In this chapter, I want to talk a little about the timing of your competition.  Making sure you release it at the right point in the year so it’s effective, generates the best spread of bookings and creates the right level of traction and buzz. As we’ve said before, we run one competition in July and one in December. This effectively splits the year in half for us, helping us bring in newborns at the right times, and also aligning with when expectant parents are thinking about making plans.

Winter launch

For the winter competition, we always launch on 26th December—Boxing Day. This is when everyone is sitting around, on their phones, not doing much. It’s the ideal time to catch attention.

This winter competition covers due dates from January through to July. You’re essentially capturing a six-month window. Entrants may be due next week or may be due in July, but the spread works perfectly.

Summer launch

There is a small difference between how the summer and winter competitions perform. We launch the summer one at the end of July. Rose launches hers then; I launch mine slightly earlier, around my daughter’s birthday on 13th July, simply because it gives me a natural trigger point.

We’ve noticed consistently—over five or six years, and even longer for Rose—that the summer competition tends to have:

• Slightly lower engagement
• A drop in average spend of around £50
• A slightly higher dropout rate

No idea why, but it’s repeated year after year. Despite that, the summer competition is still absolutely worth doing. It fills the July onwards due dates and gives you another six-month rolling cycle.

Campaign structure

We run the competition as a two-week campaign:

• Launch hard on day one. Big push, everywhere.
• Midway reminder.
• Regular daily stories and posts
• An email to your mailing list at the start
• A second reminder email one week in

Toward the end, we use countdown urgency:

• Countdown stickers and timers on Instagram stories
• Facebook reminders
• MailerLite countdown timers in emails

This helps drive sign-ups in the final days.

When you announce the winner, announce it everywhere. This visibility prompts shares and tags, and you usually gain a wave of new followers, many of whom become ideal candidates for your next competition.

Annual relaunch

The beauty of this system is that you can reuse everything. There’s a checklist in the resources for this chapter with the things you must update each year:

• Dates
• Images
• Form links
• Any CRM or Light Blue automations

Next, we’re going to talk about converting competition entries into bookings, and also how to manage and send out all of your ads, emails and supporting materials.