Let's talk about something that trips up so many hosts – marketing promotions. You know the sort: giveaways, discounts, special offers. They can be brilliant for filling gaps and growing your audience, but get them wrong, and you'll land yourself in what I call "marketing jail."

No, there won't be sirens or handcuffs, but you might end up with angry guests, awkward refund requests, or even your social accounts shut down. And if you're really unlucky, you could find yourself in proper legal hot water.

In this episode, I'm walking you through the three big promotional pitfalls I see short-term rental and glamping owners fall into all the time.

We'll cover the UK rules around giveaways and prize draws (yes, there are actual regulations!), what Meta allows on Instagram and Facebook (spoiler: they have very different rules despite being the same company), and how to handle those dreaded messages from existing guests who want your new offer applied to their existing booking.

I'll share why promotions are one of the most complained-about marketing activities in the UK, and how to protect yourself with proper terms and conditions. Because honestly, you don't want to accidentally turn your free prize draw into a lottery, or be forced to give away a peak summer weekend because you weren't specific enough about your prize.

If you're thinking about running any kind of promotion, this episode will help you do it properly without the headaches.

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Key Takeaways:

1. Prize draws must be free to enter – never require a purchase or booking to participate
2. Always have clear terms and conditions that specify who can enter, what the prize is, when it's valid, and any exclusions
3. Instagram and Facebook have different rules for promotions, even though they're owned by Meta
4. Be strategic about why you're running a promotion – don't just do it for vanity metrics like follower counts

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More resources:

Check out my Promotions & Offers training - available in THE FULLY BOOKED BUSINESS CLUB™.

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I've saved £100k in commission in 5 years by taking 100% direct bookings and now I show Airbnb hosts, holiday cottage and glampsite owners how to do the same.

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You're listening to Get Fully Booked with Sarah Orchard.

Are you ready to master your marketing so you can ditch your reliance on the online agents and grow your direct bookings?

I'll be sharing with you exactly what it takes to grow your direct bookings and the simple marketing steps to get more profit in your pocket.

Hey there and welcome back to another episode of the Get Fully Booked podcast.

I'm your host, Sarah Orchard.

If you're enjoying the podcast so far, don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss any fresh episodes when they drop.

Today's episode is inspired by a question that I get all the time in my DMs on my weekly marketing help desk with my club members, even during free webinars.

And it usually starts with something like, sarah, am I allowed to do this?

And the answer that I give is often, well, yes, but only if you do it correctly.

Because today I'm going to be talking about marketing, promotions, giveaways, offers, discounts, and how very easy it is to accidentally land yourself in what I like to call marketing jail.

Now, there's not going to be any sirens or handcuffs, but you may end up with some angry guests, awkward refund requests, or being banished on social platforms.

And if you're very unlucky, sometimes you could find yourself in very hot legal water as well.

So I thought it'd be good to just touch on some basics and to walk you through three of the big promotional pitfalls that I see short term rental owners and glamping businesses fall into all of the time, and how you can stay squeaky clean while still running brilliant and effective promotions.

Now, before we get stuck in, what I would say is that I don't necessarily always recommend doing like discounts and offers, but sometimes, you know, running those types of promotions are called for and there are lots of creative ideas that you can use which aren't just about giving headline percentage discounts on your stays.

So what we're going to look at today is we're going to be covering giveaways and prize draws because in the UK there are some rules that you really need to understand because otherwise you can get yourself into a bit of a legal pickle.

We're going to touch on social media platform rules because Meta, who obviously runs Instagram and Facebook, they have an opinion on promotions as well, and they have some quite strict rules which you need to be aware of and a lot of people are not aware of them.

And the big one is getting caught out when you run an offer or promotion and then Guests that have already booked ask you about giving them the offer too, and how you should handle that.

And I know that comes up quite a lot, so stick around because I'm going to be sharing some quite interesting facts about why this is so important and how common it can be a problem in your marketing.

So let's get started and I hope that I can keep you out of trouble.

So firstly, let's start, as I promised, with giveaways, because giveaways or prize draws, honestly, I do love them.

They can be brilliant for reach and engagement and list growth if they're done right now, what I would say is, if you're using them on social media, be cautious because you get a lot of people who sort of engage with your content but then aren't very engaged afterwards.

