About this episode
Ty, TJ, and Kylie tackle a question every crypto marketer eventually asks: do giveaways actually work. TJ opens with the short answer, yes, because giving away free stuff has driven engagement since the days of morning radio. But the group quickly gets into the catch: giveaways attract whoever wants free stuff, not necessarily your target customer, and on Twitter a large chunk of that engagement comes from bots built specifically to enter contests.
The conversation turns practical. Ty explains why Coinbound stopped running giveaways in favor of targeted Twitter follower campaigns, where you can bid per follower by demographic and get more relevant growth for the same budget. TJ and Kylie cover the legal side too: giveaways and sweepstakes are federally regulated, requiring published rules, clear start and end dates, and a transparent process for picking winners, especially important in a crypto community that expects transparency.
The group lands on giveaways as a tool, not a strategy. Used well, mainly for mass reach and brand awareness, and built into a longer campaign with months of content leading up to the prize, a giveaway can generate real value. Used as a one-off with no plan, it mostly just costs money for followers who won't stick around.
Key takeaways
- Match the prize to your target customer, not just a broad audience, or you'll attract leads that don't convert.
- Expect a chunk of giveaway engagement on Twitter to come from bots that exist only to enter contests.
- Consider targeted Twitter follower ads instead of giveaways; Coinbound has bid as low as 50 to 60 cents per follower for highly specific demographics.
- Publish clear giveaway rules in advance, including start date, end date, and how to enter, since sweepstakes are federally regulated.
- Show your winner-selection process publicly, since crypto audiences expect transparency and will call out giveaways that don't deliver.
- Treat giveaways as a mass-reach, brand-awareness tool rather than a full marketing strategy.
- For bigger impact, build a sweepstakes campaign over six to eight months with content leading up to it instead of running a one-off giveaway.
Questions this episode answers
Do crypto giveaways still work in 2019?
Yes, TJ says giveaways work because people always respond to free stuff, the same way radio stations have used giveaways for decades. But he stresses they only produce engagement, not a real growth strategy on their own.
What's wrong with running a giveaway to grow Twitter followers?
Giveaways attract bots and accounts that only exist to enter contests, so followers spike fast but don't stick around. Ty found that spending the same money on targeted Twitter follower ads, sometimes as low as 50 to 60 cents per follower, gets higher quality, more relevant followers than a giveaway does.
What legal rules apply to running a giveaway or sweepstakes?
Federal rules require that giveaway terms be published in advance, including a clear start date, end date, and exactly how to enter and win. Skipping this can get an individual or company sued or shut down, since the rules exist to stop fraudulent giveaways where prizes are promised but never delivered.
Should crypto companies pick giveaways or paid ads to grow?
It depends on the goal: giveaways are better for mass reach and brand awareness since anyone will enter for a good prize, while paid ads let you target a specific demographic and income bracket. Coinbound stopped doing giveaways because the resulting audience wasn't relevant, and switched to targeted Twitter follower campaigns instead.
How do you run a giveaway that actually builds momentum?
TJ recommends treating it like a real sweepstakes campaign, setting it six to eight months out, and posting content leading up to it rather than doing a one-off giveaway. That approach builds an audience around the event itself and generates more media value than the cost of the prize.
Full transcriptShow
Ty Smith0:04
Welcome to another episode of the Crypto Marketing Show. My name is Ty Daniel Smith. With me is TJ and Kylie. And today we are discussing do giveaways work. TJ, why don't you start as you usually do.
TJ0:13
Sure. If you just want the simple answer, yes, giveaways work. I think it's one of the oldest tricks in the book. It's been around forever. I mean, if you listen to morning radio, they're still doing giveaways, whether it's concert tickets or cash or cars or paying bills or whatever it is they're doing. They're giving stuff away in order to produce whatever engagement that they're looking for. Typically, if it's a radio station, it's phone numbers. They want you to text in, call in, they collect your phone number so they can send you stuff later. But yeah, so on social media platforms, if you're trying to get an action or engagement, people love free stuff. They always do. But since it's been the oldest trick in the book forever, what a lot of people don't realize is there's a lot of rules and regulations behind it.
Ty Smith1:06
Okay. Yeah, another thing I think people need to be careful of is that when you give away something that's not necessarily something that's only your target consumers like in their interest level, like if you're just giving away money, everyone is going to be interested in that. And that's not necessarily the kind of attention that you want. So, it kind of, I would gear what you're giving away to your target consumer to make sure that the leads that you're getting from it are relevant.
TJ1:22
Oh, yeah, absolutely. And it depends, like you said, on what your motivation is and what you're trying to get. And generally, when it is a giveaway, like you said, you're going to just get anybody and anybody who's trying to win free stuff. And there may even be a lot of like, especially if you're talking Twitter specific, you're going to get a lot of bots because there's a lot of bots on there that that's all they do is enter contests and giveaways and try to win free stuff. So, keep that in mind that percentage of some of the things and actions you get from giveaways are also just computers.
Ty Smith2:06
Yeah, they definitely, if we're going to go down the rabbit hole of Twitter, they work if you're trying to grow a following on Twitter. They work, but only somewhat because they will get you followers fast, but in my experience and basically everyone's experience that I've spoken to, they don't stick around usually. And a lot of the accounts that are following you are actually made just for the purpose of these giveaways. So, I have found that if you're especially if you're giving away something like money or cryptocurrency or something like that, you're actually better off just spending it on Twitter ads.
