If you’re trying to sell raffle tickets online, you don’t want to be stealthy. It’s all about being findable and accessible – then making it as easy as possible for your supporters to make a purchase.
Search engine optimization (or SEO) is a marketing practice that involves creating and sharing content that reflects how people search for products like yours on search engines (and in this case, we're talking about raffle tickets).
Hey, maybe you’re an avid search engine user yourself. (😎) Think about the last time you typed a word or ten into a search engine bar.
What did you type? What websites were top of your research results?
Did you find what you were looking for fast, or did you have to scroll?
(And most importantly, was it us you were looking for? We just want to feel wanted.)
Let’s say you’re a hospital foundation in rural Saskatchewan running a monthly 50/50 draw.
First, we’ll think of the most common, obvious ways people talk about your raffle program. We’re talking about terms like:
Then, we put them into Google Trends, a free tool that tells us how many people are searching for our key terms, and where they’re searching from.
Without getting too into the search engine weeds (but we can, and we will in future blog posts if you want us to), we find out:
This tells us the raffle’s name should contain “hospital lottery”, and so should content on our raffle page and website, as well as social media posts and anywhere else that promotes the raffle online.
Remember, this data is relevant to Saskatchewan, Canada, specifically. If you’re in a different region, people could be using different terms or phrases to find 50/50 draws and hospital lotteries.
For example, if you go west to British Columbia, there's a little more volume around “50/50 draw”, but most people are searching for “raffles”.
And when we travel east to Nova Scotia, users search for “raffle” more than “50/50 draw”, but barely ever search for “hospital lottery”.
Then right next to Nova Scotia in New Brunswick, no one’s searching for “raffle”, a few more folks are searching for “50/50 draw”, but mostly, they’re looking for “hospital lottery”.
Back to our hypothetical raffle in Saskatchewan, though. We know we said we’d avoid the weeds... But if we scroll a little further down the page, Google Trends tells us where people are searching for these terms most often.
With this information, we can make all kinds of marketing moves, like running targeted Meta ads in these areas or partnering with local businesses to post QR code signage that sells tickets. The sky’s the limit with this hypothetical raffle, folks.
Once you know how people search for raffles like yours in your region, you can start optimizing your content so it floats to the top (of search engine results).
Feed NB runs a weekly Goldrush draw, selling tickets online and at retailers across New Brunswick. With jackpots consistently reaching over $140,000 and well over 30,000 individual ticket buyers every week, Feed NB’s weekly draw gets people in the province talking – and according to Google Trends data, searching.
So, how do they make sure they’re easy to find?
There are a few areas of your raffle page you can optimize for search, including:
Everything else is set in stone once you’re licensed, like your winner information and raffle rules (but once you’re really rocking with SEO, you can write your raffle rules with popular keywords in mind before you apply for your lottery license. Expert level, unlocked.)
Just take those target keywords like 50/50 draw, hospital lottery, car lottery, raffle tickets – the ones people say the most when they’re talking about your raffle program – and work them into your title and description.
Perhaps you’ve noticed posts and pages from platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram are increasingly popping up as top results on search engines like Google.
And why not? If the information’s there and it’s accurate, social media is a totally acceptable, even efficient place for search engines to lead users.
Plus, if someone’s searching for your raffle and finds the link on social media, there’s a chance they’ll follow you and sift through your posts to learn about your organization.
Review these key areas of your social media profiles and make sure they’re optimized for search:
Finally, let’s make sure your website is ripe for raffle promotion – because once you have brand awareness (if you’re working on it, bookmark this for later), supporters will be looking for you on search engines.
And even if your raffle brand is still growing, users in your region are looking for things like “ways to win” and “raffle tickets”. If you’re optimizing your content, you have a shot at showing up first.
Review your website for opportunities to share your raffle and optimize for search. Some tactics we’ve seen work well are:
That’s a goal we’ll always support. The State of Raffling Report is full of insights to help you raise more with your raffle program, including data on ticket buyer behaviors, challenges raffle admins are facing, and opportunities to capture more ticket buyers.
Get your copy now to start growing your raffle results and making an even bigger impact.