They can actually damage your account going forward.

But they can be a very good way of getting visibility and particularly if you also maybe do it with a partner.

Sometimes you might want to hook up with a brand, a local brand or a national or global brand that your business sits very, is well aligned with from a brand perspective.

And that can be very useful for getting you in front of fresh eyes and drawing attention, getting that visibility piece for your business.

But there are some rules around giveaways and prize draws, particularly in the uk.

Now I'm going to talk from the UK perspective because that's where I, I'm based.

I'm also a chartered marketer and obviously I understand all of the UK promotional laws.

That's part of my job.

I need to make sure that when I'm advising my club members or clients that I give them correct information that is legally correct, because there are, and I'll come on to touch on it, there are some bodies that control these types of promotions.

You might not think that there are any, but there actually are and you need to be aware of them.

So let's talk about giveaways and the basics of those.

Now, giveaways generally fall into two types.

So you have prize drawers and they're normally called a free prize draw because the winner is picked at random, no purchase necessary, and it's based on chance.

And then you have competitions where the winner is chosen based on skill.

So many hospitality businesses run prize draws, free prize draws, with things like win a two night stay, so that kind of thing, you will have seen a lot of them.

But with a prize draw giveaway, you cannot require the participant to pay to enter.

Now you might be thinking, well, I'm not selling a ticket to them, but even if you ask them that they have to buy something.

So for example, if they had to book a stay to then be entered into a prize draw to win something, that means that they're having to pay money and that's a big no no.

So if they have to buy something, book something or pay to enter, that requires payment, that is a big no no.

Because in UK promotional law that becomes what we call a lottery, which is a whole different legal situation.

I'm not going to go into the ins and outs, but lotteries are very highly regulated in the uk so it's something to be avoided and you need to be aware of it.

So if you said in your marketing promotion, book a stay to be entered into the prize draw to win X, that's a big no no.

But if you said enter by doing certain activities on social or clicking on a link and going to your webpage or sign, even signing up to your email list is fine as a competition like a prize draw mechanic, but definitely not having to book a stay or buy something else to be entered into it, because that then does get into the lottery situation.

So like I said, you can require a non monetary action, signing up to email list, following your account, commenting or liking on a post and they're the ones that we typically sort of see people using.

Now I mentioned about the rules.

So if you want to get into the ins and outs of it, the nuts and bolts the rules in the UK around these types of promotional marketing is actually governed by.

It's a self regulatory code, but it's called the cap code which stands for the UK code of non broadcast advertising and direct and promotional marketing, which is a bit of a mouthful, but it does have principles that around the code, the cap code, that promotions should be truthful, decent, honest and socially responsible marketing and they actually are enforced by the Advertising Standards Authority which does cover all of the broadcast advertising that we might see on, you know, TV channels and maybe digital online.

So it has got a regulatory body behind it and it's probably highly unlikely that you would get picked up on it.

But if you, particularly if you cross the line into that lottery territory and someone complains, you could get into trouble with the asa and they do fine companies for breaking the rules and they don't seem to take much notice of your size.

You know, the rules are the rules and you do need to be aware of them, which is where someone like myself, who, you know, obviously as a chartered marketer and with all my experience is something that I make sure I keep up to date with and I can advise my clients and club members accurately in terms of what they need to do.

Now, one of the things you must have is some prize draw and the same with competitions, terms and conditions.

So if you're running any type of promotion, you need some terms and conditions.

Now they don't have to be really onerous.

You don't even really need to get a lawyer to put these together for you.

You can probably look at what other people have used in theirs, particularly on social can be quite useful or on a website.

But the key things are you need to state who can enter.

So if they need to be over 18 years old or based in the UK, you need to state that you need to state your opening and closing dates.

So when will the competition close and what time, what exactly is the prize that they'll be winning?

And you need to be very specific.

So if it is a two night midweek stay and weekends are excluded and maybe peak dates and school holidays are excluded, you definitely need to state that in your terms and conditions.

You can't spring that on the winner when they've won and say, oh yeah, but you've won a two nights day, but you can only take it X, Y and Z.

You need to tell them that in the terms and conditions before they enter.

You also need to say how and when the winner will be picked and contacted.

