The first thing you need to do is pick the item you will be giving away.

It needs to fit these three criteria:

Criteria #1. Highly Desirable: Your prize needs to be something that your target audience covets.

For example, if you run a food blog whose primary focus is organic cooking, you could offer a $2,000 gift card to Whole Foods.

OR

If you are a self-help coach, you could offer free tickets to Tony Robbins’s next event (a $750 value).

Criteria #2. Shocking: To maximize your giveaway’s reach, it needs to have shock value.

In other words, when your target audience hears the headline of your giveaway, it needs to make them stop and turn their heads.

Which of these giveaway headlines is more shocking to you?

“Win a $2,000 Gift Card to Whole Foods”

OR

“Win an Entire Year of Groceries from Whole Foods (a $2,000 value)”

In my contest I used this hook: “Win a One-Decade Subscription to LeadPages.”

I could have gone with a lifetime membership, but what I found was that many other giveaways in my industry use the lifetime angle. I wanted to be different.

By using the “decade” angle, the hook was unique and thus played a big part in my contest getting as much traction as it did.

Criteria #3. Authority Leaching: Pick a prize owned by a company that will be likely to help you promote the giveaway.

The entire purpose of the giveaway is to reach new people. Leaching off of the audience of the prize owner is an easy way to do that.

...

Those are the three baseline criteria for picking your prize.

Now let’s workshop through the 4-step formula for finding and selecting your prize.

Resource: Giveaway Selection Spreadsheet