Hey there,
My two cents is to focus ALL your contest efforts on building up your mailing list - especially if you're using paid traffic. The other softer conversions can be made once you've already got them all on your list.
I haven't personally found too many strategies for driving a large amount of subscribers in a short period of time, that hasn't involved some budget whether with influencers or ads.
The thing with influencers (when just starting out) is you can't really afford the best ones, so you hire a bunch of smaller influences (which can be great) but is also a bit of a crap shoot.
In this post you'll find 25 ways to promote your online store - many of them can be repurposed to promote your contest. There's also an insight into how the latest campaign I ran got new subscribers for as low as 0.60c. We built a pre-launch list of 781+ in ten days, and I'd say at least 80% of that was through paid methods.
The issue is you need a lot of subscribers quickly, and then you need a system in place to convert those people who signed up for a free giveaway into paying customers (which again, is where it gets tricky).
This guys gives some of the best advice I've seen on how to work with Instagram influencer accounts, and is definitely worth checking out.
Good luck with it, and keep up updated on how it goes.
Actionable, affordable, marketing strategies that work. Stacey Herbert www.brazenprofitlab.com
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