And you probably noticed that a lot of people now on, particularly on social put that they'll never ask you for like bank details or you know, that they'll contact the winner on a DM or they'll email you.

Normally it's on a dm but we won't ask you to do X, Y and Z because the there are people who then pretend to be those businesses running the competitions and then obviously try and get money or card details, payment card details out of the winner.

So we need to be very clear about what the terms and conditions are because we're also protecting the people that are participating and the winner that they're not going to get defrauded by somebody.

Now T's and C's obviously can be a little bit lengthy, so you might not want to put them in your social post or on an email.

But I would suggest if you were doing it on an email campaign, you probably would want to be quite upfront about what the T's and C's are.

But you could put link in bio and then put a page on your website that's hidden, that's not in the main menu, the main navigation and you can then Take people and then just keep that page for when you're running any promotions or competitions so that you've got some general terms and conditions.

And I think, you know, using your website is probably the easiest way to do it because then you don't need to clutter up your social post with the terms and conditions of the promotion.

As I said, you need to be very clear about the prize.

And this is often where I see people get bitten because they, they don't state what the prize is, they just say like winner stay.

And then you know, it transpires that it's not valid in the summer weekends, subject to availability, you know, midweek only.

You really do need to say that upfront because if you don't, you are legally obliged to honor what a reasonable person.

This is the thing with law, it would be what a reasonable person would assume they've won and someone could then argue that they thought they'd won a two night stay of their choice throughout the year, maybe even valid for two years.

So you know, you need to, if it's within a set time frame or even sometimes I've seen people promote a specific date that is the prize and maybe that's because they've got a date available and they think actually I'll use that for a promotion, that's fine, but, but you do need to state it up front.

So you don't want to be one of the hosts that gets forced to give away a peak summer weekend stay because, or a week long stay because you didn't specify what your, your prize was.

So an interesting fact for you because this, this really does matter and it just shows why it matters that.

Did you know that promotions are one of the most complained about marketing activities to the UK regulators?

So I mentioned about the ASA and obviously we have like GDPR as well.

So the Information Commissioner's office, you know, marketing promotions are one of the most, I'll say that again, one of the most complained marketing activities.

So you know, it's not ads, it's not pricing, it's promotions.

And why is that?

Well, I suppose people feel they've emotionally invested, you know, they've entered something in good faith and they feel like they've won something and then they get told that actually no, you didn't win what you thought you, you'd won or the person doesn't pick the winner or they don't honour, you know what they said they were going to give the winner and people will then though it's free and they entered a competition or a Promotion, a prize draw to win it, a giveaway, they won't just shrug it off, they will complain and take it further.

And I think because we're in hospitality, the, the stakes are, you know, even higher because the prize is an experience.

It's not just a product that we're posting to somebody.

They're potentially will feel aggrieved if they don't get the experience that they thought they had won.

I never win anything when I enter competitions.

So, you know, there's some people out there that are obviously doing quite well, but it's not me.

Next I want to talk about.

It sort of brings me nicely on to my point about social media.

So obviously there's, there's some rules that exist and if you're in another country, there will be rules in your country of residency in terms of where you run your promotions.

If you're in the US or you're in another European country, there will be rules and you need to check those out and fully understand them.

But, but there are also rules on the social media platforms as well.

So if I just talk about our little friends at Instagram and Facebook first, I'm not going to go into detail for all of them because we will be here for a very long time.

And I actually have covered this off, off in an in depth training in my membership on promotional rules.

But Instagram and Facebook in in particular, they do have their own rules about what you can do if you break the rules.

They can remove your post, they could even close your account down if you choose to ignore their warnings.

And saying that you're not aware of the rules is not going to be a good defense.

So you do need to be aware of it.

And frustratingly, although both Instagram and Facebook are owned by the lovely Meta, they do have different rules.

So for example, you can ask entrants to tag a friend on Instagram as a mechanism for entering a giveaway, but not on Facebook.

So you know, it may change over time because rules do change all the time and they do have a page with all of their promotional guidelines set out.

But you, you definitely are allowed to do certain things on each platform and most importantly, when you do run a promotion, they do not want to be associated with your promotion in any way.

