The Best Sweepstakes Prizes

Hosting sweepstakes online can be a great way to increase your brand’s reach and to encourage potential customers to take a more serious look at what your company has to offer. Such promotion can also allow you to collect valuable information about your customers. You’ll also have the ability to contact them in the future via the entry information they provide, as long as you get their permission. However, if you want people to hand over personal information, then you better make it worth it by offering the best sweepstakes prizes that you can. That means that your customers must view the prize as having high value.

Best Sweepstakes Prizes

• Cash: This is the obvious choice as a prize because it appeals to a broad audience. If the value is high enough – think over $10,000 – your sweepstakes may even attract a lot of attention. That also means people who might not be fans of your brand will enter for the chance to win. Casting a broad net like this may or may not be what your marketing goal is – many brands are looking to recruit new fans in addition to rewarding their current fan-base. 
• A Week’s, Month’s, or Years’ Worth: If you offer a product or service that people can enjoy repeatedly, you may want to consider offering an ongoing prize. For instance, a magazine brand might give away a year’s subscription. For a soft drink brand, it might mean offering up one month’s worth of the beverage. This type of prize is considered valuable to the general public, but can also hold great value for your brand, because it can mean developing a loyal customer out of the winner. As mentioned above, everyone will enter to win money but by offering your product or service as the prize you know the people who enter like and want your product. These people are also easier to convert into customers.
• Make the Winner a Star: If you don’t have a product or service that you think works well to entice participation, then consider how you might appeal to the talents and vanity of your audience. Many people are both willing and eager to enter a sweepstakes if it means being publicly recognized in some way. This might mean featuring the artistic talents of the winner on your website and social platforms. It might mean making the winning design your new brand logo. Or, it could mean making the winner the spokesperson of your brand for a specified length of time. When it comes to best sweepstakes prizes, this one is usually right on target when it comes to finding true fans of your brand.
• Exclusive Product: One of the best ways to excite fans of your brand is to offer a product they cannot buy. Imagine Nike giving away a one-of-a-kind pair of Jordan shoes or Chevy giving away the first new Corvette that will be produced. A few years ago the Wu-Tang Clan made an album but sold only one copy via an auction for $2 million. It would have made an unbelievable promotion to give it away to a fan. Consider how you can adapt a product in your line to make it one-of-a-kind. By making the prize an exclusive item, you can increase the perceived value of the product, and therefore garner more interest in the promotion.

Psychology is a funny thing especially when it comes to figuring out the best sweepstakes prize for your target audience. For instance, some brands see more participation when the prize is $1,000 rather than if it’s $10,000 because the smaller sum seems more attainable. And some brands know their audience base just wants to win trips, so they don’t even bother giving away anything else. So, put your brainstorming hat on when it comes to determining the price for your sweepstakes. Some of the best sweepstakes prizes are ones that resonate with a target audience so remember, the sky is the limit. It’s okay if learning the prize type or prize value that garners interest is a trial and error process at first. After you run a few promotions, you’ll glean honest, a real insight into what appeals to your audience. You might even be surprised.