Winning or being shortlisted for an award is a fantastic way to gain recognition within your industry and among potential customers. An award is a third-party endorsement of the fantastic work you do, and provides added credibility and authority for your business and its products or services.
You can share your award win with relevant media titles and across your social media platforms – as well as using the awards’ logo on your website to fully leverage the impact of your success.
Which award to enter?
There are so many different awards out there, it can be difficult to know which ones to enter. It’s an important decision because some of the less well-known awards may not bring you any extra publicity or prestige even if you win them.
The first thing to do is to ensure you’ve done some research – how long have the awards been going, do they attract a lot of attention on social media, and how have past winners benefitted from taking part?
Secondly, make sure their purpose aligns with your values and messaging. For example, if you’re proud of your company’s heritage then an award that celebrates family businesses might be a good option. If the majority of your customers are local to you, then a regional award could be the way forward. Or if you’re a particularly innovative company, then do look for awards which celebrate new and creative products and services.
Writing a winning entry
Most awards websites will have a list of criteria that the judges are looking for, making it easy for you to include everything you need to within your entry. Some will ask for a statement which incorporates all of the criteria, while others will break the entry down into a series of questions.
Here are our top tips for crafting your entry:
Don’t be modest – while making grandiose claims about being the best in the world isn’t advisable (unless you can back it up with tangible proof!), neither is underplaying yourself. It can be uncomfortable to ‘boast’, but if you truly want that award to be yours, then you need to do yourself and your business justice when submitting the entry form
- Get to the point – equally, just because you have a certain number of words doesn’t mean you should unnecessarily use all of them. If you’ve made the points you need to, with words left over, then don’t pad out the entry just to reach the limit.
- Stick to the criteria – going off on a tangent, showcasing an element of your business that the judges haven’t asked to hear about, or missing out some of the key criteria are all likely to negatively affect the impact your entry has. Make sure you tick off all the criteria as you go, and don’t be tempted to talk about other non-related elements of your business.
- Prove your point – it’s all well and good saying your business has grown, or your new product has been more successful than its competitors. But if you can back this up with proof, then your entry is more likely to catch the judges’ attention. State exactly how many products you’ve sold compared to your competition. Use your revenue figures to showcase growth. And don’t forget to include testimonials from customers where appropriate!
- Don’t be modest – while making grandiose claims about being the best in the world isn’t advisable (unless you can back it up with tangible proof!), neither is underplaying yourself. It can be uncomfortable to ‘boast’, but if you truly want that award to be yours, then you need to do yourself and your business justice when submitting the entry form.
Leave it to the professionals
As a business leader, you’re likely to be incredibly busy undertaking all the tasks needed to keep your company going – so it might be that writing an awards entry keeps dropping down your to do list as more pressing tasks present themselves. Equally, creating content may not be a particular strength of yours, and you may feel worried about being able to strongly present your case in writing.
That’s exactly why we offer award entries as part of the wide range of content we craft for clients – taking the pressure off them and ensuring their entry has the very best chance of success.
We’d love to hear from you if you’d like some support entering awards… Contact us today on 0121 594 0712 or email hello@makemorenoise.co.uk.
