Instagram What’s Working: Giveaways and Ads (but only when . . . )

This is Part 9 of a 10-Part series. Find all the links here.

OK, let’s talk giveaways and ads. In this post, we’ll define giveaways and ads and I’ll share how I use them to move the needle in our business.

Giveaways and/or ads can absolutely work, but they both need one thing. This is key, the rest is just the process. They *need* to be something people actually want, like really want! We want to be serving instead of selling here.

And they need to serve in a way that’s in alignment with our goals. Remember, before we use any strategy, we need to define what working actually means for us.

While I don’t do a ton of giveaways or ads, you’ll see that when I do, they start with something (I hope) that people really want! And each have a very-specific goal in mind. This way, I can begin to measure if they are actually working for us.

Instagram Giveaways

Giveaways can be a really fun and effective way to reach more people and connect with your current audience. A social media giveaway is typically when a creator/brand/business gives something away in exchange for an action (follow, like, comment, etc.). You’ll often see these done as a way to gain followers. Personally, that’s not really my main goal (which I’ll talk about more below). However, it can be a byproduct of a good giveaway.

Regardless of the ultimate end goal, giveaways really shine when it’s something pretty dang good. If you’re considering a giveaway, take a moment to also consider this. What would you take time out of your day to enter and win? If you’re looking to connect with your current audience, how can you make the giveaway really enticing for them?

And if you’re looking to reach new folks, consider how you can get the word out. For example, partnering with another person or business (or multiple) is a great way to increase reach. This is especially useful if your partner(s) has a larger audience than you. If you decide to reach out to someone regarding a partnership and they have a much larger following, consider how you can show up on your end to make it a win-win for both of you (like giving away something really exciting).

Another way to get the word out is by boosting the post or creating a paid ad. Spending money on something you are giving away may sound counterintuitive, but it all depends on your end goal. If that spend can convert someone into a paying customer in the long run, it could be worth it.

And then the “rules” of the giveaway can also be created in a way that gets the word out to more people, like having people tag a friend in the comments in order to enter. My favorite current way to do this is by having people share the giveaway in their stories. The comment tags are great, but think about it: When people share to their stories, the giveaway gets to a ton of other eyes.

Instagram Giveaways: Real World Example

Some of my goals for past giveaways: FUN for anyone following along, gaining newsletter subscribers, sharing other creators, raising money for a charity, and hyping up a launch. While not every giveaway shares all of these goals, they usually contain at least a few of these elements.

To see one in action, check out this post. Every year, before the launch of our dahlia tuber sale, I like to give away some of our favorite varieties as a fun way to celebrate the launch. Leading up to the giveaway, I’ll also ask people which varieties they’d like to see in the giveaway to sweeten the deal! In other words: give the people what they really want!

You can see the specifics in the post, but how I like to structure it are certain requirements that gain entry. In this example, the giveaway works like this. To enter, folks must share in stories and then sign up for our newsletter. The main reason for the newsletter sign up is for subscribers, yes, but it’s also a *much* easier way for me to collect entries.

I used to collect entries by comments and shares, and even though there are online programs to help with this, it can become a lot logistically. Now, I do this by creating a unique workflow and audience through my newsletter service provider. (Which, P.S., is Flodesk, and I truly love them, and you can use this link for a free trial AND 50% off your first year!). Any good provider has this capability and ultimately what you end up with is a sign up link.

As part of my workflow, folks can get the sign up link by either commenting a word and then getting a link in their DMs OR clicking the link in my profile OR clicking the boosted link on the post. All links lead to the same outcome, it’s just whatever works best/easiest for people. By having people enter by getting on our email list, I can also measure the effectiveness of the giveaway because I can see how many people signed up through the unique link. If you want to see this in action, you can comment on the actual post. The giveaway is closed but you can see how it all works.

You may also notice that I don’t require people to follow. While I’ll happily welcome anyone who wants to follow, my main goal here is for people to have fun and get excited about the dahlia launch, as well as get on our email list. And current subscribers get the opportunity for even MORE entries, because I believe in treating your people the best!

And sometimes? I do giveaways  simply for something that means a lot to me, like the raffle we did for Lyndsay’s Breast Cancer Go Fund Me.

