💥Use Giveaways to Explode Your Audience ✉️
Everybody loves to get free stuff, be it a tangible product or a special service. Therefore, your business can always benefit from offering online giveaways to your audience. In this episode, Adrienne Hill chats with Kristen Robinson about the many benefits of systematizing explosive online giveaways. They present the five things you need to prepare when hosting an online giveaway and everything you must consider to yield the most desirable results possible. Kristen also discusses how to handle freebie seekers and why hosting online giveaways is always better than participating.
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Hello everyone and welcome to another amazing mastermind session. I'm super geeked out about this one. We are here with the one and only Kristen Robinson. She is a lead generation specialist at Explode Your Audience. She helps online coaches grow their email lists so they can fill their online courses and programs. Kristen is also a military spouse. Her husband, Lamont, serves in the United States Marine Corps. When she's not working or attending a family day for her husband's unit, she's playing with her black lab-hound mix puppy, Taichou. She's here to talk to us about systematizing explosive online giveaways, which is a cool strategy that I've been dying to dig into. I can't wait to pick her brain. I'm super excited that you're here Kristen. Welcome.
Thank you. For all of you, because I get this all the time from when I'm on social media and stuff like that, so Taichou is Japanese for Captain. If you translate my dog's name, her name is Captain Robinson.
Looking Back
That is the best. I love that. How unique. Very cool. Before we geek out on all things online giveaways, in case anyone in the audience is meeting you for the first time, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself? How is it that you found yourself in the space of becoming the queen of online giveaways? Spill it.
Honestly, it’s our unique lifestyle. As a military spouse, we move every three years. Unlike most of you who are like, “I'm stuck in this one place,” I move every three years. That means I change time zones sometimes. I go to the islands. We lived in Hawaii and all those kinds of things. Being online is very essential to our lifestyle. I can't have a brick-and-mortar or network like some people like you're in a networking group or things like that. Those are not options for me, so I had to be online. When I started my business, I was going to be online.
Most military spouses get a job. For me, that was very hard to do because you have to quit the job and go to the next job in three years. I didn't want to be doing that job hopping every three years so I started my business online. Fast forward, I'm online. I needed to generate leads. I've been participating in online giveaways since about 2018. It was the Wild West back then, like Tumbleweeds Wild West. In 2015, I was getting serious about online giveaways. I've been doing them for a few years. I was doing them until 2015 but got serious in 2018.
I remember doing an online giveaway where I got 500 opt-ins. I'm like, “This is amazing.” I don't know why this popped into my head but thank goodness. I was like, “If I got 500 opt-ins, what did the host get?” I was like, “Wait a minute. Hold on a second.” One of my favorite quotes is I got a slice of the pie but I want the whole pie. I started thinking about it. If 500 is a slice, what's the entire pie? I want the entire pie. That's what I want. I had to host my first online giveaway. I did it back in 2019 and I got 700 opt-ins and I'm like, “This is great. This is what I want to do.”
Who doesn’t want hundreds of opt-ins like that?
It was 770 total, but then we took out the unsubscribes and all that. It was like 740-ish or 750-ish net. I did another one that December. The first one was in July. I did one in December and I'm like, “This is going to be a thing.” Ever since that December, I have done a list-building event every 90 days since then. Every 90 days, we're doing some kind of list-building event, but primarily a giveaway. I've never looked back from doing it every 90 days.
That is amazing. You systematized it into your business. It became a regular part of how you work. Specifically, it's the best strategy you find to work around the fact that you move all the time. You might be in a different time zone all the time. You can't commit to being on camera in certain windows. You need something that runs behind the scenes and gives you a ton of leads, but it's not reliant on your time zone.
When I tell you guys I'm trying to do everything, I've tried everything. We move in the summer. Remember, I'm going from depending on where I'm going. I'm literally in different hotels every 3 or 4 days. Let's be real, we have all been to the hotel, Wi-fi is not reliable. Honestly, there have been days where I don't have internet because we're driving all day. Summer is a ruckus in my business.
I need something reliable that I can be like, “I'm on the road, and I don't have to worry about people coming into my world or buying.” I have this system set up where people are coming into my world. They're coming onto my email list and I can relax or enjoy or at least organize my move as we go or what other summer events happen during the summer.
