Sweepstakes or Contests: What's a Marketer's Best Bet?

You've decided to run a giveaway to promote your hot new product. But what kind to run? A sweepstakes or a contest? Well, it depends ...

First off, let's clarify the difference. In a nutshell, if you're choosing your winner randomly, that's a sweepstakes. If you're choosing your winner by some kind of pre-determined criteria (best photo, video, recipe, etc.) that's a contest. There's a super helpful description of the differences, along with other important legalese, here. As you can guess, it takes more resources to run a contest than a sweepstakes because someone has to judge all those entries!

But more importantly, what's your marketing goal? It's key that you define your goals first before selecting a giveaway format because each kind is better at meeting specific objectives. Are you trying to build brand awareness among people who are unfamiliar with your product? Or are you trying build loyalty among your existing customer base? Are you trying to generate lots of web traffic? Or trying to attract qualified sales leads?

Once you've defined your goals, you can align them with the correct giveaway format. Our Ecobunga! web stats and our own giveaway experience tells us that the biggest traffic drivers by far are sweepstakes. Seems obvious why -- aside from filling out an entry form (and meeting eligibility requirements), sweepstakes have little barrier to entry. So they'll get you lots of entrants. What they won't necessarily get you is qualified leads. There is a large population of folks out there who love to win stuff -- *any* stuff -- and they enter sweepstakes in a blanket fashion. So don't be surprised if a sizable number of entrants don't convert to customers (or repeat traffic.)

Contests, on the other hand, require much more work to enter. The entrant has to *do* something -- whether it's make that 30 second video about going green or send in their best organic holiday cookie recipe. As a result, contests attract a vastly smaller pool of entrants, but they tend to be much more interested in what you have to offer.

Ah, trade-offs. The bane of every marketer's existence. But since we are a green site, we have a hybrid model to offer you: the contest/sweepstakes combo deal.

Let's say you're an electric bike company with a fab new model out that you'd like to give away. You could run a video contest asking people to answer the questions "Where would you go with your shiny new electric bike?" At the same time, you can run a voting sweepstakes. You post the videos online and ask people to vote for their favorite. The vote automatically enters the vote-caster into a sweepstakes for a chance to win a bike, too! With a combo deal, you're appealing to your existing creative customers (the ones most likely to enter a contest) but at the same time extending the promotion's reach to a wider audience.

Here's the quick take: If you're short on resources and want lots of entrants, without regard to how qualified they are -- run a sweepstakes. If you've got some resources to devote to judging and want highly-qualified entrants -- run a contest. If you want the best of both worlds -- run a combo-sweepstakes/contest.