Crypto Marketing with Ty Smith
Do Giveaways Work? | Ep. 19
About this episode
Ty Smith, TJ, and Kylie tackle a question every crypto marketer asks at some point: do giveaways actually work? The short answer is yes, but with heavy caveats. Giveaways are one of the oldest marketing tricks around, borrowed from morning radio contests, and they still drive engagement on social platforms because people like free stuff. The catch is that a giveaway attracts anyone chasing a prize, including a large share of bots on Twitter, so the leads generated are often not the audience a crypto project actually wants.
The group compares giveaways to targeted Twitter ad campaigns, arguing that the same budget spent on paid follower ads, sometimes as cheap as 50 to 60 cents per follower, can produce a more relevant and longer lasting audience than a one-off prize giveaway. They also walk through the legal side: sweepstakes rules require published start and end dates and clear entry instructions, and crypto audiences in particular expect transparency about how winners are chosen. TJ and Kylie close by describing what separates a throwaway giveaway from a real campaign: setting a clear objective first, planning months in advance, building content around the event, and treating the giveaway as one tool within a larger strategy rather than the strategy itself.
Key takeaways
- Match what you give away to your target audience instead of a generic prize like cash that attracts anyone.
- Expect a meaningful share of giveaway entries and followers on Twitter to be bots, not real prospects.
- Compare the cost of a giveaway to a targeted paid follower campaign, which can run 50 to 60 cents per follower.
- Publish clear start dates, end dates, and entry rules for any sweepstakes to stay compliant and avoid legal risk.
- Show your process for picking a winner since crypto audiences expect transparency and will call out projects that don't.
- Treat giveaways as one tool, not a full marketing strategy, and set a clear objective before running one.
- Plan larger sweepstakes six to eight months out and build ongoing content around them to get more value than the prize cost.
Questions this episode answers
Do crypto giveaways actually work?
Yes, they generate engagement and can grow followers fast, but the quality of that engagement is often low. Many entrants are bots or people only interested in free stuff, not real prospects for your project.
Are giveaways better than paid Twitter ads for growing a following?
The hosts argue paid follower campaigns often beat giveaways because you can target specific demographics and interests for as little as 50 to 60 cents per follower. A giveaway budget spent the same way tends to produce more relevant, longer lasting followers than a one-off prize.
What legal rules apply to running a crypto giveaway or sweepstakes?
Federally regulated sweepstakes rules require you to publish start and end dates and make the process for entering and winning clear in advance. Skipping this can get you sued as a company or banned by the platform, and in crypto specifically, the community expects transparency about how a winner is chosen.
Should a giveaway be the core of a marketing strategy?
No. The hosts describe giveaways as a tool or trick, not a strategy, useful occasionally but too short-sighted to build a whole plan around. They recommend setting a clear objective first and only using a giveaway if it fits that goal.
How do you get the most value out of a giveaway or sweepstakes?
Set up a real campaign around it instead of a one-off post: plan it six to eight months out, produce ongoing content leading up to it, and turn the winner announcement into an event. This generates far more media value than the cost of the prize itself.
Full transcriptShow
Ty Smith0:00
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?
TJ0:10
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 an 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 Smith1:01
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, 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.
TJ1:17
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, 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 Smith1:58
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 in 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.
Ty Smith2:13
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. Yeah, like a paid post. 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.
TJ2:26
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, targeting 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 target it into that rather than just giving it away and getting who knows what.
Ty Smith3:08
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.
Kylie3:30
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. Yes, they can. 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 start set dates, start date, end date. I don't know what else.
TJ4:09
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 like we're saying 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 can be shut down.
TJ4:52
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 Smith5:05
Yeah, especially in the crypto community, everyone values transparency. Sure. 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?
TJ5:15
I mean, just on that subject, so basically, the answer is yes, they will work, they'll get engagement, but you need to use them wisely. It's a 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.
Kylie5:54
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 Smith6:17
For sure. Okay, very cool. We still have some more time or no?
TJ6:19
Yeah, we got a minute. Okay, 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 Smith7:16
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 e-book. So, you sign up, you put your email in, you get an e-book. 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.
TJ7:59
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.
Kylie8:11
Anyone who could use a Tesla.
TJ8:11
Anybody who wants to win something like that. So, just kind of just work it into your strategy accordingly.
Kylie8:21
Absolutely.
Ty Smith8:21
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 at @youngdumbcrypto. Kylie is at @cryptokylie, and I am Ty Daniel Smith. Thank you. Yeah, we're out.
