Ep. 81: How to Run a Successful Giveaway and Why You Should Do It
Doing Instagram giveaways helps with my marketing. It helps my brand and gets my page seen by the people I know need to see it.
Running giveaways can be a great way to expand and promote your business. Not only does it help me connect more deeply with my existing audience but it also helps my page reach more people. It's also a really great way to collaborate with other brands and artists. I'm always stressing the importance of collaborations in my courses like Grow Your Gram, and giveaways are great for that!
So in this episode, I teach you my best tips and tricks for running a successful giveaway that will help you grow your beauty business on Instagram.
Here are the episode highlights:
‣‣ [03:23] To understand how to grow your Instagram and how giveaways can help you, you need to understand how the algorithm works.
‣‣ [04:55] What you THINK is a good Instagram strategy vs what is actually a good strategy.
‣‣ [08:35] How good collaborations work.
‣‣ [09:39] What is your goal when doing a giveaway? What should you be striving for?
‣‣ [15:11] Let's figure out what your first step should be when running a giveaway.
‣‣ [16:27] How do you offer value through your giveaway?
‣‣ [17:52] Let's discuss the importance of connecting deeply with your audience.
‣‣ [23:07] How to ensure that your giveaway is SUCCESSFUL.
SHOW ME HOW TO RUN A SUCCESSFUL GIVEAWAY! (Listen Here)
You can follow me, Sheila Bella, on Instagram @realsheilabella!
Here are the links that were mentioned in the podcast!
Grow Your Gram
Online Course Workshop
FOR MY LISTENER BOSS BABES
You can enjoy this podcast by downloading it on iTunes here.
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FOR MY READER BOSS BABES
You can enjoy a transcript of the podcast here.
Sheila Bella:
Oh, hey, there you are. Oh gosh. It's been a minute, right? Yeah. I miss you. You miss me? Aw, come here. Give me a hug. I'm so weird. I'm so weird. I'm Sheila Bella. I am the weirdest podcast host ever. Anyway, you know what? So many people, so many people are down with ingesting the information, reading the books, listening to the podcasts, liking the captions and all that. But when it comes to the execution, we are just not always as good now, are we? I want to change that. I want to change that today. You and I are going to make a path that after day, because today is information filled, it is. We're going to make a pack that after today, you're going to have an AA.
That's what I do when I take notes. I have a journal and every time I go to conferences or every time I listen to podcasts or read books, I have a journal and then I write down notes. And what I do is on every thing that requires an action I put a double A right next to it, action assignment. Right? So that when I go back and I can see all the AAs, I'm like, Ooh, ooh, maybe, okay. And then sometimes like, if my business isn't working out, or if I'm having a bad day, I'm like, oh, what about all those, the AAs? I haven't even done anything with them. You know what I'm saying? That's one of my favorite mantras. Before you complain, ask what else haven't you done?
And I'm getting ready for my course. I'm getting ready for the course. I'm so excited to launch called, Grow Your Gram. I'm in the middle of finishing it up, but I taught it already to my Pretty Rich University students. And they were like, Whoa, Whoa. So I'm really excited to unleash this goody for you guys.
Today I want to talk to you guys all about giveaways. I'm sure you guys have seen that I do giveaways and I do them frequently. And there's a really good reason for it. It helps my brand, my page gets seen by the people who need to see it. The customers, the clients, the friends, the people that I'm trying to serve. I know that there's a girl out there that was basically me 10 years ago. She's frustrated that nothing is working in her business. She doesn't have any clients. She doesn't have any confidence. She doesn't have any friends. And yeah, I want to get to her. I want my content to get to her. And I want to have a relationship with her even virtually, because I know that my content will help her. I wish, I wish this podcast was around when I first started Jesus, it would have saved me so much. So many, many tears. Cry me a river. And that's what I did, especially in the beginning.
