Utilizing Amazon Giveaway to Promote Your Private Label

Are you selling on Amazon and looking for ways to entice consumers to try out your products? One year ago, Amazon launched Amazon Giveaway, which is a great promotional tool for merchants to boost product exposure. With Amazon Giveaway, Amazon merchants, especially private label owners, are able to set up campaigns to give away their own products as prizes, draw in shoppers to try out their unique products, and increase over 40% traffic to the product webpage in a week! [1]

What is Amazon Giveaway?

Simply put, anyone who owns an Amazon.com account, not just sellers and private label owners, but also customers, marketers, bloggers, artists, and more, can host a Giveaway campaign. It’s as easy as selecting products on Amazon and sending the invitation to their target audiences by employing one of Amazon’s winner selection rules [2].

What are the Benefits?

Through Amazon Giveaway, hosts can attract their target audience’s attention and gain new followers. That is to say, Amazon Giveaway can be utilized as a marketing tool to intensify audience’s engagement and to generate buzz. Moreover, for private label owners, it’s a good opportunity to let potential customers try their products, to boost product reviews and create brand awareness. For a new launched product, by gaining more product reviews from Giveaway, it can establish its credibility, raise its rank and even appear on the front page when shoppers search it in its product category, thus draw more sales.

How to Set Up a Giveaway?

Step 1: Choose prizes

To get started, the host can either go to Amazon.com/giveaway or find the product page and click on “Set up an Amazon Giveaway” near the bottom of the product detail page. The host can choose up to 30 physical items or 50 digital items from a myriad eligible products sold on Amazon.com. The total value of the selected items cannot exceed $5,000 before tax and shipping. In addition, digital products such as songs, movies, gift cards, etc are forbidden to be Giveaway prizes [3].

Below are popular categories for Giveaway prizes. Among them, electronics is the most popular prize category at 73% [1].

Step 2: Select winners

The second step is to select winners, which can be one of the three different methods–Random, Lucky Number, or First-come, First-served.

Random: The host of the campaign selects the number of prizes and the chance of winning, and the system will randomly select winners. For example, if the host decides to give away 5 prizes and that each participant has 1 in 50 chance of winning, the campaign may have any number of entrants varying between 201 and 250, depending on random selection.

Lucky Number: The winners are selected based on the order of their entry. For example, every 20^th entrant wins the prize until the prizes run out. This method keeps the campaign running for longer and bring you more entrants, fans or followers.

First-come, First-served: With this method, the first entrants who enter win the prizes. For example, the first 10 entrants who join your Giveaway will be winners. This method awards your followers who are most engaged and proactive.

After deciding on one of these three winner selection methods, the host of the Giveaway can choose whether entrants need to complete a specific task in order to participate. These tasks include follow his/her Twitter or watch a video on YouTube. According to Amazon, this requirement has helped Giveaway hosts generate over 2.8 million new Twitter followers [4].

Step 3: Design your Giveaway page

In the final step, the host can customize their Giveaway page by adding title, welcome messages, etc. Then they can select payment method and place the order. Once the Giveaway campaign is set up, Amazon will send a URL to the host so he/she can share the link and launch his/her Giveaway.

After completing the above steps, Amazon will handle the rest by automatically notifying winners and distributing prizes. The only thing that the host has to take care of is to pay for the prizes and shipping fees.

Amazon Giveaway is currently only available in Amazon US. However, we believe that it provides a good opportunity for Amazon merchants, especially private label owner, to increase product exposure, generate reviews, and create more awareness. Follow the above steps and design your own Giveaway today! Also, for soliciting more feedback and managing review, please check our Feedback Central and Review Central and see how we can help you!

Reference
[1] Amazon widens Giveaway promotion service to include Kindle ebooks. http://rogerpacker.com/blog/amazon-widens-giveway-promotion-service-to-include-kindle-ebooks/
[2] Amazon’s Newest Tool Lets Anyone Host Giveaways Online. http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/10/amazons-newest-tool-lets-anyone-host-giveaways-online/

[3] Amazon Giveaway: Frequently Asked Questions. https://www.amazon.com/b/?_encoding=UTF8&node=11715260011

[4] New features added to Amazon Giveaway, tool for running online promo contests

http://www.geekwire.com/2016/new-features-added-to-amazon-giveaway-tool-for-running-online-promo-contests/

BQool Marketing

June 17, 2016

Pauline's passions lie in eCommerce and supporting individuals in their online selling endeavors. Currently, as a frequent contributor to the BQool Blog, she channels her passions into creating informative contents that break down the complex challenges Amazon sellers face on a daily basis.