TJ2:28
Yeah, like a paid post.
Ty Smith2:28
Yeah, because you can get, if you key it in the correct way, you can get followers for like 60 cents a follower. It's not that expensive, really. And those could be like highly, highly targeted.
TJ2:34
Right. So, you're saying basically what you're talking about is taking the same money that you would be giving away, and instead of giving it away, taking that, putting it into a paid post, dialing it into a really specific audience where you can say, okay, I want adults 18 to 45 above this income bracket in this demographic area that is interested in X, that you think is exactly the type of audience you're trying to get. You dial it into that rather than just giving it away and getting who knows what.
Ty Smith3:18
Yeah, exactly. Because Coinbound, we've done giveaways before, and we stopped because I just found the audience wasn't what we were looking for. And now we do follower campaigns on Twitter. So, you can actually bid on each sort of demographic or target audience that you're going after. So, for example, we don't do a whole lot of business in the UK, so I have a lower, I think we only bid like 60 cents per follower in the UK. And we get followers from the UK, but if I was to spend $100 on a giveaway, let's say it's 50 cents, I can get 200 followers now. Who knows how many I would get from a giveaway that are actually valuable to me.
Kylie3:40
Right, quality followers. Yeah. It's also important to know the rules of all the platforms when creating giveaways because if you're violating the rules, they can ban you, they can do whatever they want. So, as we know. But yeah, every platform, and some of them have very specific rules that, obviously, the well-known rules, you have to have the set dates, start date, end date. I don't know what else.
TJ4:23
Yeah, I mean, basically, the main thing is the rules need to be published. A lot of people don't, most people don't realize that these rules even exist. But since this has been around forever, since the days in radio, the government has made federally regulated rules that all these, if you're doing any sweepstakes giveaway on different platforms, the rules have to be published in advance. Like she said, you have to show the end date. Everybody needs to know clearly how to get every action that needs to be taken. Otherwise, technically, it's out of alignment with the law and you could be shut down. So, a lot of people don't realize that when they're doing things just individually like, hey, I'm just going to give this away. But yeah, there are definitely really strict guidelines, especially if you're a company, you could get sued. But even as individuals, you need to be really careful when you're doing this because there's been a lot of, what they're trying to do is cut out fraudulent activities and bad actors and people saying that they're giving things away and then not actually doing it.
Ty Smith5:21
Yeah, especially in the crypto community, everyone values transparency. So, they fully expect you to show the process of you choosing a winner for a giveaway that you do. And some people don't, and they get called out for it. All right, so anything else?
TJ5:31
I mean, just on that subject, so basically, the answer is yes, they will work, they'll get engagement, but use them wisely. It's a trick, it's a tool, it's not a strategy. It's something you can do for certain things here and there as you need it. But if you try to build a whole strategy around giveaways, it's short-sighted and it's only going to take you not very far.
Kylie5:47
Yeah, I think the most important thing is you establish your objective, figure out what you want out of it. And if you find that a giveaway works for you and fits in your objective, then create the plan and make sure that you know what you're giving away, when you're going to give it away, how many people you're giving it away to, like have a set clear plan, and then know the rules for your platform. And also pick the platform that is best for you. Obviously, for crypto, Twitter is going to be the best platform. But when you're like a lifestyle brand or like an apparel brand, a platform like Instagram that showcases visuals is going to be the way to go for you.
Ty Smith6:36
For sure.
TJ6:36
We still have some more time or no?
Ty Smith6:37
Yeah, we got a minute.
TJ6:38
Because one other point I was going to make, like what she was saying as far as have a whole plan, that is another key. If you're doing a giveaway, don't just give away $100 or X amount one-off without really setting it up. We've noticed the best sweepstakes are things that you do a really big, big giveaway, you get a lot of people involved, you set it six or eight months out, and you produce content around it and talk about it, tons of posts leading up to it, getting people to sign up, and you build, like she said, a whole campaign around the sweepstakes rather than just a one-off giveaway. And that's really how you get all the, you get a lot more leverage and value out of your prize if you talk about it for six, eight, ten months leading up to it, and then make it a big event when somebody wins, and then you get all the content out of that. The sweepstakes becomes a lot more than just what the prize is, and you can get a lot more media value out of it than the cost.
Ty Smith7:38
Yeah, and as with really all things marketing related, you kind of have a trade-off between volume and like a highly targeted lead that you'll get. So, like something like, for example, we do something like a free ebook. So, you sign up, you put your email in, you get an ebook. Not a whole lot of people are going to do that. It's just people that are highly specific to people that are looking for crypto marketing tips. So, yeah, basically, the more valuable and targeted it is, the more highly specific the lead is going to be, but you're going to trade off volume.
TJ8:23
Right. And so, generally, what we're saying is most giveaways are, mass reach, mass appeal, brand awareness type plays. You're just going to get, if you're giving away a Tesla, you're going to get anybody and anybody who wants a Tesla, anybody who wants to win something like that. So, just kind of just work it into your strategy accordingly.
Kylie8:34
Absolutely.
Ty Smith8:35
All right, well, that is it for today. Be sure to rate, review, and recommend the podcast if you found this valuable. And follow us on Twitter. We are @coinbound_io, TJ you are @youngdumbcrypto, Kylie is @cryptokylie, and I am @tydanielsmith. Thank you.
TJ8:46
Yeah, we're out.