Okay. Today, we're going to be talking about giveaways. I said that already. Anyway, I'm seeing it again. We're going to be talking about giveaways and why you need to be implementing it into your business ASAP. So one of the things that I teach and Grow Your Gram is the power of collaboration. These days, the only way to grow in on Instagram is to collaborate with other people. The algorithm is not what it used to be, not what it used to be. And truth be told when I first started Instagram back in 2011, actually it was like 2010. Yeah. It was like 2010, but the end of 2010. I remember my followers went up consistently every single day. It was so easy. Basically, how the algorithm worked before was they didn't prioritize anything. It was basically based on time. If you posted it, it got seen by everybody. It was just time.
These days, the algorithm is more complicated than that. These days, what you see is based on other factors, which I go over in my course, but let's just say that you and I follow the same 100 people. Our feed would look completely differently. It would look completely different because what you see is based upon your personal behavior, how you interact with the platform. So that's part of Grow Your Gram is I break down how to get in front of the right people. I'm so excited because I'm such a nerd about this stuff, but today I'm going to give you something super valuable. And that is how to do a successful giveaway and why you even need to be doing them.
You know what really sucks, and I think we talked about this on the last podcast with the Mei-Cha girls, is that after you graduate permanent makeup school or even cosmetology or whatever it is you're doing in the beauty industry, right, especially hairstylists and everything. They go through a lot of extensive training on technique and artistry, but you get thrown out there once you graduate into the jungle and what do we do? What do we do? We look at other people who are hairstylist, makeup artists, lash technicians and we think that, Oh, this is how a professional beauty page should look. So if I just do that, that means I'm a professional beauty page, but there's like no heart in our pages.
And a lot of pages that I see out there, it's just everybody copying each other. Right. But there's no real strategy and copying other people, isn't a strategy. If your page looks just like your competitors page, but maybe a slightly different color and you use maybe a slightly different type of filter. Hers is more warm, yours is more cool. That's not a strategy. We think like, okay, we're going to post pictures of eyebrows, right, and then that means that we're professional. And we use the Glamcor and a ring light because that's what professionals do. Oh, you post funny brow quotes. I'm going to post funny brow quotes. It's going to be super cute.
And my advice to you is to go rogue. Go rogue, okay, with your branding, with your social media pages and dare to be different, dare to tell your story because how are we going to differentiate your page from the next person's? And part of that is also learning how to collaborate with people who are in the periphery of your business. So the great thing about giveaways is when you partner up with basically another brand, perhaps another salon, another gym, anyone, really, anybody who has a following of your ideal clients, anyone who has a following of your ideal clients.
So let me give you an example. So a few days ago I did a launch the Higher Love, the Higher Love giveaway. Good thing I was on pitch kind of, sort of, not really. The Higher Love giveaway, I partnered with Brow Daddy and with Minx Brows to put together this, first of all, pretty amazing if I do say so myself, pretty amazing giveaway for you guys. So we're giving away the last VIP ticket to the Pretty Ambitious Summit. All for free. Brow Daddy is giving away a place, a seat in his masterclass and Amy Lalani, who is a CEO of the super awesome Minx Brows is giving away $1,000 gift card. Pretty incredible. I wanted to win this giveaway myself, actually.
Listen. So it's Pretty Ambitious Summit, right, which is my live event coming up in March of 2020 in Santa Monica, California. It's the first live event for PMU Boss Babes, where we basically do a dive deep on your soul, your confidence, and also tackle a lot of business strategies. I feel very blessed. We're expecting about 350, 350 people in attendance. And yeah, whoever wins this giveaway is going to get a VIP ticket to that. Next, Brow Daddy. Oh my gosh. His technique is insane, you guys, his work is stellar and he's giving away a seat to his masterclass, to this one lucky person. It's a $2,500 value. And Minx Brows, Amy, she's giving away $1,000 gift card. That's crazy talk. Okay. We have lost our minds. The three of us we've lost our minds. Have we? Have we though?