What I love about this is there are so many benefits of this type of list-building activity. I'm sure there are some people in the audience that are like, “What? You're getting hundreds of leads and how fast and all at once?” I'm sure other people are like, “You don't even need Wi-Fi? You're in and out of hotels. You don't have to be on camera? What the what?” Maybe others are like, “I want all of it.”
Online Giveaway
I know collaborative events can be so powerful for business and so many people are blind to that side of building. I love collaborative events and I've been specifically interested in learning more about giveaways so I can't wait to dig in. For those who are like, “A giveaway, a what?” Break it down from the top. What is an online giveaway?
An online giveaway is a collaborative event hopefully with twenty or plus people. You can do a mini version but twenty-plus or more is what's going to turn the needle for you. Everyone is offering a free gift and you call them contributors because they're contributing a free gift. All the people who contributed free gifts also promoted that event. It's very much similar to a virtual summit like what you're watching now. The only difference is there are no interviews. You go to a summit, you see interviews, you see free gifts. The giveaway is basically a virtual summit stripped of the interviews. Everyone is still promoting and is still on the social media post, but everyone comes in and grabs a free gift if that is available.
Online giveaways are virtual summits stripped of interviews. It still has promotions, but everyone comes in and simply grabs a free gift.
These free gifts that are being promoted, are they freebies lead magnets? Are they things that people normally charge money for but they made it free specifically for the event? Talk to me a little bit about that.
It can be both. When you host your own, you will find it's a lot easier to start with those types of giveaways. You start getting a little fancy when you're like, everyone offers a course and it's free because people want to do a checkout, some coupon codes and it gets a little hairy in that situation. The thing about online giveaways that I like is it doesn't matter what the free gift is. We have done an event where we offered coaching calls. You sign up and you get to grab a coaching call. It doesn't matter what the free thing is offered but start with the free gift. Those are the common ones and it's easier, but there are all different types of things that you can offer like free courses, code, and things like that.
The Genius Of Hosting
Talk to me about why would you want to host one as opposed to participating in one. I know you hinted at that before but talk to us a little bit about numbers and metrics of what's the real genius behind hosting.
What a lot of people don't know, and this is something I want people to know, is that when you're participating, it's a slice of a pie. Look at your favorite pie. I like sweet potato pie. You want the whole pie. Some people are like, “I'll just eat a slice and be polite,” and certainly you want the whole pie. Let's be real you want the whole pie. For those of you who want the whole pie, that's what you want. Let me put this in numbers like you said.
If you've ever participated in an online giveaway, you probably don't know this. If you've never had one, then obviously you don't. If you are participating in an online giveaway, you're getting anywhere between 5% to 20% of what the host got. Let's wrap your brain around that. Remember, I told you that I was like, “I got 500 opt-ins.” You do a little math. If I got 500 opt-ins and that's 20% of what the host got, the host probably got 10,000.
Think about that for a second like, “Wait a minute, what?” It's a completely different game when you're hosting versus you're participating. Just like a summit, when you sign up, the host gets all the opt-ins. All the speakers get a piece. If you're participating in an online giveaway, you're just getting a piece. You're just getting that small sliver. If you're the host, you're getting every single opt-in that comes through. It’s a totally different game, especially if some of you want to launch. You're getting ready for your online course to go out and you want to start a funnel, whatever it is where you need a large flow of people to come in.
That's when it starts making a huge difference. Also, the time because people go, “Online giveaway takes time.” It does. I'm not saying you have to be like me where I do it every 90 days. A lot of my clients do it once a year or twice a year. Imagine how many online giveaways you have to participate in to equate that same amount of numbers. For example, if this host got 10,000 and I got 500, think about how many online giveaways I have to do to get that same 10,000. Versus in 90 days, I could get 10,000 and be done with my whole year.
That's my list for the whole year. A lot of people don't understand that there is more work involved in hosting. For many people, they have to do it once or twice and that's their whole list building for the entire year, versus if you're participating, it's something you're probably doing once a month or at least once every other month. That's a huge difference.
It's a lot of work but it's worth it.