And it's really good practice to put a disclaimer on the bottom of your promotion and maybe put this in your terms and conditions that we talked about earlier, that this and what you want it to say is this promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by or associated with and then insert the platform, whether That's Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, whoever you want to make sure that you're not could be seen to be running a promotion that could get linked back to the, to the platform owners themselves because they will not be happy about that.

Now if you want an in depth training on promotions and giveaways with lots of ideas about types of promotions that you can run and also a bit more on the the ins and outs of the different platforms and the legal stuff, do take look at joining my marketing club, which is the fully booked business club where I literally walk you through this step by step in a lot more detail.

I'll pop a link in the show notes so you can take a look at that.

But if that's something that you feel like you'd really get like to get to grips with, that's the sort of thing that I do in my monthly trainings within the club and to equip you really with all of these things so that you don't get thrown into marketing jail and you don't have to go and work it all out for yourself.

I even give template copies for terms and conditions of a promotion etc so you can literally just lift it and use it in your own marketing which saves you lots of time and hassle and trying to put that together and worry about getting it right.

Another thing I'd like to say is, is sort of thinking about why you're doing the promotion in the first place.

You've got to be quite strategic about the promotion and making sure that it's aligned to your, your goals and your business needs.

It's like what does the business need?

I think people often just do, oh, I'll do a giveaway because I' get more followers on X whatever social media platform, whether it's Instagram or you know, if I run a giveaway I'll.

I'll immediately get more followers and yes you probably will, but you'll probably get a load of hosts that might follow you.

You'll get a load of freebie hunters who are potentially not your ideal guests.

You'll also get people who live potentially in another country and will never ever book with you and you can end up with people who are spend their whole time looking for competitions or freebies and giveaways on, on social platforms and they enter like hundreds of times.

So you just end up with a.

You know, and they could even do that with an Email entry.

So, you know, you end up with lots of spammy stuff that on your email list and people who are not genuinely not interested in your business, which is, which is never a good thing.

So that actually hasn't helped your business in any way.

So I think you can use your entry criteria for your promotion and for maybe for your giveaway to actually filter people and make sure that you've got the right people actually entering who could be your potential guests.

So maybe get them to tag a person that they would bring.

So obviously that would hopefully put you in front of people who are similar, who match the profile of the persons that maybe are already following you and are your ideal guest.

You might want to pitch it who it's perfect for.

Like couples needing a break.

Make sure it's UK residents only and like over 18s or over 21, depending on your age profile.

You just got to be smart that you don't end up running something that potentially could get you into hot water, but also just doesn't align with what you're trying to achieve as a business and actually just you're giving something away and it's, it's actually probably a bit detrimental to the business rather than a positive.

And my last point is I mentioned about those dreaded thing when you get contacted by an existing guest who sees an offer and then wants to apply it to their booking.

So this issue causes instant panic, you know, so maybe you've done a lovely promotion, an offer, you've done 10% off midweek stays in January because obviously it's a slow time of the year.

Or a free bottle of Fizz for every spring booking, stay three nights, pay for two and you send out your promotion, however you've done it on email or social and then you've, you get this email back saying, hi, we've already booked for those dates.

Can we have this offer please too?

And this is where the marketing jail really looms because you're, you know, you're not obliged to retrospectively apply offers because actually, you know, I've had this came up quite recently on one of my help desks.

A member was sort of saying, you know, I've been approached by a guest who sort of saw my offer.

Oh, actually, no, she hadn't sent the campaign and she was like, I'm really just really nervous about sending this campaign because, you know, I'm worried that my existing bookings, they'll all turn around and say that they want it.

And I said, that's fine, you just need to make sure that Your terms and conditions are really clear.

So any offer or promotion that you do, particularly obviously of the offer type, rather than maybe the giveaway type, is that you should always state it's valid on either new bookings only or is not applicable to existing bookings or reservations.

If you haven't done that, then you are on a very sticky wicket.

And marketing jail does loom.

Probably not.

You're not going to get thrown in jail, but you will probably have to honour giving that offer to all of your people who put their hands up and say that they want it, because legally they're the sorts of people who will then go and complain because, you know, you've not said that that was part of your terms and conditions.

So they legitimately are like, well, can I have that offer too?

So you just need to be really, really careful.