Let me tell you, it feels really good to give. It feels really good to give. And also I got to say, there's a business aspect to this. All three of our businesses are in alignment. They're in alignment. So yeah, Amy does supplies. Ruben does art, right, he teaches art and he also has the service. I do too, but that's not my main focus. My main focus is helping people build their businesses and develop more confidence. So it just makes sense. It makes sense for us to join together and do a giveaway. What's great about giveaways and this one in particular is not only is it an opportunity to give back and say thank you so much truly to all the people who've supported us over the years, but it's also a great tool for visibility.
And I'm sharing this with you guys as I go, because I want you to do it. I want you to do it too. It's very effective. Every time I've done a giveaway, the more generous I've been and the more generous the participants have been, the better it has been for all of us. The goal of a giveaway is brand awareness. And that is literally the very first, the very first thing that needs to happen before somebody ends up in your chair, before somebody purchases your online course, before somebody downloads your podcast, before anyone does anything with you. The first level obviously is awareness. And giveaways are amazing for this. And it feels really, really good.
The last giveaway we did was a couple of months ago, we did one with all of the speakers of the Pretty Ambitious Summit. And seeing this girl's reaction, you guys, seeing the winner's reaction on her face when we called to tell her that she won, I mean, she was in tears and she brought all of us to tears and ah, gosh. I mean, it's a win-win, it's a win-win for everyone involved. So I'm going to get to the six things that you need to do for a successful giveaway. But before I do that, dude, first of all, I am loving these Beauty Boss Spotlights that I've been getting, that I have the emails that my team has been sending me.
So you're like, what is a beauty Boss Spotlight? A Beauty Boss Spotlight is your chance to be on the show. I want you on the show. I don't want the show to just be about me. I want it to be about you too. Guys, hearing your stories really just melts my heart. It really does. And it's a reminder that we're all the same because I'm listening to a bunch of these stories and I'm like, yeah, I was like that. I can find a part of myself in that human being. So without further ado, today's Beauty Boss Spotlight is from Georgia Nixon from Austin, Texas, and her business name is Effortless Beauty. Here we go.
Georgia Nixon:
Hi, this is Georgia Nixon of Effortless Beauty Clinic in Austin, Texas. The first time someone agreed to pay me for a service for them specifically in semipermanent makeup microblading, I thought they were crazy to allow me to tattoo their face. And I was totally faking my abilities at that point, but I also knew that the only way to ever start was to just start. And so now when people come in and they pay me full price, which is not the lowest in the industry, nor even in the middle for my area, I definitely charged what I feel that the service's worth, but when they pay that every single time I'm humbled and astonished.
So every day I feel the excitement and the pressure to do my very best work, to never have asset, to never take it for granted that I get to live the life of an artist. And for me, that means the freedom to spend time with my newborn daughter, Aila, or to go for a walk with my dog, Tom, or actually his name is Tommy Dan Strauss. And to just live my life, to go ballroom dancing and to work at home on the different aspects of my business, like social media and whatnot. So I still feel terrified and I still feel grateful. And I love that feeling and I hope it never goes away. And that I'm always astonished that someone will pay me to tattoo their face.
Sheila Bella:
Wasn't that awesome? It was so relatable. We've all been there. And some of you may still be there. Anyway, if you want to be featured on the show, or if you have a question to ask, just go to sheilabella.com/beautybosssportlight for the instructions on how to send over your audio. All right, you ready to get to business. Let's get to business. Okay. Give away collabs and the six things that you absolutely must do in order to have a successful giveaway. What determines a successful giveaway? I think what determines a successful giveaway is a lot of people entering, a lot of people talking about it, talking about you, talking about your brand, getting excited about it, seeing your follow count go up, a lot of comments, a lot of likes, a lot of shares, just engagement. You know what I mean?
