Are you an Award winner? 10 tips on how to leverage Awards for PR.

I'm going to talk about winning awards. Now, awards can be a tremendous way of building your brand and getting publicity. The reason I'm thinking about that today is because I just dusted off a trophy that I was given a couple of years ago in China by the group at top marketing. It was the Global Business Innovations Award which I was given for my inernational business mentoring and entrepreneurship in China. Today, I'd like to talk about 10 different ways that you can use awards. These are all free tips and ways that we as business people can enter and use awards to build both our brand awareness and our level of confidence inside the organization for our staff, for our partners, and for our clients. There are many different kinds of awards, as we all know. Summer tends to be the quiet time when it comes to awards We tend to have awards cere onies towards the end of the ye r. There are awards by, l t's call it, industry firs . Every industry tends to ave its own awards and th se are often organized by the ndustry association. Being member of the industry assoc ation is obviously a key prerequ site. Secondly, there may be n tional, regional, or local awar s that are taking place. hose will be a function maybe f local government or a local bu iness council. The next category would be run by the media. We ll know that for the media, the awards create a highlight. t's an opportunity to recogni e and to celebrate the reade s and the subscribers, and also rom a commercial point of vi w, it's a really lucrative par of the publisher's franchise. B cause whilst online has take a lot of the advertising rev nue, the desire to sit in a large room with your peers an to be celebrated for your w nnings is something that First, let's just look at how to enter the awards. There is a website called Awards List that claims to be the world's first and largest award entry consultancy, and they've helped their clients win over 1,400 awards. They have a team of people who are dedicated writers and "application scribes," because entering an award can take quite a lot of time. Obviously, the harder the award is to win, by and large, the more prestigious it is. On this website, they count over 4,000 awards, both in the UK and internationally. While that might seem like a lot, I would say that's just a fraction of the number of awards that there are out there to be entered and to be won. If you don't want to contract a specialist agency, public relations agencies will also help to craft the application, because often, there's a fair amount of writing involved, maybe getting together of case studies, submission of photographs, interviews, and other such things. In 2008, I started the British Business Awards in China. We had the British ambassador as the patron, and the guests included members of the British Council, the government, and a number of other stakeholders, including the DTI and The 48 Group. We had a large number of judges and stakeholders. If you look at the kind of award that you're entering, the more complex the award is in terms of the the groups that are in the judging panel and the stature of the awards, then the more power that award is going to have when it comes to winning and putting that out in a press release. You can enter these awards yourself. Almost all of them are free to enter, because the money isn't in the awards entry. It's in the gala dinners and the profiles. There are some that charge a nominal fee to enter just to remove those people that enter without any real commitment to the process. You can find awards through your trade association, through your publisher, or through local government, for example. I would suggest looking for at least one in the local, regional, or national category, one in an industry category, and one in a media category. It would be great to have a minimum really of one, but ideally, two to three awards per category that you could enter would be better. Maybe we can set ourselves a goal of entering 10 awards per year, because they don't all happen at the same time of the year either. Many happened towards the tail end of the year with submissions in September and October, but they're happening throughout the year, and it's a really great way of identifying what your company's doing and starting the process of promoting it. Next, let's look at a num er of different ways that y u can leverage an award. First o all, once you've entered, espe ially if your company is a fin list, then it's an awesome oppor unity to be saying that your c mpany is currently a finalist i this category or this a ards. Normally, you're allowed t use the logo of that award. I could be a physical award, i could be an award that's takin place through online entries but there's a way of starting t announce the fact that you'r entering and competing. Let' assume that you do actually ge to win, which is a fabulou thing. I was very blessed tha in Singapore, quite some tim ago back in '98, I was th winner of the British Chambe SME of the Year Award, and th following year, the Entrepreneu of the Year award. I've used an enjoyed the benefits of award myself both as a recipient an also creating them. Obviously if we win an award, we have third party endorsement of ou business or of ourselves. Bein able to say that we are an awar winner is a great differentiato against all those other player that are also competing for ou customers