Entering business awards can skyrocket your sales, boost brand awareness and leave your competitors eating your dust. It begs the question; why aren’t more businesses taking advantage of this incredible opportunity?
Too often I hear people saying that they will never enter themselves into an award but will wait to be nominated. For years I didn’t want to nominate myself or our company either, it didn’t feel right. Ideally, I would like to be recognised by someone else and nominated accordingly. I felt I wouldn’t be authentic if I self-nominated. That was until I learned a valuable lesson from our conference speaker, Jo Fairley, co-founder of Green & Blacks who said,
“A key activity to raise our profile was entering awards. Sometimes it can feel like a full-time job but I honestly believe, when you have a great product or service, it is worth every moment of someone’s time to devote to this.”
She also said, “Whenever you win an award, in fact, whenever you are shortlisted for an award, you get a fantastic opportunity for free PR.”
I’ve since changed my mind and set about entering every suitable award available.
Award nominations offer incredible marketing and PR value. It’s not only about winning, you can start using a nomination right away. Start shouting about it on social media and send out a press release. It is a big deal, well you can certainly make it a big deal and do wonders for your brand awareness.
Nominations also raise your profile and reputation in the business community. Who wouldn’t prefer to do business with a brand nominated for an award over one who does not? Share your nomination multiple times in many different ways. Be creative, come up with ways to find an excuse to share this. Perhaps take photos with your team and tell people why you are awesome and should definitely win the award or do something special or charitable. The opportunities are endless, you just have to think outside of the box and get others involved too.
Most importantly have fun with it – if you are having fun your followers will also enjoy following you and you will attract new followers too. If you send out press releases make it interesting or fun, the press will enjoy it and always open your emails whilst deleting your competitor’s boring emails. My top PR tip – include video and can’t include video always use high-quality images… these will get journalists interested. Record a short little video clip explaining your excitement about your nomination and how people can support you.
The bottom line is that awards are GOLD for business but few businesses are using them.
Are you lost in a sea of competitors vying for the attention of your ideal clients? Have you run out of ideas to get noticed and attract new business? Are you jumping up and down saying pick me, pick me but no one is noticing? It’s easy to stand out from all the noise, enter awards or even better, nominate your ideal clients for awards, that will really get their attention.
Shout about it at every stage. Once you have exhausted piggybacking on your nomination, hopefully, you will get to start the whole process again when you get to the next stage. If it’s an award that requires voting, why not celebrate a few milestones, like, “Look, we have 100 votes already!” or “We are so excited to be breaking through into double digits already after announcing our nomination only 4 hours ago!” Again, use your imagination and use every opportunity.
Your next step is to carefully choose the award and category to best suit your business and its achievements over the preceding 12 months.
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