It is. Honestly, doing the math equates them to about the same because you have to promote online giveaways when you're participating. You have to put your free gift together. When you're doing all of that multiplied times five versus hosting it, when you think about it, it's like if you do one online giveaway a year like participating and you host one on the giveaway and we measure it, it's about the same amount of time.
Online Giveaways: Doing multiple online giveaways a year with other businesses requires the same amount of time as hosting your own event.
Instead of participating in five or more, why not host just one? It's possible to go from zero people on your email list to multiple thousands with a single giveaway.
A lot of my clients grow anywhere between 600 to over 1,000 when they do host.
You’re getting 1,000 leads all at once. Who doesn't want that? If you're like, “I want to launch my course. I want to launch my program,” why not launch it off the back of a massive list build like that? It's a no-brainer.
That's exactly what I do.
Five Requirements
For the people who are mind-blown and maybe they haven't heard of this before or they've heard of it and they're like, “I'm finally going to get the scoop on this,” what do you need if you want to host an online giveaway? What are the requirements?
The number one thing you need is an email marketing tool. Most people already have it. The thing I find is there are five tools you need. Most people already have them, they're just not using them in this capacity. You need an email marketing tool. That's number one because you have to get emails onto your email list. You have got one of those. You need landing page software. It could be your website if you want to run one on your website. I have a couple of clients who do that. They run it on their website. You can do that.
I prefer you get something like lead pages or something like that where you can get actual metrics that you don't have to think about. That's important. You need a shopping cart. One of the things I love about online giveaways is you get paid to grow your email list. People pay you to be a part of these. You need a shopping cart or PayPal. Either way, you need that. I used to say this was optional but not anymore. You need your own domain name. You want to be professional.
That means yes, you have to go out and buy whatever you want to call it for your domain name. You're going to need that. The fifth thing you're going to need is something to track. You want to make sure you track people's promotional efforts like they're actually promoting or people are actually clicking on it. You want something to track it with. Those are the five things you need. There may be things you want but those are five things you need. You can add bells as much as you can but those are five things you need to host an online giveaway.
Most people who are catching this session probably have those things. They're realizing, “Wait a minute. I already have everything I need.” All of the speakers who participate get a list built. As people are opting into whatever their free gift is, that's how they're growing their email lists. Are they incentivized with anything else or is that usually enough for them to want to sign up?
For our giveaways, a lot of people do this but we do. We host contests. We have the most referrals contest. If people want to refer people, we have a referral contest. We have the most opt-in contest. Who gets the most opt-ins, there's a price for that. We also decided to have the most conversion list and that's because not a lot of people get a lot of opt-ins. We wanted to add something for the person who has that good quality list.
You're going to have a good conversion. We have the most conversions contest for our online giveaways. Those are the four contests that we have to incentivize people to promote. We have people who want to promote because they know the list build. Some people get that competitive edge and they're like, “I want that prize,” and they go after it. It's cool to see that too.
When you say conversions, you mean how many clicks they drove to the event, how many people opted in like, that conversion?
Exactly.
Freebie Seekers
That's amazing. I know some people are going to be wondering so I got to ask. If the whole premise is set up around the idea of giving away these free gifts, are you attracting freebie seekers?
That's a valid question because I do get that question. The thing is that you are going to get to people. It happens. Let's be completely honest here. Some people grab the free gift and unsubscribe. My husband reminded me the other day. He's like, “Did you have someone that said free giveaways at gmail . com?” I'm like, “Yeah.” You're going to get people who are like that, but I will tell you that from generating over six figures in my business, most of the people who buy my high ticket, like that $5,000 thing that you have in your business, come from my online giveaway.
The freebie seekers are the people who buy the high-ticket things that I have. Do they buy the low-ticket thing? We've talked about launching something on the back end. One of my most popular funnels is hosting an online giveaway that goes into a three-day or one-day virtual event, offering my $5,000 thing, and the people from that giveaway who signed up on my email list 30 days ago are buying that $5,000 thing.
They didn't even take a course. They straight up came in the thing, “I want to ticket for this thing.” They bought the ticket for the event and purchased the $5,000 thing. No course. No program. I’m in. That’s how I had the $15,000 or $10,000 a month with my virtual events because of those opt-ins, that huge list builds that come in, all these leads that come into this event, and boom that's it.
