How to Run the Perfect Promotional Drawing

You might remember how we recently posted a special report about giveaways to help boost your book sales. In that article, we gave the basic steps but also promised to tell you more details about the specifics of a promotional contest. We then followed that up with a special report about properly running promotional contests. In this special report, we are going to talk about how to properly run a promotional drawing.

It’s possible to run a good one without a deep dive into all of the best practices, but you’ll get better results if you spend some time on what makes a drawing different from a contest, how to leverage those differences, and what specific mistakes to avoid. 

Here’s how to do all of those things. But first…

What is a Promotional Drawing?

In a promotional drawing, participants enter their names into a pool during a time period you set. At the end of that time period, you draw a winner at random. It works just like those fundraising raffles at every awards banquet you ever attended, or like the lottery. They break down into three different categories, based on the prizes and chances of winning:

• A grand prize drawing, where there is only one prize to win and one winner gets it. 
• A multiple prize drawing, with only one prize but multiple iterations of that prize. You’ll draw a number of winners equal to the number of iterations. 
• A graduated drawing, with several prizes of different values. You’ll draw a winner for each. In some cases, all winners will be drawn from the same pool. In others, entrants can choose which pool to put their name in. 

Promotional drawings differ from promotional contests in that the participants can’t impact their chances of winning. It’s all up to chance.

The Hybrid Model. You can split the difference between promotional drawings and promotional contests by giving prizes in a random drawing, but allowing participants multiple entries based on their behavior. 

Promotional Drawing Dos and Don’ts

Image by Nina Garman.