A Quick Guide to Amazon Giveaways

Amazon just released a new tool called Amazon Giveaways allowing anyone to run giveaway contests. As long as the items are sold on Amazon, you can run an online contest. In fact, it is so easy to use that the person running the contest just chooses the prize, sets a few parameters and then Amazon does the rest. I’d say that is a social media win! Amazon will choose the winner or winners for you, get their shipping information and then ship the prize out. How many times have you had to use a third party application, set the parameters, put it on all of your social networks, choose the winner and then ship it out yourself? Forget all that. Marketers everywhere can take advantage of this new easy way to help them grow their brand!

Amazon didn’t just make the process easier, they also added a feature that allows you to require entrants follow your Twitter account. This feature is similar to like-gating on Facebook, it’s a way that marketers can reward fans with exclusive content and give them access to contests, but that was removed from Facebook in fall of 2014. This is one of the first tools that requires that a user follow you versus the traditional follow us for an extra entry, which we have seen for a while. This is great for your marketing department because it helps grow your followers and hopefully helps you gain potential leads.

Finding something on Amazon to giveaway can take some time and even be a little difficult at times. Think of what your audience would want. If your product isn’t being sold on Amazon then what can you give away that is of value to your followers? Amazon claims that any item sold through them that is under $5,000 is eligible, but looking around the site proved that not all items are available for a giveaway. To that note, there is not currently a way that allows someone to search for just Amazon items that are available for giveaway. Once a user is allowed to add a giveaway filter to their search query it will make the search process much easier.

To set up a giveaway follow these steps:

1. Find an item that you want to give away. Scroll all the way to the bottom of the screen until you see ‘set up a giveaway’. Click on ‘set up a giveaway’.

2. The next page takes you to the setup page where you will be able to set the parameters of your contest. Next, you choose whether you would like a random entrant to win or you would like multiple winners to be chosen. You can give out multiple prizes, but they have to be the same item unless you start another contest.

3. Select the rules for winning. How often do you want Amazon to select a winner and how many winners do you want?

4. Then the program asks you if you want to require people to follow you on Twitter in order to enter the contest. Tip: It would be smart to make that a requirement! All you need to do is click connect account and authorize Amazon to run the contest.

There are some notes at the bottom explaining the details of your contest. It states that the contest only lasts for a week, only 50 people can enter and when Amazon ships the item(s) it will be shipped standard. Sorry, Prime users.

Get your Amazon contest running today and see how easy it is!

Maren Hogan

Maren Hogan is CEO of Red Branch and general Bad@$$

Maren Hogan is a seasoned marketer and community builder in the HR and Recruiting industry. Maren started Red Branch Media and, before she hired all the smiling faces you see below, she ran it on her own. In marketing for over 15 years, she has deep experience in strategic campaigns and a long-term, results-based operational approach.