Now, you can obviously respond in a professional way.

And if your terms have been clear and they've stated that it can't be applied to existing reservations or bookings, you can just warmly and calmly go back to them and say something like, this offer is available on new bookings, only made during the promotional period, but we'd love to look after you on your next day or something similar.

You know, it's, you know, at the end of the day, you're a business and I think sometimes we forget that and we want to be kind to people who've booked with us.

You know, you're not being unfair, you are running a business.

So, you know, I, I gave the analogy on my help desk when I was being asked about this, that if I was a big high street retailer, and it's no different when they run sales.

You know, I go in earlier in the year, I buy a product, I maybe haven't even worn the item of clothing yet, maybe still has the price tag on it.

I'm terrible for doing that.

I buy something and it sits in my wardrobe and I do tend to leave the tag on it until I finally get around to, to wearing it.

But if I then see that it's gone in the sale now I have a choice.

I could go back to the retailer, but probably only if it was in 30 days and say, I bought this at full price, I'd like to return it.

And then you can go and grab a sale one and get the sale price.

But can you actually be bothered to do that?

But most retailers would be like, no, sorry, when you came in, you had the full choice of all of the items that were available in all of the colors and all of the Sizes and you got to choose what you had.

Now it's just what's left.

And that's the same when we're like selling off what I call distressed inventory.

When we're selling off the dates that we've got left, we're not selling our full calendar.

So actually our customers, our consumers are exactly the same.

The ones that book early, they get the full choice and they've obviously they can't then retrospectively go back and say I want that offer because you're just selling off and discounting what's left.

And obviously the dates were not the dates that potentially that are now available, not the ones that your guests have booked.

So I think it's not unreasonable to say no.

But you may decide over things like goodwill and particularly if you've got guests that have maybe booked with you like multiple times and they have a really long and positive sort of lifetime value to your business that you're going to give it to them.

But you know, if you do it for one, potentially it opens the floodgates to more guests requesting it.

So I think you just need to be consistent.

But you might decide under the radar to give back to a guest who is a very valuable one to your, to your business.

But just if you get your T's and C's correct at the beginning, hopefully you sort of avoid those uncomfortable emails and moments.

So let's just do a quick sort of wrap up what we've covered today.

So let's recap on how I'm going to keep you out of marketing jail.

If you're doing a giveaway, you need very clear rules, clear terms and conditions and you need to make sure that there's no payment to enter.

So it's often referred to as a free price draw.

And you need to be crystal clear on the prize that's on offer.

And you can't really hide that in T's and C's.

You probably need to make that very clear up front on the, wherever you're promoting it, whether that's on socials, etc.

If you're using a social media platform to promote your giveaway, they have their own rules and they really do matter because they can shut your account down if you breach their rules and they're unhappy with you.

So please be aware of those and educate yourself on what the rules are on each of the platforms.

And like I said, I have got a training that takes you through that if you're interested in finding out more about it.

And promotions finally should protect you, particularly around your existing bookings.

So you don't want to be doing something promotionally that then ends up discounting all of the bookings that are already in your calendar for the year.

So marketing promotions should build trust.

They're not designed, you know, they're actually designed to meet your commercial objectives, but they shouldn't create headaches for you.

But when they're done right, and they are one of the most powerful tools you have to fill those booking gaps, you know, to grow your audience and get more people on your email list and to increase your direct booking.

I hope you've enjoyed this episode.

Make sure that you've subscribed, basically so you don't miss any future episodes.

And if you know any other hosts who maybe have fallen into a little bit of hot water over these sorts of things, do point them in the direction of this episode.

And all I'd like to say is thank you for listening and if you enjoyed this episode.

You know what I'd love you to do?

I'd love it if you could leave a review because you know how much us hosts love those five star reviews.

Next week I'm back with a solo episode to finally banish the fixation that we all have with calling, email marketing, spam.

I think you're going to love this episode.

Bye for now and I'll see you soon.

Thank you for listening to Get Fully Booked with Sarah Orchard.

If you want to see if you are ready to ditch the likes of Airbnb and grow your direct bookings, put your business to the test with my free Direct Booking Roadmap quiz.

Head to my website get fully booked.com quiz and let's get you more direct bookings and more profit in your pocket.