Instagram Ads

Pay to play baby. LOL OK that really isn’t quite me, but there are instances where I have found ads useful.

And please, full disclosure: I am not an expert when it comes to paid advertising. We are a very small grassroots business. While I’m definitely no expert in this arena, I decided to do some experimenting on Instagram, and I can tell you how they work for me so far.

It should come as no surprise that, to work for me, they need to be of value for my target audience. But before we dive into that, let’s discuss the difference between Boosted Posts and Meta Ads.

According to Facebook, a boosted post is “an ad you create from an existing piece of content (e.g. post, Stories, video, Reels) you published on your Facebook Page or Instagram account.” On the other hand, this is how they explain Meta ads: “While a boosted post is still considered an ad, Meta ads created through Meta Ads Manager and Meta Business Suite offer more advanced customization solutions.” Basically, boosted posts are the simple way to increase engagement through paid advertisements. Meta ads have more targeted customizations and metrics.

Instagram Ads: Personal Experience

As previously mentioned, paid ads are not my expertise, but I’m here to share my personal experience if you’re curious about them too. My personal experience is mainly with boosted posts, because it’s a really simple way to get started.

From there, you can decide if your needs require more customizations. For a large business with multiple products being delivered worldwide, Meta ads and A/B testing would make more sense. For our small business, I’ve only experimented with boosted posts to increase reach for big launches. The reason being that I can fairly reasonably assume these have more appeal to a broader audience.

However, one of my future goals is to learn more about targeted Meta ads. For example, I really only use boosted posts when we’re launching something to a wider, national audience (like bulbs). However, I’m interested in more local efforts for our fresh flowers and wedding services. A targeted ad could potentially be better suited for this. So far, word of mouth and organic reach has been more than enough for us to keep up with demand. But after experimenting with boosted posts and being pleasantly surprised, I’m curious to learn more as our business grows.

As far as boosted posts, I’ve only done them a couple times per year. They really shine for me when I want folks to know we have a sale going on without having to actively post or push every day. So, for example, I may boost a post for our bulb sale versus posting about the sale every day. When you boost a post you can choose certain things like audience, spend per day, and goal. Personally, I like the goal to be a link click (which shows up on the bottom of a photo). The link goes to the main page of the sale and I let Insta pick the audience. 

Generally, it’s advised to boost posts that have already gotten good engagement. While this is great advice, I’ve found that even some of my posts that don’t have quite as much engagement are still worthwhile.

For example, this post did not originally get much love (and that’s OK!). I boosted it anyway. It of course now has more likes because of the boost, but it did not originally, and that was not the point (just a byproduct). The likes are good and all, but the boost was worth it for me because it resulted in over 2,000 website visits for our bulb sale.

How Much to Spend on Ads?

This is one of those annoying answers where it completely depends on your business, budget, and conversion rates. But if you’re just testing the waters (like me), you can start super small. P.S., I historically don’t spend a lot here, I think the one above was $5 / day and I am only running them the durations of the launch. And I believe you can start for as little as $1 / day if you just want to test the waters. I’ve only done a few boosted posts, so I’m still tinkering with what works best for me.

An important note for Apple users: If you’re considering boosted posts, do so in Instagram through your desktop, NOT your mobile phone. Apple charges a 30% service fee on boosted posts.

Final Random Thoughts

The world of paid advertising is still really new to me but I’ve found that digital does better for us. I love print, but the spend was a lot (at least the ones that have reached out to me). I even had a wedding magazine offer us the following year free but the leads were just so few.

Most people find us through google and that’s due to SEO. I built both the farm website and my husband’s guiding website, optimizing both for SEO (ahem, articles to come). Most leads for both businesses are through organic google searches (we’ve never done paid as of 2024).

I don’t know? What do you think . . . print? paid? organic? word of mouth? There are so many options! At the end of the day, I think experimentation is best.

OK, that’s it. While I don’t use these quite as often (and one could argue using them too much could have the opposite desired affect), they are really useful tools for our business when we do use them. I hope sharing my personal experience was useful to you!

Have you tried giveaways or ads on Instagram? Let us know your experience in the comments🙂