You want to stay relevant. Like how many times have you worked with somebody before? It could be somebody who did your hair or somebody who did your makeup, or perhaps like a store, like a brand that you used to love or whoever you had a great experience with. Right? And you had no reason to leave them necessarily or stop buying from them. But the only reason that you may have done that is because you just forgot about them, right? They weren't relevant anymore. They disappeared. Well, a giveaway is a great way to stay relevant, stay visible so you're always on people's minds. So perhaps they may not be customers right now, but next time they need what you're selling, next time they need what you're selling. Guess who's going to be at the tip top of their noggins? You, you, because you're relevant, people are posting about you, people are sharing about you. It doesn't even really matter if people necessarily want to win your giveaway, but I don't know. They've just seen you lately. You know what I mean?
Okay. So the first thing you must do is to choose a brand partner to work with. So let's say you're a permanent makeup studio. You're a permanent makeup studio and you're selling permanent makeup to women who care about their looks. So look around you, look around in your town and choose a business or maybe a few businesses where you can collaborate with whose following have similar types of clients. Like who in your town has a bunch of customers, a bunch of women who care about their looks? Medi spas, nail salons, gyms, you collaborate with them.
Perhaps you can call up a gym and maybe have lunch with the owner, this is why I think networking is so important and say, Hey, I'm going to give away a completely complimentary brow service. Why don't you join in with this giveaway on me and perhaps you can give away a month's worth of free Pilates classes? And then say, Hey, this medi spa, this medi spa that I'm friendly with is onboard. And she's going to give away an $800 gift card for any service to their medi spa. That's incredible, which brings me to my next point.
Number two, you need to choose a prize and the more awesome the value of the prize, the better the draw. Hello, don't be giving away no bag of Doritos. You got to give your best. You have to be generous. Think of it as advertising. Think of it as an investment and you probably have an ad budget anyway. And if you do consider putting your advertising dollars in the form of giveaway for this month.
Okay. Number three, determine the entry criteria determined the entry criteria. What do they have to do in order to enter? So if the goal is awareness, you definitely want them to share. You definitely want them to tag, right? But if you're the organizer, you might want to go the extra mile and do an email capture. It's a great opportunity for an email capture. I actually did this with the giveaway that's going on right now. This is so meta. I'm talking about giveaways in the middle of a major giveaway season. So yeah, there's an email capture. I am asking, requiring of any person that enters to log onto my website, I believe it's sheilabella.com/updates, and what it does is it'll keep you up-to-date on all things about my event.
Anytime I want to dive in deeper and connect with my audience more than just a caption that they think I posted for everybody. I feel like email is so much more intimate. I try to treat it like I'm sending a letter to an old friend and you guys know I'm all about the email list because it's the only thing we truly own, right? Because remember a couple of times this year, Instagram... Was it this year? No, last year, Instagram went down. I mean, it was out. I mean the panic, what would you do? What would you do especially if you've worked so hard to have all of these followers? What would you do if all of a sudden it went away? That's why I really believe in taking the time to build your email list. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs skip this step. Big mistake. I do a lot of list building. It's reassurance. It's like, Oh, well, it's kind of like having your friend's phone number, home phone number in case they lose their cell phone. Who has a landline nowadays? Anyway, '80s baby.
Next on our list is select a giveaway hashtag, select a giveaway hashtag. So basically what this means is when you ask them to repost the graphic that you create, tell them to use a specific giveaway hashtags so you can find them. So you can find all the people who entered your giveaway so you can choose a winner, but you have to make sure that this specific hashtag that you choose isn't taken or doesn't have a gazillion things posted to the hashtag already. So this last giveaway we did, I called it The Higher Love Giveaway. So the hashtag was higher love giveaway. And I actually asked my assistant, "Hey, can you check to see if higher love giveaway is taken already?" I thought, for sure it was taken, but it wasn't, it wasn't. Had it been taken, I would have done something like higher love giveaway PMU, or PMU higher love giveaway so that I can find every single person who entered the giveaway and I can choose a winner easily.
