15 Instagram Contest Ideas to Grow Your Brand

Looking for Instagram contest ideas to grow your brand? If so, this resource is perfect for you. Below we’ll share 15 Instagram contest ideas you can use to start growing brand awareness. 

What are Instagram Contests?  

An Instagram Contest or giveaway hosted by brands or social media influencers influencers. Typically, the purpose of a content, giveaway, or challenge is to build more awareness for the brand or influencer and in the end grow a larger following or increased engagement. Let’s dive into Instagram contest fundaments. 

Why is an Instagram contest a good idea?

You might be wondering if an Instagram contest is a good idea or not. After all, the biggest step towards taking action is is making a commitment. Here are some pros and cons of running an Instagram contest. 

Pros of Running an Instagram Contest

The primary benefit of running an Instagram contest is of course more eyes on your Instagram brand profile. Other pros include: 

• Growing your audience 
• Increasing account engagement
• Nurturing your existing audience
• Getting more traffic to your assets (posts, shop, sales pages, affiliate links)

The above all seem like great ideas when considering Instagram contests or giveaways can rely solely on cold organic traffic. When done right it can be the perfect introduction for new followers. When done wrong it can appear spammy or eventually turn into a purge cycle. More on this below. 

Cons of Running an Instagram Contest

The cons of running an Instagram contest include are mostly associated with time an energy. After all, it takes time to promote and run a successful contest. Other cons of running an Instagram contest include: 

• Poor targeting when using generic offers 
• Post follower purge (if followers are only following your account for the contest)
• Cost of prize or reward
• Cost of advertising or promotional methods 

If goes without saying running any marketing strategy requires time, know how, and of course the expense to fund and operate the strategy. However, as we mentioned above Instagram contests can be promoted using completely organic methods. 

Now that you understand the general pros and cons of running an Instagram contest let’s talk about some best practices you can employ if you decide to run a contest of the ‘Gram. 

Best practices for running contests on Instagram:

Do you want to run a successful Instagram contest? Then let’s outline important considerations you should take into account when planning an IG contest. 

Start with a clear goal in mind

Generate more engagement on your posts. 

Grow your Instagram following. 

Get more people to sign up for your email list. 

Produce user-generated content 

This will help you to have a clear vision of your contest and will allow you to make full use of the contest. 

Plan Your Instagram Contest Properly: 

Make sure you have everything planned perfectly. Plan a relevant prize, for people to participate in your contest. The more valuable the prize is, the more people will participate in your contest. And, also plan what your contest is going to be.  

For example, you can ask people to post selfies with your brand’s product, and the lucky winner will win a trip to “Maldives”. What is happening here, people will start buying your product to click selfies, and which brings you a ton of revenue. This is a great marketing strategy! 

Promote Your Instagram Contest: 

Before launching, promote your contest. You may think, what will happen if I promote my Instagram contest? Let’s see what will happen when promoting.  

When you promote your content, it will reach a wide range of audiences and people who don’t know about your brand or contest. Instagram ads will help to promote your Instagram contests. This will also attract a lot of new audiences to your page and your brand. 

Evaluate Instagram Contest Results: 

This is the last step you need to take care of, you must check and evaluate your Instagram contest results thoroughly. This means, check your web page and Instagram page trafficking, and check how many hikes it took post contest.  

You would be amazed by seeing those results! As every human being is interested in participating in contests and win free prizes. So, this will be a huge game-changer for you. When the contest wraps up, I recommend that you edit your post caption to read “Contest CLOSED” at the very beginning of the post. This will ensure that users who see the post after the contest has expired won’t attempt to participate. 

Contest Ideas for Instagram Contests: 

1. Tag to win  

This means you must ask people to tag their friends, relatives to win the contest. 

How can this help you grow your brand?  

By asking people to tag their friends, relatives, and anyone they know, will help you to the target audience, what happens when they tag their friends and family? The people who don’t know about you will know about your brand and contest. This will expose you to a new audience. 

2. Like to win: 

You will ask people to like the post to win the contest. 

By asking people to like your post to win your contest. This will help you to make your content by increasing the number of likes. And you can target a new audience through this technique. 

3. Selfie contest: 

You ask people to post or upload a story of their selfies by tagging your Instagram Page. 

What will you gain through this? 

When you ask people to post or upload a picture using your Instagram handle, their followers can see your Instagram page and they will know about your contest. Which will again bring you a new set of audiences to participate in your contest.

4. Photo Contest 

 You ask people to upload photos. For example, you ask them to upload a picture holding one of your brand products or some prop. 