or for our team Another thing to do is to connect the award to a broader story. There can often be an award won inside a vertical niche, an industry, let's say, technology or security, or maybe home decor. If that in itself is struggling to get publicity in the broader media, then that award is indicating that the industry is important. For example, if you were to be working in clean tech, and you were to win an award for, say, a best solar or best water product, to then attach that to the growth story of sustainability and being an award-winning company in that sustainable industry sector could carry enough to get a journalist in a mainstream publication interested. If we win an award, we need to promote it to our own circles, to our staff, to our customers, to our partners. We can also then put it in our stores. We can put it in our literature. We can put it on the back of our business cards. We must certainly put it on our website. We can also issue a press release. Getting the news out that we've won is tremendous in a press release, but don't be disappointed if it's an industry magazine that's given an award, and that therefore, the other publications will not cover it. If you win, for instance, a Forbes award, then it probably won't be covered in Fortune. Bust bear in mind that if it's an industry vertical media, that may not get picked up by the other media in the same industry. We want to include it on our website and in our auto signatures (you know how I feel about email auto signatures, which I previously talked about). We can also use them to offer a promotion or a special discount if we've won. This can be something like, "The prize-winning product will be on offer at a lower price for this length of time." It then gives you a reason to make a discount, and may entire more customers to purchase your product or service. The other thing that you can do if you're going to an awards itself is you can start to affiliate with the other judges, the organization, and the winners. Certainly, that's useful in itself, because you're mixing by definition with "winners." But also, what I like to do if I'm ever lucky enough to win is, when I send social media out, I always tag the judges, the organization, and the winners. That way, you are possibly going to be able to connect with them on social media, and you get some uplift if everyone starts to promote one another, so I always include the names of other winners. When we did the public relations for the Asian Entrepreneurs Awards in Singapore back in 2018, we made sure that all the press releases included all the names of all the winners and the judges. We can also, of course, start to see ourselves as authorities, either as an individual or as a company if we've won an award. That endorsement that I mentioned at the beginning gives an opportunity to create some leverage during speaking engagements when we are then able to say, "As an award-winning entrepreneur," "As an award-winning scientist, "As an award-winning author," whatever it is. It's a great line, because that authority means that other people will want to listen maybe more than if you're just someone who has been doing that for a number of years. Awards entries are things that can absolutely create opportunities for publicity. They're in themselves a good exercise, because they force us to write down what we're really doing and what we're doing well. In my experience, both of being lucky enough to win awards and to organize awards, they're a great way to connect with members of the industry. In the British Business Awards in China, we had eight awards. Each award had its own panel of judges, and they operated independently of one another. Many of the judges told me afterwards that they had enjoyed the networking with the other judges as much as the rest of the process. So, it's one thing to enter, but as I say, it's also just as great to take part, because we learn from the process, and we might just meet someone who may be a great employee, investor, partner, or customer as a result of taking part. Ultimately, business is a competition, and we have our own internal metrics. But if we can win awards and be seen to be winning awards, then that is the best endorsement that we can possibly get for our business. I'd encourage you to look for two to three awards from your local, regional, or national category, look for industry, and look for local media or vertical media awards. That should give you a nice round number of 10 to enter. If you are winning 10% of that, then at least you've got one big award that you've won, and you can reward your staff and team as well for all of their hard work. Let's not forget then the the benefits of winning an award for morale. Even if we don't win, it's to at least show people that we're there, and we're competing, and that we are potential award winners, and even in competing, that we are actually very much a vibrant and alive business. With that, I encourage you to look at the events that you could enter. Think of the awards that you would like to take part in, and maybe even sponsor an award if you feel like you would like to do that and get the benefits from sponsorship, or if one doesn't exist already, as I did in China in 2008, take on the mantle and create an awards for your industry, your town, your city, your industry, because we all need recognition and awards, and it coming from our peer group is the greatest recognition of all.