What's up PMU sister friend? No, seriously. Do you want new clients all the time? Do you want to end the worry and anxiety over where your next client is going to come from? How awesome would it be to have a steady, I'm talking of steady flow of leads and calls to your business inquiring about your services? I'm inviting you to stop stressing and start living. With my new online course NCC, which stands for New Clients Consistently, here you will learn how to guarantee how that one client that loved you so much is going to turn into 10 more. There's a formula to this and it works. It works so well.
This course is going to teach you how to create new clients out of the current ones that you do have. So if you have a PMU lash or any beauty business that's struggling, you've got to check this out. This is everything. This is the secret right here. It's a new era. You got to shake things up because of what you're doing isn't working, stop doing it. Your pattern isn't working so you need that to get a new one. And this is the ultimate pattern interrupt. So stop what you're doing. You got to go to sheilabella.com/ncc. Let's get you those new clients consistently, and I'll see you inside.
Make sense? Okay, good. Number five. You got to put a time limit. My suggestion is about a week, about a week. I've done ones before where it was like two or three weeks and it still worked. I don't know. I feel like a week though, from my personal experience, there's like, it's an event. You know what I mean? I feel like a week is the perfect time to increase anticipation and excitement. And then winner announcement. Seven days is just right for me. I think that's what I'm going to stick to nowadays. Oh, and here's a tip. When you announce the winner, do a video, do a video so that they know that it's there. So what I typically do, what I typically do, because I do ask for an email capture is I print out all the emails. I printed out on the computer and I put all of the emails in a bowl. And then I just draw a winner. And typically I do it on video.
But for those of you who don't want to go through that trouble, there are apps out there that you can Google who'll choose a winner truly randomly for you. But for this giveaway, since I had so many things on the criteria list, you have to sign up for our email list, you have to post, you have to tag three friends, you have to share, etc., etc. Then I wanted to make sure that I drew number one, from my email capture, because that's the most important criteria to me. And then what I do is I back-check from that to make sure that they met all the other criteria.
Okay. Last one, launch and promote. And when I say promote, I mean promote every freaking day until your face turns blue. There's lots of different ways you can promote. You can promote it on your stories. You can promote it on your timeline. You can go live and promote it and tell people about it. The cool part is too you can repost what other people are reposting because you're asking them to. So the same image with your face, your logo, and everybody else's is getting posted over and over and over again for awareness. This is how marketing works these days. You have to something sharable. You have to provide some sort of value. You have to reward people for talking about you or sharing your business. These days, you guys, our customers have options. They have a choice.
You have to give them a good reason to talk about you, to share you or create something that's shareable for them. So when it comes to the content that you guys are creating, even if it's not in the form of a giveaway, ask yourself, are you creating content that is shareable. That is valuable. That if you focus on the person that you're trying to help, that you're trying to serve, when she comes across your page, is your page helping her in any way? Does she know people who could use whatever it is you're posting about? That's the way to think these days.
I actually really love social media because it's requiring us to be actual human beings. Before, a marketing strategy was taking out an ad in the yellow pages or buying for time on cable TV. And yeah, while that did use to work, it doesn't work as well anymore. These days, competition is steep and people's attention spans are shorter. The quality of everything is getting better. And if you're kicking and screaming saying like, Oh, I hate social media. I hate how it's working. Is it because of that? Is it because it frustrates you, you feel like you could never live up to the quality that's out there?
You know what? What's great about social media is the fact that it's actually less edited, in my opinion. It's more instant. You can get paid just for being yourself. This morning I posted what my alarm clock sounded like and me in bed with absolutely no makeup on going like, okay, fine. I'm up. I'm up. It's just more raw these days. I don't have a film crew following me around and you don't need one either. You just need to show up, show up, provide value. When you do a giveaway, make sure you are generous about it.
