4th of July Contests and Sweepstakes Ideas

Independence Day is an excellent opportunity for you to connect with your audience and share some patriotic pride. Here are our picks and tips to get you started on Independence Day campaign ideas.

Tips to Prepare for the Holiday

• Build Up Your Email List

4th of July email marketing is a great way to begin notifying your customers of upcoming deals, sales, and other promotions you’re planning for the upcoming holiday. With a quick sweepstakes in May or June, you can build up your database with fresh leads for summer’s biggest holiday. In addition, placing promotions throughout holidays earlier in the year will set you up for success during major shopping holidays in the last quarter.

• Prepare 4th of July Social Media Posts

Every good marketer has a content calendar as part of their social media strategy. Use the weeks leading up to July for laying out your social media content for the holiday. Be sure to curate or prepare 4th of July images or graphics, as visuals content plays a huge role during holidays.

• Create branded 4th of July Hashtags

Avoid generic hashtags relative to the holiday, such as #July4th. Get creative with your copy writing and create a hashtag that's unique between your business and audience. Having your own hashtag can help you avoid overlap with other posts on social media. This is effective for gathering insights on your audience, as well as other tactics that’ll we’ll discuss later on.

4th of July Promotion Ideas

• Host a 4th of July Travel Sweepstakes

Last year, an estimated 46.9 million Americans traveled 50 or more miles away on Independence Day. With travel plans on many minds, you can lead into the holiday by launching a pre-4th of July travel sweepstakes. Big prizes such as weekend getaways and other trips attract many new leads to build up your email list.

If you want to collect more insights on entrants, you can take your sweepstakes a step further by offering additional entries for sharing your promotion, connecting their social media accounts, or daily returns to your website and promotion. Our sweepstakes can be layered with Instant Win games, which can drive traffic back to you by creating repeat points of engagement.

Related: How to Choose a Sweepstakes Management Company

• Run a Photo Contest with a Gallery

User Generated Content (UGC) has been shown to create a more authentic brand experience for consumers. In addition, featuring UGC photo entries on your website has been shown to increase conversions. UGC contests are also great for curating content to share later on, or even next years 4th of July. Our UGC promotion templates have many galleries to choose from, with the back-end tools to moderate and manage content.

Related: 5 Practices to Getting UGC.

You can encourage users to upload photos of themselves using your products in fun, patriotic ways. For example, fashion brands can encourage audiences to upload their best red, white, and blue outfits to showcase their products. Food and crafts brands can ask users to upload their creations they made for parties and cookouts.

• Holiday Hashtag Contests

As mentioned earlier, having a branded hashtag is an excellent strategy for social media. Hashtags can also be used to host a sweepstakes or contest to speed up the barrier to entry. For example, participants can be asked to share their favorite 4th of July activities, and then submit them via hashtag.

Our Visit Florida campaign took a similar approach, with participants using the #SunshineMomentsContest on Twitter and Instagram, automatically submitting it to the voting hub. From there, other users could vote on submissions until a winner was chosen for an incredible vacation!