They are going from cold to sold on high ticket offers within a month that time.
Yeah, within 36 days.
Sure you get some freebie seekers but they're not all freebie seekers.
No, they're not. One of my latest clients, we were talking about that because she made a pit stop. She bought my low-ticket workshop, then bought a ticket to the event and joined the event. I asked her, “You've been on my list for 45 days. What made you?” She goes, “I don't know. I wanted to grow my audience. This sounded great about the workshop. I loved you. I loved the event. There was nothing else. Sounds great.”
“You gave me what I needed so I bought it.”
It's amazing how that happens. You're not going to get a freebie. You're going to get some but remember, there are people who want what you need. The free gift is like an audition. It's like, “Do they present themselves?” I find that most people don't go through my free gift. They are interested in the emails. They want to see what I'm going to say afterward. That's what they want like, “Is this the right person for me?” They're not even looking at that free gift. They're like, “The sounds good. What are you going to say to me? What are you going to say?”
Best Time For Online Giveaways
That is incredible and it goes to show that if you're truly fixing someone's problems and meeting their needs, they're going to buy whether they've been on your list for two days or two years. If you can move them through in 30 days or less and get hundreds or thousands in one fell swoop, why wouldn't you do it? It makes sense. I know people are probably realizing, “Wait a minute. I want to do this.” When is it a good time to host one? Are there certain blackout zones or ideal hot spots, or is it a free-for-all? Does it work as well any time of the year? Anything we need to know about that?
There are giveaway seasons. There are seasons. You have your spring season. March to May. In the season of March to May, March is the most popular. You also have your summer season, which is funny when I say summer. It’s June, it's not that far from May but June is also a popular month. You have March to May, and then June is like your summer. Believe it or not, fall doesn't happen. You have a couple in the fall, you don't see as many. It's not as popular.
For those of you who want to participate in all my giveaways, December is the month. I'm letting you know that. If you're hosting, be aware of December. We were talking about this. In December last year, I counted 14, 16, or somewhere in there and I'm talking about the ones that came across my emails like, “I'm hosting a giveaway. Join my giveaway,” like 14. That's insane. How do we get 14 in a month? How do we do that? As an industry, how did we do it? I don’t know.
Those are the seasons. I will say the best time is when you're getting ready to launch something, regardless of what time it is. A lot of people say, “I don't want to do my giveaway in December. You said it's the busiest month.” I'm going to tell you this though. I do one every 90 days. I will tell you right now hands down our December one is the biggest one. That is when we get the most opt-ins. That's when we get closest to 800 or more. It is when we do the December one. You're probably going, “How does that happen?”
Online Giveaways: The best time to host your own online giveaway is when you are getting ready to launch something regardless of the time of the year.
It's because when you have contributors to promote your thing, it doesn't matter what everybody else is doing. Your contributors are focused on your giveaway event. It doesn't matter when yours is. I will say that. The best time is whenever you know that you're going to launch something or you know you want to promote this or you want people in your private coaching, like you know you need a cash injection. You're like, “It's going to be this month.” Host your online giveaway for at least 30 or maybe 60 days, depending on how you nurture or how you sell. Host 30 to 60 days in advance so you get that good flood of leads in and then get them to the to your offer.
It makes sense, December is the month when people are in the gift-giving and gift-receiving mode. For them to hop online and browse a bunch of free gifts, it makes sense. It's congruent with the season. Anytime you're pre-launched is a great time. It's a great way to build your list and you can do it without necessarily having to be on camera per se.
If you want to add a camera element, you can. There's no video or camera.
I know some people, especially introverts, they're like, “Yes.” Maybe they're loving that idea of, “Wait a minute. I can collaborate with a bunch of cool people and I can get a huge list built and I can launch something. I don't have to be the extroverted on-camera person. That's amazing.” I know a lot of people feel that way and it's it's a great way to dip your toe into the world of collaborations. I think people generally are becoming more and more aware of this as a strategy. When they're invited to participate. it's not so much like, “What is this? What are you talking about?” It's more like, “I trust you. I would do that with you for sure.”