And you know what the algorithm is forcing us to do? It's forcing us to make friends with our neighbors. That's what's so awesome about that. A successful giveaway requires the cooperation of more than one party. That means you need to be friends with the business that's next door to yours. That's why it's so important to go to these events such as the Pretty Ambitious Summit or any live events in your area where you can see if there's anybody who is willing to work with you, who needs you as much as you need them, who you can help as much as they can help you. I encourage you guys to stop competing with one another and really, really see each other for what you all really are. You guys should be friends. You should form an alliance. Things will work much better in your favor if you see your competitors that way. There's really no such thing. There's really no such thing. You can always find a way to work together to benefit each other.
And I am saying the same thing over and over again, but who else aside from your competitor knows what your going through? They're in your shoes. And as you know, business building is really hard and it has its ups and downs. And I think it would be much healthier for you, your mental, physical, emotional wellbeing to have that type of support. In the end, your soul needs to be healthy. It needs to be well because your soul supports the business. And to have somebody understand you, know exactly what you're going through is really healing. And that's going to be very hard to find outside of the people who are doing what you're doing for a living too.
I mean, my husband loves me, but he doesn't understand. Not really. I got to talk to Shay Danielle about this. I got to call Emily Joy of Dollistic and vent about this or voice notes her about this. Believe you, me, I am going back and forth with my colleagues who don't even live in California all day long. Why? Because they get it. I was on the phone with Lexi Bowler, pretty much like half the day yesterday. And I just can't tell you how much I appreciate the support and the love these women have given back to me. I mean, even something as simple as, hey, do you like how this graphic looks? Even something as simple like that. Do you like the colors of this logo? Just like that and they will give me feedback. And they care. They know that it matters because it matters to them.
And there might be some things that they're selling that is in "direct competition" with mine, but I really don't think so because there is room for all of us. If you're going to buy Shay's PMU marketing course, you should buy mine also. And if you're going to buy mine, you should buy hers also. And look for the overlap. That's valuable. If we're both saying it, it means you should probably really do it. And there might be some things in her course that are not in mine and vice versa. This awesome thing I'm experiencing, this awesome thing called relationships, this is the reward for having an abundant mentality, having deep relationships with people who truly get you, who are at your level, who are chasing the same things that you're chasing.
There's nothing like the relationships I have with these types of women, having that comradery, having that sisterhood, having that tribe to fall back on when you forget, you forget who you are. And you know, we have those days when we doubt ourselves, because to me, I feel like achieving success on my own wouldn't be enjoyable. Definitely not as meaningful. So when I see my girls win at something, I feel like I'm a part of that. Yeah. I feel like I'm a part of that and I'm so happy for them. So make friends, do a giveaway. I promise you, you won't regret it. Even if somebody intimidates you at first, they really shouldn't because I believe at the end of the day, we're all still in middle school. You know what I mean? That insecurity that we had as kids never really goes away. It pops up once in a while.
I hope you guys try this. And if you do let me know, let me know. Let me know on Instagram. You know, you know I'm on there all the time. Creep up on my stories. Let me know if you're a fellow weirdo. It's @RealSheilaBella. And if this episode hit home for you, let me know. I want to hear about it and tag me in your next giveaway. Yes, yes. I want to see some AAs, you guys, some action assignments actually being executed. All right. God bless you, until next time
You're listening to the Pretty Rich Podcast, where you are totally the heroine of your own story. I'm your host, Sheila Bella. And I built a seven figure PMU biz without a degree, without a fancy website or a sugar daddy. And if you and I hang out here long enough, you're going to start to believe that you can do it too, because you really can. I know you think I don't know you, but I do. I really, really do because I am you. And I believe we're all on the same journey together. My perfect job didn't exist. So I created it. The job I wanted wasn't hiring me. So I skipped the line and hired myself as CEO. Just like you can. So consider me your secret beauty biz BFF. In case you need to be reminded that power is never given to you. You just have to take it. Are you ready Beauty Boss? Let's jump in.
