Top ten ways to win an award
By Jacqueline Booker, Eleven Hundred Agency
Out of all the incredible tools out there, awards remain one of the most effective ways to signal to your clients, prospects and partners that your service or solution is best-in-class, and – most importantly of all – better than the competition. Aside from the prestige an award nomination or win brings, there is also a myriad of PR and marketing to highlight and showcase your achievement within the industry press, across social media and in outbound communication with your prospects and customers.
Without the requisite know-how, it’s not straightforward to win an award. There are, however, some golden rules when it comes to crafting an award-worthy entry. To help navigate this somewhat tricky process, we thought we would share our top nine tips on how to successfully enter, and ultimately win, an award:
Entering your solution or service for an award is a sound strategy to gain recognition amongst your target audience but this isn’t the only path to award success. Nominating a customer for its work with you is a great way to showcase your expertise and highlight the results that your organisation can achieve. Similarly, an award nomination that celebrates the achievements of your team and your colleagues holds significant value and can boost long-term employee engagement.
You don’t want to be seen as a jack of all trades and a master of none. In deciding which category/categories to enter, consider the following questions - what award will make the most difference to your organisation? What solution/service has made the most impact to your customers? You’re better off to enter one award well than several poorly.
Awards should be something that involve the whole organisation. Ask for input from the wider team, and encourage your account managers to share details of innovative customer implementations. This could open the door to future joint marketing activities with the customer, if they see value in these types of activity, or could even generate new sales leads from other prospects keen to enjoy similar levels of success.
Make sure you check the small print to ensure that your nomination falls within the required parameters. Some awards have limits on how new a solution or service is or how old a customer relationship is. All award entries will have a specified word limit – make sure you stick to this to stay on the right side of the judges.
Nominating yourself for an award is not a quick undertaking and can be a costly affair. Before you embark on the journey, make sure you understand the time commitment involved and how much it will all cost. Some awards require you to draft a written submission, to prepare and attend an in-person presentation (if shortlisted) and attend an awards ceremony. Make sure you have the time available to complete all these tasks and are available on the required dates. As to costs, awards ceremonies are rarely, if ever, free to attend so you need to factor in the cost of a ticket or a table to an awards ceremony if you are lucky enough to be named a finalist.
Award organisers usually share previous winning entries to help future nominees draft their own. Also look out for any webinars held by the organisers on how to craft a suitable award entry. This will help you to best shape your entry for success.
Signpost the judges to the most important points in your entry and use the supporting materials to include any additional detail. Think carefully about what makes your service and solution unique and make sure that you highlight each of these points clearly. Don’t get bogged down in technical jargon or acronyms. Your judges might not be experts in your particular field, so don’t write your entry as if they are. Focus on telling a clear and compelling story that outlines clearly why your product/solution/customer/team is award worthy.
In our experience, award entries that demonstrate clear business benefits – are the ones that are the most successful. By including figures on, for example, improved customer satisfaction ratings or time saved, you can effectively showcase the value that a solution or service has brought. Evidence of such results is critical to success in awards season.
You have to be in it to win it, but you’re not going to take home every prize. If you’re not successful first-time round, dust yourself off, apply the learnings from your last entry and try again. Gather more data on the success of your service or solution, encourage customers to provide quotes on how they have benefited from your service and solution and make sure you are constantly revising your offering to make sure it really is best in class.
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