In this contest, you ask people to upload pictures to win your prize money. This will bring you a lot of attention! When people will start posting photos to win your contest, it will help you to increase your brand reach and recognition. 

5. Voting Contest 

In this contest, you ask people to vote for their favorite. For example, if you sell football equipment, you can have a voting contest between Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi.

In this, you ask people to vote and this will make your audience indulge in a healthy debate and an interesting voting contest. This also has the potential to increase your brand’s reach. 

6. Caption Contest 

A caption competition is where brands share an image and ask their audience to come up with a description for it. Usually, a winner is drawn by choosing the best caption and is rewarded with a prize. 

By this, you can have a lot of traffic on your page, and eventually, you will have enough traffic on your website too (if you have one). Which is again a plus point to your business.

7. Challenge Contest 

You can challenge your followers to post something on their Instagram account and tag you on that post. Today’s millennials love these kinds of challenges and that will bring you a lot of reach and recognition for your brand. 

This will also help you to increase your business tremendously. 

8. Trivia or skill-based contest 

Asking fans to show off a skill related to your product or brand is another great option, especially if you offer products or resources that help people learn or develop those same skills. 

This can be very engaging, and you will get a great response from the crowd. 

9. User-generated content contest 

You could ask users to show themselves using your product, share a story of how your product or service has improved their life.

Indulging your users with your products, helps them to use your product and review it, and you will get a lot of publicity because of that. Isn’t that a great way for marketing? Try it out and see wonders happening to your business. 

10. Scavenger hunt contest 

This can be fun to get your Instagram community involved with your brand. The scavenger hunt can be a very fun and fantastic contest you can ever conduct. You can use your Instagram feed to provide clues that people need to follow to find a prize or give people a list of photo tasks to complete and post on their Instagram feed or Instagram Story. 

This can be a very fun way for your followers to, this scavenger hunt will be the most fun-loving contest that you can ever pull, and publicity will cross the roof-top. 

11. Follow Us Contest 

This is where you ask people to follow you and the luckiest person would win an exciting price. A lot of people would start following you and get a huge fan base after conducting this exciting contest.

This is again another exciting and fun-loving contest to engage and increase your fan base on Instagram.  

12. Upcoming Event Contest 

You can conduct contests about upcoming events, by giving passes or entries for new upcoming event contests. Which will indulge all the youth, and it will be fun and exciting. 

This can attract many people to your account, and it’s a great contest idea for your business. 

13. Celebrating milestone contest 

When you celebrate all your milestones, and conduct contests for that. For example, when you hit 10k followers you can conduct a contest or a giveaway to a lucky follower of your community. 

When you celebrate your milestone like this, people will be attracted to your Instagram page. 

14. Promote New Products 

Launching something new? A contest or giveaway is a great way to draw attention and drive traffic to your new product. When announcing your winner, include a “consolation” discount code, so those who didn’t win can get a discount on your new goods. 

This can be a kickstart to your new product. Isn’t it a great idea? Use it and give your product a kick start.

15. Promote New Content 

If you’re an author or your business produces content, you can build a giveaway offering the latest release of what you’ve written.  

What are the rules for Instagram contests?

The following are some typical contest rules that you might find useful. 

• Acknowledge that your Instagram contest or giveaway is not sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with Instagram 
• Include the name of the company hosting the Instagram giveaway or contest 
• Include the dates the campaign will run, including time zone 
• Include participation restrictions (such as age and location) 
• Write clear guidelines on how to enter 
• Outline how and when the winner(s) will be chosen 
• Share details about how and when the winner(s) will be announced and how/when the winner should claim the prize 
• Disclose details about how the prize will be delivered, including whether the recipient is responsible for delivery (shipping costs) or pick-up 

These are some rules you need to follow for your Instagram Contests. 

What do people need to be eligible for it? 

    You must mention who is eligible for your contest, some contests can be targeted to certain age groups and, you can have age restrictions on your contest, or any demographic restrictions. If there are no age restrictions or demographic restrictions on your contest, then everyone who has an Instagram account is eligible for the contest. 

These are things you need to keep in mind while conducting an Instagram Contest. 

3 Tools you can use to host Instagram contests. 

There are many tools you can use to host an Instagram contest, some of them are: 

• Shortstack 
• SweepWidget 
• Vyper 

Conclusion 

That’s all friends! We hope this article provided some inspiration for your first or next Instagram contest. Be sure to tag Ampfluence in your next IG event.