I sponsored and paid for an Instagram giveaway recently that cost me $11,000, however, this was no normal giveaway. In fact, I was sponsoring a giveaway by a very big name in reality TV, a Kardashian herself.
Khloe Kardashian, the youngest sister to Kourtney and Kim Kardashian, previously hosted a giveaway on Instagram in which she stated, “If you want to win $50K and all the bags you see on my post, you have to follow this account, and you have to follow everyone that this account is following as well.”
And I was one of those 75 people that she was following.
At the end of this video, you’re gonna be able to discover if Instagram giveaways actually work, or if it’s all just a scam. There were 74 others who joined in and sponsored her giveaway and a lot of them were actually in markets or niches that could be appealing to Kardashian’s followers.
I will reveal to you the numbers, what actually happened throughout the entire giveaway, and whether you should be doing Instagram giveaways, if it’s a great strategy, or if it is an absolute waste of money.
Does Instagram giveaways work? Is it a great strategy to build a following, to monetize, or is it all just surface level, likes and following? First of all, let me explain the three main parties involved.
- Influencer
In this situation, the influencer is of course Khloe Kardashian herself as she has a huge following with over 100 million followers on Instagram. Every influencer, big or small, they all want to monetize, but they don’t want to deal with a lot of different people. So what they normally do is they’ll hookup with an agency.
- Agency
An agency will organize these types of giveaways so the influencers won’t have to go through the hassle of dealing with sponsors. They will look for people who either want to build up their social media following, get verified on Instagram, or would like to increase their credibility. What this agency would do is they would get about 50 to 100 different sponsors to join this giveaway, and this mainly consists of people who focus on Instagram growth.
- Sponsors
These could be people who would like to get a bigger following, or people who are in a market that is similar to the influencer. Because if somebody follows this influencer, chances are that they could monetize from them. They would pay for Instagram growth.
The agency pitches this giveaway programme to 75 to 100 people and if I were to do some quick math, 75 people sponsoring this giveaway at $11,000 each, that would be a total of $825,000.
The agency then approaches the influencer and pitches this idea to them, and that they’ll pay a certain amount for them to make a post. The pitch is unlike a normal post, whereby you have to pimp out your brand or the name and endorse the product.
The pitch is literally just this, “I would like to thank and reward you guys for being my followers, and I’m giving away $50,000 in prizes,” which is what Khloe Kardashian did.
For an influencer, it’s an easy sell because they get to make more money. The followers are happy, because they’re literally giving away money, that’s being paid by the agency, that’s being paid by the sponsors.
Sometimes I see people saying, “Is Instagram giveaways a scam? Do these people really give out the money?” They do. And the reason is because these people are not coming off the money. The sponsors are the ones that are actually forking out the bill. So the question is, was it worth it?
The way to think about Instagram growth for you is by looking at these few different factors. First of all, it is to look at the amount you’re paying versus the expected followers.
If I have 80,000 people who genuinely follow me, I know that approximately 5% of people that follow me will view my Instagram story, and these are considered the hot audience, which means this is somebody that genuinely follows me because they were interested in my content.
And I know that out of 4,000 people that view my story if I were to do a swipe up campaign, meaning every time I do a story and I say, “Hey guys, I just released this thing, and if you would like to check out product name, all you need to do is swipe up.”
So every time I have a call to action, and I do a swipe up campaign, which is a lot once you have 10,000 followers, I know that 10% will swipe up. 10% of people swiping up is equal to 400 clicks. That means 400 people would be visiting my website, funnel, sales process, free plus shipping, webinar, etc.
In most cases, if you were to pay for a click on Facebook, cost per click will cost about $1. It depends on the funnel type, whether it’s a webinar, or a high ticket. This number would vary, but give or take, I know that’s about $3.
So, if I were to add these two numbers up, this means that the amount it would have saved me plus the amount it would have made me is approximately $4 every time I do a swipe up campaign. That gives me 400 clicks, so 400 multiplied by 4 would be $1,600, and I would earn that amount every time I do a swipe up campaign for a normal audience.
Another way to think about this could be if 400 people visited your website, and if you had a decent conversion of 5% for a $50 product, that’s another way to calculate, 5% and a $50 product, if you have 400 clicks, that will be 20 sales.
20 sales multiplied by 50, it will be about $1000. If you’re taking into account cost per click, $1 per click, it’s about 1,400 clicks here. So if this is for a normal 80,000 followers, the question now would be, if all you did was one swipe up campaign once a week, how much would that be?
However, there’s a big objection. The goal here is to see if there’s ROI on these 80,000 followers because these are not normal followers. These are people who just wanted to join for the sake of joining.
So my train of thought is I would dilute this five times. I want to be conservative because these people, after watching this for a day, three days, five days, 10 days, the people who are not interested, they’re going to unfollow, and that’s why the unfollow is gonna be around 30%-40%.
I’m assuming that if they continue staying, they’re going to be five times less interested than a normal audience that would normally follow. If it is a fair assumption, that means that this number over here is diluted five times.
However, do note that Instagram giveaways are not for everyone. Do this only if you are in a market that is catered to the masses, so if you are selling something like beauty, exercise, lifestyle, money, investments, things that are for the mass audience where it’s okay for you to have a large amount of random people suddenly following you, then it will be good.
In most cases, I will not depend on Instagram giveaways as a way to generate Instagram growth. Other than those reasons, or the intangible reasons like social media proof, getting you the gigs if necessary, or even getting you Instagram verified, because that is one of the many factors that Instagram looks at.
Discover the entire list of numbers, how much I’ve gained and lost from this giveaway, and whether it was worth it for me by clicking here to watch on YouTube now. Let me know what you think in the comments!
