Social Media campaigns such as giveaways have long been a standard practice for brands looking to quickly boost their followings on Instagram or drum up excitement and interest. Sure, it’s a simple and effective way to grasp the audience’s interest due to its ease of entry and viral component, but post-campaign drop-offs can also be high due to the abundance of giveaway campaigns on social media, and brands failing to attract the right audience due to a disconnect between the prizing incentive and marketing objective. We also find that users are becoming more selective when picking giveaways to enter, making it harder than ever to engage a relevant audience.

Throughout our years of experience running giveaways for brands across various industries, we noticed that giveaway campaigns are proven to be more effective in certain industries than others. For example, a lifestyle product brand or food and beverage establishment can easily give away their own products as a way to promote themselves, attracting audiences who may be interested in such products. But what about businesses in trades or real estate? How do you run successful campaigns that will not only attract and engage audiences outside of the real estate sector, but also create lasting impressions by establishing your brand values while you are at it?

We recently planned and executed an Instagram campaign in the form of a Street Photography Contest for our commercial real estate client, Rendition Developments. Since their current marketing goal is to generate leads and interest to their new office buildings situated in the emerging Railtown and Chinatown neighbourhoods, running the campaign on Instagram is a surefire way to reach younger decision influencers working within the startup and tech sector that will be attracted to the vibrant work-life and start-up culture in these particular neighbourhoods. We were also drawn to the photography contest idea by first observing the large community of local street photographers and hobbyists on Instagram, solely due to the image-centric and interest-driven nature of the platform.

The Execution

Vancouver’s Chinatown and Railtown neighbourhoods have long been known for their photogenic streetscapes, and are often visited by local street photographers. To engage this community, we created a Street Photography Contest branded as “#SnapEastVan” to be run solely on our instagram platform. The contest encourages anyone in the Greater Vancouver region to submit their Chinatown and Railtown street photography by simply posting the photo on their personal account and adding the #SnapEastVan hashtag to enter within the three-week campaign period. To incentivize entries, we also teamed up with three well-known Vancouver restaurants in the contesting neighbourhoods with gift certificates from $50-$100 in value to be gifted to the top three winners.

To get the ball rolling, a designed photography contest announcement post was posted on Instagram and boosted for 15 days, targeting local audiences from the age of 24-35 with an interest in photography. To optimize our reach in the niche street photography community on Instagram and to utilize the small remaining budget we had left, we partnered with a local photographer micro-influencer to help spread the word about the contest via his instagram story. This approach allows for a more organic introduction to the brand, and helped us reach a tailored audience with an interest in photography.

The campaign was also strategically planned to tie into Rendition Development’s community-centric brand philosophy, introducing them as a creative, refreshing and fun brand that stands out from the crowd of Vancouver boutique builders.

The Result

The successful campaign was completed with a minimal budget of $500 (including prizes), and reached over 15,000+ unique accounts and generated 41,000+ impressions. The contest announcement post was saved over 100 times, showing a high interest in the contest itself. At the end of the 3 week long campaign period, we received 75 photo entries and 110 new followers.

Running campaigns in a contest format proves to be an effective way to engage users especially within a demographic that values the opportunity of organic exposure. This also proves that every business, no matter the industry, can use creativity to build well thought out campaigns without deviating from the brand philosophy. For marketers today, it’s especially important to understand that community building should be at the core of their social media marketing effort, and having regular campaigns that engage and interact with users in an authentic way is a proven way to build trust and connection with new or existing audience.