How To Run An Amazon Giveaway

Amazon Giveaways have been around for a few years at this point, but it often flies under the radar with the myriad of other projects and offers that Amazon has to offer up. Initially offered as a way to create buzz, reward an audience, or attract new social followers or customers, giveaways have developed into a tool that brand owners are utilizing to launch new products into the marketplace.

Anyone that has an Amazon account can run a giveaway.

To start you must select and purchase an item to offer as the giveaway prize. If you have a Seller Central account, you can navigate to Advertising > Promotions > Create Giveaway > Select Product Offer.

From here you can select how many of the item (up to 30 physical products) you wish to give away. These are units that you will purchase and pay for, plus shipping, that the customers will enter to win. Bonus: If you have a Seller Central account these will count as orders for your product.

Selecting your giveaway type is the next step, as most opt for the Lucky Number instant win.

The following parts are the most important: this is how you will control the discoverability, discounts for those who enter and lose, and the steps entrants are required to perform before being eligible.

The first box you will fill out will be the steps entrants are required to take to participate:

• No Additional Steps – This will get the max entrants, but they will be less qualified should you offer a purchase offer.
• Follow An Author – For all authors, this will push new updates and releases into those who opt-in to follow.
• Watch A Video Short – A video hosted on Amazon Video Shorts that can be up to 15 seconds about a product.
• Watch A YouTube Video – You can choose to have entrants watch a YouTube video promoting your giveaway product. After 15 seconds, viewers can proceed to enter. The video must be public and non-restricted.

These are great ways to build your audience, get entrants engaged with a brand or product story, and bring them into your marketing funnel.

The second portion focuses on offering a discount to entrants. From here, you can post a coupon code that you create within your seller account to incentivize entrants to purchase your product should they lose. For example, if they were not a lucky winner, they could receive a 30% off exclusive coupon code to purchase the product at a discount.

After the coupon code comes discoverability. If you choose to use public, then Amazon will market the giveaway on their today giveaway page, email lists, Amazon notifications, and other placements. If you want to keep the giveaway private, say to a specific audience, you can choose private where you will have to direct traffic to the giveaway page.

After finalizing all of the settings on your contest, you will be asked for your payment method to finalize the purchase. Amazon will handle shipping and fulfillment for the products that are won. If you are the seller of the product, you will receive these as full priced sales in your account essentially bringing down the overall cost of the giveaway.

Overall, Amazon giveaways can be a very effective Amazon marketing tool used to launch new products, gain new customers, and revive dead listings. The overall cost may vary depending on the price of your products and how many of the entrants choose to end up purchasing your product, but if you have the margin provided and the right price point for your products, you can often end up gaining additional sales needed for the marketplace as well as new customers for a very small cost.