Let’s be honest; everyone loves free stuff, and online giveaways seem to be the easiest way to get it. However, from a follower’s perspective, it is merely following a few pages that will occasionally fill up your feed and won’t have a considerable impact on your life. On the flip side, the influencer or account hosting the giveaway gets a massive barrage of traffic to their accounts.

However, know that standard giveaways have now evolved into loop giveaways. This new trend in the influencer marketing space has substantially impacted the Instagram growth possibilities of business accounts. In addition, a loop giveaway opens the door to larger prizes, as it involves multiple accounts with larger giveaway budgets.

Gone are the days when you entered a giveaway that gave you the chance to win a mere Starbucks gift card. Loop giveaways take prizes to the next level. Some common prizes that have been seen in previous giveaways have ranged from designer clothes, $20,000 in cold, hard cash, and even brand new cars.

Naturally, the bigger the expected prize, the greater the number of people joining your giveaway and the better the growth. This article will discuss how loop giveaways work and if they are good for Instagram growth.

How Does a Loop Giveaway Work?

Loop giveaways are an influencer marketing strategy where several small businesses and influencers come together to sponsor a prize for a lucky winner. Since participating brands pitch in for the prize, there’s enough to offer some fantastic incentives to people to join the giveaway.

Once agreed upon, they all post a picture on Instagram on how their followers can enter the giveaway. Typically this means following a list of Instagram accounts (which are the accounts trying to grow their followers, and have likely paid to enter the giveaway.).

For example, check out this ongoing giveaway from @firstaidbeauty, @realtechniques, and other brands. See how the caption tells where to buy these products and how to enter the giveaway.

Once the period for the giveaway ends, the host announces the prize winner and posts a picture on Instagram.

Benefits of Loop Giveaways

Tens of thousands of people participate in Instagram giveaways, and the bigger the prize, the more the participants. Due to this, accounts involved see a massive influx of new followers.

Now, most would argue that these accounts usually get unfollowed after the giveaway is over but let’s put that into perspective.

Say you do a loop giveaway that brings you 50,000 new followers. Now let’s suppose the majority of Instagram users unfollow you right after the giveaway deadline. We can assume that figure stands at 90%, but here’s the deal: 10% of them stay and continue to follow you. Maybe they are too lazy to unfollow or like your content, but now you have 5000 new followers who were previously unaware of your account.

The general rule of Instagram is that the higher your follower count, the better a chance you have at securing partnerships and sponsorships in the future. So it’s a constant cycle; you get sponsors, do a giveaway, get followers, get better sponsors, so on and so forth.

Types of Loop Giveaways

Companies often host two types of loop giveaways based on the result they want to achieve.

General Loop Giveaway

As the name suggests, general giveaways are open to everyone. The purpose of these campaigns is to:

1. Create brand awareness
2. Bring exposure to your brand and page
3. Obtain social proof of concept
4. Gain thousands of followers in a short time.

These campaigns can be a great way to drive traffic to your page and get you in front of new eyes. The large influx of traffic can help you grow your page at a much faster rate.

Targeted Loop Giveaway

This campaign is specifically designed to give you control over who you want on your page. Due to its narrower targeting, often based on age, location, gender, interests, and more, you can handpick the people that come to this giveaway.

This campaign offers authenticity, better engagement, and a higher potential to generate sales than a general giveaway. For example, suppose a general loop giveaway sees 90% of followers unfollow after the giveaway is over. In that case, a targeted loop giveaway will probably see 45% or lower.

Loop Giveaways Vs. Instagram Ads

Most organizations in 2022 use Instagram ads as their way to get new followers. These can be seen in stories as well as your news feed. So it begs the question, are loop giveaways a better way to get followers? Well, yes and no. Firstly, loop giveaways are inexpensive. You can collaborate with ten brands and pitch in $100 per organization (which in business terms is nothing compared to the thousands spent on marketing and ad campaigns) to come up with a $1000 prize for the giveaway. This translates into thousands of followers in return. To put it into numbers, $100 can get you 10,000 followers, which would mean you will be getting a follower for every 10 cents. These kinds of numbers can never be achieved through ad marketing.

On the other hand, once the giveaway is over, most people tend to unfollow the page, damaging the company page. Whether you are doing a general loop giveaway or targeted, the chances of people unfollowing at the end of the giveaway are considerable. Instagram ads offer a much more authentic audience. It attracts people that have a genuine interest in your product and are not following you for the sake of winning a prize.

How to Run an Instagram Loop Giveaway on Instagram?

This campaign offers authenticity, better engagement, and a higher potential to generate sales than a general giveaway. For example, suppose a general loop giveaway sees 90% of followers unfollow after the giveaway is over. In that case, a targeted loop giveaway will probably see 45% or lower.

1. Look for similar businesses

The first step to hosting a successful loop giveaway is finding similar businesses to your own. It is usually advised to keep the number of participating brands at a minimum. You could bring together 20 of them, but that makes the giveaway challenging to manage. The recommended number of businesses is 4 to 5. Fewer pages to follow attracts more people to participate in your giveaway and not abandon it halfway.

Also, make sure that all influencers and businesses leading the giveaway work in the same niche and have similar target audiences to improve the chances of generating sales.

2. Come up with a prize

Once you have rallied up your troops, it is time to pitch in for the prize. The reason there are multiple businesses involved is to give a better price to the audience. The better the giveaway, the better of a chance you get at attracting followers.

3. Get strategic

You can’t just pick a random day of the year and expect to get a considerable number of followers. People expect giveaways on holidays such as Christmas and Valentine’s Day giveaways. It is vital to have a strategy to tap into the maximum potential of the loop giveaway. Be creative to keep the audience engaged, and there is no reason they won’t stay around long after the giveaway is over.

4. Find the right influencers or celebrities

It may be a good idea to bring in relevant influencers to be the face of your campaign. However, if that sounds like too big of a deal or you have trouble finding a celebrity whose fame aligns with your brand, it may be a good idea to work with niche micro-influencers.

So, if you have beauty or personal care products to promote, Kylie Jenner or Jackie Aina would be a great fit, depending on who your target audience is. But if you are in the construction industry, you’ll be better off working with Becki Owens or Kate Builds.

5. Create the creatives

It is essential to create eye-catching posts that entice your followers to participate. Your post is the first instance of the campaign that your audience will be interacting with. Brainstorm with all your collaborators to create a giveaway promotional campaign that is exciting and authentic to your brand.

6. Run the campaign

Once you have all the previous steps down, the next step is to set your campaign live and watch the followers roll in. This doesn’t end here, though. You still need to keep track of the campaign. So don’t forget to use relevant hashtags and monitor engagement.

7. Keep your new followers engaged

Once the campaign is done, you aim to retain as many followers as you can. A good practice is to offer your new followers promotions and discounts to keep them on your page and decrease the number of unfollows when the giveaway ends.

Wrapping Up

A loop giveaway can be a great way to get thousands of followers to your page and improve Instagram growth. That being said, the campaign needs to be carefully designed to ensure the maximum output and minimum turnover when the giveaway ends. If done correctly, you can expect to see your business and sales grow a lot faster than what you could achieve through Instagram ads.

Influencer marketing campaigns are evolving every day, and one loop giveaway is a product of this evolution. The future will tell how successful this strategy truly is and if it can ever overtake Instagram ads.