagement levels are high.
Download my Media Kit and contact me for more details and prices!
Zelda is wrong, Money Saving Expert’s forum has never let you promote competitions you or your company are running, and ever since they updated the forum, cut down on the sub forums/acceptable topics, and changed their rules, there even stricter on anything ‘self promotion’, you can’t even stick a link to a personal non-commercial blog in your profile now.
The compers forum on MSE has a lot less comps posted on it now and less regular users, ever since the the forum software change broke ways the comping forum worked.
Zanuda not Zela, sorry.
“…MoneySavingExpert and HUKD (Hot UK Deals) forums, but as self-promotion isn’t allowed, you can’t add your own comps…”
MoneySavingExpert is OK if you just post the link to competition (and if you are not absolute newbie to the forum :)). But if you start bragging that it’s the best ever company, then yes, it will be deleted.
Hot UK Deals is kind of funny, let’s say the same toy is a prize in TESCO or national magazine – it’s OK, but if a small company or local magazine runs that competition it is classified as “selfpromotary”… Totally illogical. They didn’t cut only one of the links I posted – competition for Australian Dinosaur Zoo that was touring that time. And a lot of blog/sites were running same type of competitions. I think Hot UK Deals was so flooded they didn’t notice my link was not from The Times or BBC… 😉
Another tip – google other competition websites from time to time. Sometimes new ones appears. Usually they don’t live very long and after a couple of years they’ll disappear into oblivion but for a short time you’ll be able to use it the same way as Loquax or Competition database…
Nope, MSe doesn’t let you promote you own competitions or your own websites/blogs etc. at all now.
How about “competition time” section of the forum. Who do you think is posting there?!? They would not have enough moderators to post all these competitions… And if some of the new moderators delete your post and post the same link as their own post, who cares, you’ll still have the link to your competition…
Of course if you start writing like this company/blog is so great, they have all these competition in that category – link there, they would delete this post. And of cause if you post only links to competition and nothing else and don’t communicate with fellow forum users, you might get into suspicion list and if moderator is eager enough, he/she will watch you on the subject of self promotion.
There are many competitions around thesedays mostly i see on Facebook and social sites but they just seem to promote things to get likes and shares.
If we did a competition for one of our boiler sales, would we have to get anyone to verify the winner legally?
Thanks for the great advice. I used your ideas and increased our competition entries by over 25 000!
Hi Shane, do you have an email where i could ask you some questions to gain some advice as i have just started a new venture in prize competitions and with your statement i would like to understand how you achieve such high numbers, Thank you.
Great article, lots of really good advice for competition runners here.
Is your blog comp linky just for hobby bloggers to use or can companies with blog hosting a competition on their blog page add to the linky too?
Company blogs are welcome too Rebecca!
thanks Di x