Congratulations! You won the award. (Well, perhaps your client won the award.) Your hard work and dedication paid off!
But don’t let the excitement stop there. When clients win an award, they may not know how best to use it as leverage to increase sales and brand equity.
What are some best practices for marketing your award wins? We’ve gathered some insights, suggestions, and examples from companies who are doing an incredible job in extracting the most value out of their hard-earned award wins.
Dedicated Awards Page
Most companies will give a brief mention here or there about an award win, but some companies will go all out and have a dedicated webpage displaying their wins.
We absolutely love what UK-based company Darktrace has done with their awards—all 125 of them!—on this page. Incredible.
Blog Post
Tell your story about how you won the award and your experience applying in a carefully crafted and thorough blog post. You can discuss how the application was a lot more difficult than you anticipated. Explain how the submission process made you think differently about your company’s challenges, processes, and successes.
Essentially, the blog post is the story behind the story.
If any sort of ceremony or event was involved, be sure to explain how all of that went, with photos of course. And don’t forget to include photos of the actual award trophy (lucite, plaque, etc.) in the post.
Once you publish your blog post, offer it to the award organizers. They will be happy to see one of their winners sharing their success. No doubt, they will share it as well, knowing that this could spur future applicants to consider their award program.
Email Footer
Email has been getting a bum rap lately, thanks to the ubiquity of Slack and Teams, but email isn’t going away anytime soon. Encourage employees to promote the award in their email footer, perhaps with an HTML graphic with a link.
To make things as simple as possible, be sure to create a “How-to” for employees to set up the email footer.
Have the link point to the blog post on your site in which you show off the win and describe the application process. For added measurement, be sure to create UTM tags to track the success of this email footer strategy in Google Analytics.
Google Ads and PPC
Yes, you can include language about your award in a Google Ad. Be sure to clear it with the award organization first, as there may be some copyright issues.
Most likely they won’t mind, as you’re paying for the ads and they get promoted in the process.
Social Media
Using various social media channels to promote your company winning an award can increase brand awareness, build trust and drive your audience to your website.
Again, make sure that all social media messages include a link to your blog post, so you can measure the traffic and impact.
LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook are the usual suspects but consider other social media channels, such as YouTube and an Instagram Story. Try to capture a video of someone from your company accepting the award at a ceremony for use in these channels.
Award Marketing Package
Lean on the awards program organization for some marketing help. Often times, their marketing folks have created a promotional planner for you to use, which includes a templated press release, blog post or article, social media posts, stock photos, and the like.
Pick and choose those elements which make the most sense for your organization.
Tell us about your awards strategy.
Have you applied for awards before? Did you win? We’d love to hear how you used it in your marketing strategy to increase sales.
Press Release
Sending out an official press release is a good way to share the news of the prestigious award your company has just won. The price of press releases has come down significantly in recent years, with providers like PRWeb offering distribution for as low as $99.
But first, check with the awards organization: they may need to approve the press release before you are able to distribute it.
To facilitate this process, some awards programs, such as the Red Herring Top 100, actually provide a press release template to winners. You simply have to fill in your company name and it’s good to go—no final approval needed.
Media Outreach
Personally reaching out to a handful of relevant reporters, bloggers, and editors who cover your industry is another great way to spread the word. Chances are if they already cover your industry, they are familiar with the awards program and are likely to cover it.
Of course, don’t just tell them about the award that your company won. Relate the bigger story behind it, including your company’s mission, strategy, and product or service delivery. Indeed, the fact that you won is only the hook: the reporter or blogger is perhaps more likely interested in what you accomplished that merited the distinction.
Newsletter
And of course, how can we forget email? We mentioned adding a link to the news to email footers, but you should absolutely include the news not only in personal one-to-one emails to key customers—perhaps sales can do this—but also in your monthly or periodic newsletter.
Make sure that the link in the newsletter goes to the blog post on your website, for additional tracking.
While it certainly takes time, effort and money to enter awards competitions, the investment can be well worth it if your company knows how to use it to your benefit.
Did you promote your award in a non-traditional way? Let us know in the Comment section below.
Looking for ways to boost your chances of success in awards competitions? Follow these 10 tips or contact us today.