Cool Stories
I know you teach tons of clients the strategy. Of course, you have used it regularly every 90 days for a long period of time now. You teach everyone from brand-new beginners all the way to people with more experience. What types of results have you seen your clients get, not just opt-ins on the front end and that kind of stuff, but using them to fuel a launch on the back end? Any cool stories you want to share with us about what you've seen possible with the strategy?
This was the coolest thing I'd ever seen. For some of you, let's ride the road of collaboration. One of my clients did an online giveaway and she got over 1,000 opt-ins. She went into a launch where she was promoting somebody else. She was an affiliate for launch for Ryan Lavex's launch. If you know who Ryan Lavex is, he's a big multi-seven-figure person. It’s a big deal that she's going to be this.
Would you believe she cracked the top 5 in opt-ins and cracked the top 10 in sales? I could have never been so proud. I feel like a proud little mom like, “My baby.” Some of you are like, “Who cares? That doesn't sound significant.” Let me tell you how significant this is. To beat out other big people in opt-ins and sales, now there's a new person. All of these familiar people know each other in these seven figures circles, and there's a new name.
“Who is this person that just blew up on the scene?”
Who is this person? All of a sudden, what do you think that does for her? It positions her as someone to talk to. All these top people that she was below, “Who are you? What are you doing? What do you sell? Let's have a connection call.” Now, she is gathering more partners for that launch that happens later on. I love how she set herself up like that. Let me do an online giveaway. Let me get in this launch and make a name for myself, not getting all these partners for that launch that happens in about six months.
I've never thought about that. As you said, “Do a launch,” but to set yourself up like that for somebody else's launch where you get the commission, there's an opt-in contest in the sales contests as well. Not only does she get commissions off the product but she's also getting that sales prize. She's getting that opt-in price for those contests. She is generating revenue for herself, but the biggest part is getting those huge partners to take an interest in her so that she's setting herself up for a huge launch later on.
If she has another giveaway, all those speakers might want to be in her giveaway because they're like, “You’re legit. We'll do this with you.”
My thing is a lot of people are like, “Where's the money?” The money comes from the level of collaboration that you opted for yourself. That's where the money is and where the revenue is going to come from. I never thought about that for the online giveaway, but I thought that was the coolest thing I've ever seen.
She used it as a launch pad to jump from the C-list to the A-list.
That was so cool.
You could use it to seed your own launches, but you could use it to seed affiliates' launches, create a bunch of cool friends, and bring them along for your next launch. I have seen people too when they're doing collaborations like this. All of a sudden, they're getting invited to speak on podcasts and they're getting interviewed for things. All of a sudden, they're being invited to all these things.
The thing is a lot of people don’t understand that when you're in those types of environments with these bigger people, they have a huge list. You need something to fight back with. You need a big list. Just having that huge surge of leads, that huge list power, or that punch right before that is huge. I've never thought about that but when I saw them, I was like, “That's cool.”
I think of collaborative events whether it's an interview-style summit or whether it's a giveaway, I think of it as the jet fuel in the airplane that gets it off the ground. You need a lot of speed before that moment of liftoff. It's like the jet fuel that gets you the speed you need. I love that. Not only can it set you up for success for your own launches. It can set you up to win affiliate launches. Even if you start as a complete nobody, it can fuel about anything that you want to put into super speed.
It grows your network and credibility. From what I understand and talking with you behind the scenes, it is fun. I know from hosting collaborative events myself that one of the nice things that I'm sure you've started to experience as well, especially with how often you and your husband move, is that once the team learns how it works, the team can do 90% of the work. It's not like you're the one doing it, which is amazing.
Free Gift And Workshop
I love that. Now I'm sure everyone in the audience is like, “We need to do this.” I know you have a free gift that can help people get started with their first giveaway if they're having that light bulb moment of realizing, “This is my next point of focus. This is what I've been looking for, Hallelujah.” Tell us a little bit about that free give.
