Look, let me tell you about this one client. A fantastic little bakery in Minneapolis I was working with last fall. They wanted to do a giveaway to build some buzz for their new holiday menu. Great idea, right? Except they decided to run it everywhere. "Comment on Facebook! Tag a friend on Instagram! Reply to our Tweet!"
Within 48 hours, it was a complete and utter trainwreck.
They were trying to track hundreds of entries across three different platforms using a Google Sheet. It was a nightmare. Names were misspelled, people were entering on the wrong posts, and the owner was spending hours just trying to figure out who was eligible. I've been doing this since 2010, and honestly, I've seen this exact same scenario play out so many times I've lost count. Small businesses don't need more complexity; they need tools that simplify things. They needed a solid, reliable multi platform giveaway picker
, and the free ones they found... well, they were mostly junk.
Here's the thing that drives me crazy. For years, we've been told to chase "engagement." Like, comment, share, tag a friend! And what has it gotten us? Burnout. We're asking our customers to do all this work for a tiny chance to win a $25 gift card. It feels transactional and, frankly, a little desperate.
And the advice you get is always the same. "Just go viral!" I hate that. I hate when people say 'viral' like it's a strategy you can just choose to implement. It's lottery-ticket marketing.
What I've found works best-and I'm talking about consistent, predictable results-is shifting the focus from asking for engagement to creating it. That's where gamification comes in. Yeah, I know it sounds like another buzzword cooked up by some tech bro in Silicon Valley, but stick with me. It’s not about turning your business into a video game. It's about using game mechanics to make interacting with your brand genuinely fun.
I started really digging into this around 2015, testing everything from Gleam. io to Woobox and a bunch of others. Most were either too complicated, too expensive, or both. Then I stumbled on a platform called Faisco, and it solved a problem I was seeing constantly.
My clients wanted these fun, interactive campaigns but didn't have the months it takes to develop them or the thousands to hire an agency.
Here’s some real-world stuff I've done with it:
See the pattern? These aren't just "likes." These are email addresses, subscribers, and actual customers. You're giving people a moment of fun, a little dopamine hit, and in return, they're happy to give you their email. I've seen landing pages with these games get 40%+ conversion rates. It's crazy effective.
This is the question I always get. "Byron, I don't have a budget for fancy tools. I need a multi platform giveaway picker free
of charge."
I get it. I really do. But most free tools are flawed by design. They're either a lead magnet for a ridiculously expensive enterprise service, or they just plain dont work well. They fail to pull all the comments from Instagram, they crash when you try to export data, or they're so plastered with ads that your customers won't even use them.
This is where the math has to make sense for you as a business owner.
A platform like Gleam. io is solid, but it starts at $39/month (I think it's more now, actually) and it's frankly overkill for a local coffee shop or boutique. It's like using a commercial convection oven to bake a single cupcake.
A tool like Faisco is a different beast. It's not free, but it's built for small businesses. I can have a client's entire campaign built and live in less than 10 minutes. The time you save not having to manually consolidate entries from Facebook, Insta, and TikTok into a spreadsheet... that alone is worth the small cost. Plus, it handles the winner selection, the prize distribution, everything. It is the multi platform giveaway picker, but it's wrapped in a package that's way more engaging.
Its real genius is in the seasonal stuff. They have pre-built game templates for Christmas, Valentine's, Halloween, Black Friday... you name it. I used their "Fill My Christmas Stocking" game for three different retail clients last December, and every single one saw over 300% more engagement than their usual holiday posts. Because it was fun! Not another boring "tag a friend" post.
Look, if you're struggling to get traction, here’s my honest advice. Stop chasing likes. Stop running those complicated, manual giveaways.
At the end of the day, marketing for a small business isn't about having the most "revolutionary" strategy. It’s about finding practical, reliable tools that work within your budget and your limited time. Stop trying to manually run a giveaway across four platforms. Find a tool that does the heavy lifting and actually engages your customers in the process. You'll save yourself a massive headache... and probably get way better results.
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