How to Find Local Contest And Giveaways Near Me!

The Ultimate Guide to Sourcing Local Contests and Giveaways

Support Local Businesses

The first way you can find the best local giveaways and sweepstakes is by starting to support local businesses. In fact, most local businesses don’t want global recognition and viral fame as they start out. All they want is for the community to buy their service or product, and one way to do that is through competitions and giveaways. 

Unfortunately, many local businesses are not great at promoting these events to new customers. That is why it helps to follow their social media profiles and sign up for their email lists. 

Start by checking online using Google maps on Google Business. You can even make a note as you walk down the main street and through shopping malls. Look out for the local shops, restaurants, and services in your local area.

Try looking in local publications, such as newspapers and magazines. Make a list of all the local businesses that you find, and begin to follow them on social media. Visit their websites, and bookmark them for future reference. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) has started a SmallBusinessEveryday website which also hosted some recent giveaways.

You can use this list to check through for any sweepstake, either once a week or nightly. If you follow them on social media, you will also get related pages suggested to you, which you can also follow. Set up notifications whenever any of them post, so you will be informed of any offers right away.

Attend Events

Local events are filled with opportunities for giveaways and competitions. In fact, very often this is all they consist of. They can be about anything, from community fun days, to trade fairs and festivals. 

Very often, to promote the events, they will have freebies in the run-up to the day. This may be for free tickets if it is a paid event, or for goods related to the event theme. Keep in touch with their social media profiles, and the profiles of anyone who may be sponsoring the event. 

Another event that you can look out for, that often have giveaways, are new store openings. Malls and shopping center information boards will usually announce this, so don’t forget to keep an eye on them as well. 

Use Local Media

One great source of giveaways is on local radio, and very often these trivia and secret word games can be extremely fun. Most local radio stations will have a marketing team, and it is their job as representatives of the radio to go out and support local businesses and initiatives. Part of this is that they get hired by companies to advertise for them and hold competitions. 

While the big ones will be promoted to death on the radio, many of the smaller ones are not. This means you have a bigger chance of winning. It may involve you traveling around a little to places where the promotion and marketing team are on the given day, but if you will have a higher chance of winning many people do not know about the promotions. 

Local newspapers do a similar thing, except they confine their events to the pages of their publication. As many people do not even read the local papers, it increases your chance of winning. This extends to free magazines you find in malls, doctors surgeries, supermarkets, and other places. 

Search Social Media

Social media provides a few opportunities to scour out local contests and giveaways. The first, and easiest to check, is Facebook. It has an events tab that collects things you will have been invited to, and it is likely that some of them will be competitions. 

You can also use the search function at the top. Use the name of your town and local area followed by contest or giveaway. You can also adjust the date, so any current promotion appears in the search box.

Twitter and Instagram are both extremely useful for searching for local competitions, as they have hashtag functions. Even without these, Twitter provides a very good search function. All you need to do is type in win, “Canadian giveaway”, or giveaway followed by the name of your local area to see the results. 

Instagram is useful for its hashtag function, as even as you type in the hashtag you want, it will give other suggested ones. So if you started to type in “Canadian giveaways” it would give you a list of suggested hashtags ranked by usage. All you need to do is click on them and see what people have been posting and if it is an offer you can take part in. 

Google Them

Finally, the most obvious method is to simply Google the competitions in your local area. While the command “find contests near me” may not yield reliable results, you should use the Google search terms that are most applicable to your geographical region. Start by typing in keywords like win and contest, along with the name of your city or local area. At the top of the page, you can use the filters to set a date, so only recent entries will appear. 

You Need to Be in It to Win It

The golden rule with local contests is that you need to be in it to win it. So get entering competitions, and watch the prizes come rolling in. 

If you are looking for a great way to enter sweepstakes from the comfort of your own home, then come and visit ContestScoop. We collect the biggest and best competitions so you can win cars, trips, and other amazing prizes. Click here to view the best contests that update daily, so you can be in with a chance to win big.