The giveaway blueprint. I go into why you would want to host an online giveaway. We talked a little bit about it, but I will go a little deeper into why and talk about when. We’ll go a little deeper in the free give but what you’ll love about it is I'm giving you the five tools you need as well to do it. I'm going way in-depth and especially talking a little bit about the tools that I use and why you don't want to use some other things. I've turned this blueprint into, “Here are the things you need to do to have a bit of jet fuel to get you off the ground.” If you're like, “I don't know,” or you're skeptical, at least you know what you're getting into with this guy. I wanted to put something together that gives people this good bird’s eye view, or this big window of possibility. You can then make that decision based on the information that's in the blueprint.
If you want the perfect giveaway blueprint, there will be a button somewhere around this video nearby. Click the button. It'll be in there. Scoop that up if you're realizing this is your next big move this year and you can't wait to dig in. Scoop that up. For the VIP ticket holders, you have something extra something special. Do you want to tell us about that one?
It’s the workshop that I do. I love doing this workshop. I do it once or twice a year. It's how bare bones have to do your own online giveaway like totally bare bones or the minimum means. I remember the first time I did this workshop, I was like, “You have to know workshops.” Someone took my advice and did their own online giveaway and added over 1,000 opt-ins with the information that I used in my workshop. I'm like, “How did you do it?” He goes, “I followed what you said in the workshop. I did exactly what you told me to do.”
It's funny because that person joined the workshop the next time. I'm like, “Aren't you guys successful.” He's like, “I didn't get everything,” and did it. Not only was able to do that but almost doubled his opt-ins. It’s the second time he took that workshop. If you're serious, you got the blueprint. You're like, “I think I want to do this,” the workshop is going to be the best but as I said, I've had this person take the information, and run with it and do their own online, which I think is amazing. You can do that with this workshop.
Just listening to the super cool kit example about preceding an affiliate launch, imagine if you leverage this strategy properly and systematize it the way Kristen has done, what could happen in your business? It is one of those things where it gets the top of your scalp tingly a little when you start thinking about the possibilities.
The other thing I want to know is that some of you are like, “I don't help people make money.” That's okay because the person I talked about who took it helps real estate Investors. He's like, “It's not just an online business coaching money thing.” I was like, “Real estate investors?” He's like, “That's what I do. I grew my list of people who want to invest in real estate,” and I'm like, “It works.”
I would imagine any niche where people have questions about how to accomplish something, it's going to work because of all the free gifts that speak to how to do this, how to do that, or how to do the other thing or not. It could work in almost any niche. As long as everyone coming together is in the same niche, you're good to go.
Some of you are like, “I don't know if it's going to work in mine.” I have clients who do personal development and have done this. I have one client who is a confidence coach. She uses online giveaways and wants her to grow her list. I have another client who is a business coach for these health coaches. That's it. That's her niche. It helps with her membership. It doesn't even matter how your niche or how niche down you are. As I said, if someone asks questions or that person wants to get to know more about that thing, an online giveaway is a good way.
You can leverage it. I love that. What a great gift for you guys. If you're not a VIP ticket holder yet, what the heck are you doing? Grab your VIP ticket because a lot of the gifts that the speakers are contributing or things they normally charge money for, you get for free by being a VIP ticket holder. Scoop that up, jump in and I would love to hear when we circle back in the Facebook group for a Q&A, happy hour, and all the fun stuff, let us know. Is a giveaway on your goal board this year? Are you jazzed about it? Are you excited about it?
Also, was there a question you were hoping that I was going to ask that I didn't ask and you want to ask, circle back, hang out with us there, and we'll make sure that you get all your questions answered. Especially if you're in a situation like Kristen's where you need ultra flexibility in your life and business, this might be the exact strategy that you've been missing. Thank you so much for your free gift, Kristen. This is the perfect thing to help people get started with what might be the biggest mind-blowing launch strategy that they've heard of thus far. Thank you.
Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
You guys, we will see you in the next training and we'll see you in the Facebook group. Bye for now.
Important Links
Kristen Robinson - Linkedin
About Kristen Robinson
Kristen Robinson is the Lead Generation Specialist of Explode Your Audience. She helps online coaches grow their email list so that they can fill their online courses and programs.
Kristen is also a military spouse. Her husband, Lamont, serves in the United States Marine Corps. When she is not working or attending a Family Day for her husband's unit, she is playing with her Black Lab/hound mix puppy, Taichou.
