A brand built on an audience
Leah Ray’s Instagram, @leahrayofficial, carries a verified 365,000 followers. The brand’s own account, @betheray_competitions, has a verified 133,000. That audience is where entrants come from. One winner’s review on the site says they “came across this site via her Instagram”.
Winners are announced on the Be The Ray Instagram, and one winner met Leah in person to collect their prize. For a creator-led brand, the website has one job: turn a follower’s interest into an entry in as few steps as possible, on a site that looks like it belongs to the person they follow.
A fresh start after another agency
Be The Ray moved to Nera Marketing from another agency because the team was not happy with the first site. It had never launched. The brief was simple: “a complete new look. Clean, fresh, smart.”
We started again from scratch. The new design is light and bright, with the sun mark and warm orange carried through every page. We wrote all of the copy: the homepage, the mission, the competition listings, how it works and the free entry route. The site launched publicly on 25 May 2026 with four £500 cash competitions, each tied to a charity.
“Thanks again the site looks unbelievable.”
Zach Nicholson, Be The Ray Competitions, May 2026
A charity in every draw
80% of each draw’s profit goes to a small independent UK charity, and 20% covers running costs. Each competition supports a different cause.
The charity for each draw is announced on Instagram after the draw. That keeps the brand clear of advertising a charity it has no formal partnership with, a point raised during the business’s banking checks. The prizes do the selling: a 1985 Land Rover Series III, a PlayStation 5 with GTA VI, cash prizes from 20p a ticket, and £5,000 dream car and holiday draws.
Payments moved to Cashflows
Be The Ray first took payments through the provider set up for the original site. After checkout problems with that provider, we introduced the team to Cashflows, the specialist acquirer we recommend first for competition operators. Cashflows underwrote the business and we connected it to the site, so every card payment now runs through a provider built for competition operators.
We cover how specialist acquirers assess a competition site in payment gateways and banks for competition websites.
Approved to advertise on Meta
Be The Ray runs prize competitions under the Gambling Act 2005, with a free postal entry route on every draw. Some tickets sell for less than a second-class stamp, so each postal entry receives enough entries to match the stamp’s value. The terms set out how many entries a postcard earns.
The structure is backed by a legal opinion letter written by a solicitor registered with the Solicitors Regulation Authority. We submitted it to Meta, and Be The Ray Competitions Ltd is authorised for Games of skill advertising in the United Kingdom. The full process is in how to get RMG approval.
Ads that got cheaper as they scaled
We rebuilt the ad account into one campaign with broad targeting across the UK. Against the month before, cost per order fell 83% to £3.21. The share of visitors who went on to buy rose almost fourfold, and the cost of reaching people fell by almost half. These are Meta’s reported figures.
The cheapest orders came from product-led static ads: a 1985 Land Rover photographed on its own, and a spec card for the same car. Leah’s audience brings people to the brand organically. Paid ads scale best when the prize is the hero. Our approach is set out in Meta ads for UK competition websites.
Run week to week by Nera
We write and upload every competition and every winner post. When the team wanted more on offer, we moved them from one competition a week to ten live at once, so there is always a full board on the site.
Built to be owned
The site runs on WordPress and WooCommerce, and Be The Ray owns it outright. The files, the database, the domain and the customer list are theirs. We set out what that ownership means in WordPress versus SaaS competition platforms.
What other operators can take from this
For a creator-led brand, the site carries your name and your face. Be The Ray chose to start again with a new agency rather than launch a site the team was not happy with, and that is the right call. Your followers judge the brand by the first page they land on.
Let the audience and the ads do different jobs. Followers arrive through the creator. Paid ads find new entrants fastest with a clear photo of the prize.
Get approved before you spend. A legal opinion letter and a Meta authorisation in place before the first ad means the account can scale without restrictions.
