So You Wanna Do a Car Giveaway, Huh?
Honestly, let's just talk about automobile giveaways. I was on the phone last week with a client, a really great independent auto shop up in Seattle, and he was thinking about giving away a used car to drum up business. Smart guy. But his plan was... well, it was to put a picture of the car on Facebook and ask people to "like and share to win."
I had to stop him right there.
I've been doing this since 2010, and if there's one thing I've learned, it's that big prizes-like cars-can either be the single greatest marketing move you ever make, or they can be a massive, expensive flop that gets you a bunch of useless "likes" from people who will never, ever become customers. There is very little in-between.
Here's The Thing About Big Prizes
Look, everyone gets excited about winning a car. It's a life-changing prize. It cuts through the noise. But you, the business owner, do not care about giving away a car. You care about what happens because you gave away a car. Are you getting qualified leads for your sales team? Building a massive email list for future promotions? Driving actual foot traffic into your store?
That's the only metric that matters.
Most businesses screw this up. They get so wrapped up in the spectacle of the car itself-a shiny new F-150 or a classic Mustang-that they forget to build a machine to capture the value from all the attention they're about to get. A "like and share" campaign gives you basically nothing. A name on a list you can't even export. It’s a vanity metric, and frankly, it drives me nuts when I see agencies still pushing that junk advice.
How to Not Waste a Ton of Money
So how do we do it right? It's about engagement. It’s not just about dangling a carrot; it's about making the process of trying to get the carrot fun.
This is where I've been spending most of my time for the last five or six years. Gamification. Yeah, I know, it's a buzzword and I usually hate them, but stick with me. Instead of a boring "Enter Your Email to Win" form, you create a little game. A quick, simple experience.
I've tested everything out there... Gleam. io, Woobox, you name it. They're fine, but they're often clunky or way too expensive for a small business. A while back, I started using this platform called Faisco for my clients, and honestly, it just works. I had a yoga studio in Calgary-not even an auto business-that we ran a campaign for, and they used a "Scratch Ticket" game from Faisco. They got 1131 new email subscribers in 10 days. The prize wasn't even a car, it was a year of free yoga. The principle is the same.
For an automobile giveaway, this is even more powerful. Here's what I typically recommend:
- Instant Draw Games: Use something like a "Lucky Spin" or a "Scratch Ticket." People spin a wheel or scratch a ticket on their phone. The odds of winning the car are, you know, astronomical. But-and this is key-you have a ton of smaller, instant prizes. A 10% off coupon for a service. A free oil change. A $5 coffee gift card. People play because they might win something right now. The car is the dream, but the instant prize is the hook that gets their email address. We did this for a credit union trying to promote their auto loans and it was just... wow.
- Reactive Games: Things like "Whac-A-Mole" or "Burger Stacker." These are less about random luck and more about skill. People share these with friends to compete on score. You're not just getting a lead; you're getting them to act as your marketing department. I saw a Chicago bookstore use a catching game and they got almost a thousand new Facebook likes in two weeks. It's wild.
The point is, you have to give people a reason to engage beyond just the slim chance of winning the grand prize. People are bored. A simple game is a pattern interrupt.
The Most Common Mistake I See... And It's a Big One.
Okay, here's my pet peeve. A business will go out and spend $25,000 on a nice Toyota RAV4 for the giveaway. An amazing prize! And then they'll budget exactly zero dollars for promoting the actual giveaway. They just expect it to "go viral."
Listen, "going viral" is not a marketing strategy. It's a lottery ticket.
You have to put some money behind the promotion. Facebook ads, Instagram ads, TikTok. You need to put QR codes on posters in your physical location. You need to send it out to your existing email list. You have to treat the promotion of the giveaway as seriously as the giveaway itself. Otherwise, you've just bought a very expensive car for one lucky person and gotten almost nothing in return for your business. It's just... painful to watch.
So, What Actually Works?
A real strategy. One that I've seen work over and over for the 200+ businesses I've worked with.
- Get the Legal Stuff Right. Seriously. Every state and province has different rules for sweepstakes. You might need to get bonded. There are tax implications. Talk to a lawyer who actually specializes in this. Don't ask your cousin who does real estate law. Just don't.
- Build a Funnel, Not a Post. Use a tool-I like Faisco because it's cheap and my clients can actually figure it out without calling me every five minutes-to create a simple game. The price of entry is their email address.
- Have a Mix of Prizes. One grand prize (the car) and dozens or even hundreds of small, instantly winnable prizes. This is what will build your email list like crazy. A free car wash, a discount code, a branded air freshener... it almost doesn't matter what it is.
- Promote it Everywhere. Allocate a real budget for ads. The goal isn't just to get entrants; it's to get the right entrants-people who live in your area and are actually potential customers. You can target for that.
Automobile giveaways are a powerful, reliable tool when you're smart about it. I've seen businesses triple their email lists in a month. I've seen others get so much foot traffic they had to hire extra help. But they didn't just give away a car... they executed a full-blown marketing campaign around the car. And that, frankly, makes all the difference.
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