How you should use awards to elevate your brand

In the lead up to an award submission, there are often hours and hours of hard work put into crafting the best possible answers and ensuring they’re checking off key criteria required by the judging panel. However, the work shouldn’t stop once you click submit.

Now you wait until the finalists are eventually announced (and you hopefully receive the confirmation that you’re through to the next stage!).

This is when you can start leveraging the award nomination to elevate your brand.

Award wins can often go undervalued if your target audiences don’t know you’ve been nominated or won. Sometimes stakeholders don’t realise the full effect of what goes on behind the scenes, let alone, the hours spent writing meticulously detailed responses in the submission.

So, why not make a big song and dance about the fact that you’ve been recognised as a leader in your industry?

Here are some tips on how awards can be used to grow your brand:

1. Develop and pitch an industry media release

Sharing your good news story with the media not only allows you to be seen in your industry as a thought-leader and innovator, but also helps you reach new audiences that might not be aware of your brand and grows your connections in your area of expertise.

Every industry has its own news publications which can be a channel to promoting your award success, and in some cases, particularly if your brand is consumer-facing, mainstream news might also be interested.

2. Turn your learnings into a blog post or LinkedIn article

Once you’ve distributed your media release, turn the key points into a blog post along with the learnings and experiences you want to share from your award nomination or win.

People love reading about success stories and different ways that others overcame obstacles, so these types of articles help inspire – whether it is likeminded individuals or newcomers to the industry.

This is another opportunity to demonstrate your leadership and expertise in your field with the recognition from an industry award body.

3. Prepare a digital campaign to launch with your award nomination or win

Often there is the waiting period between award submissions and finalist and winner announcements, so this is the perfect time to develop a strategic digital campaign off the back of your nomination or win.

Once you or your brand is officially announced as a finalist or winner, it’s important to keep the momentum going on your social channels by distributing e-Newsletters (EDMs), targeting content towards your different audiences on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, developing case study videos or white papers about the winning project and sharing thought-leadership pieces (such as a blog - as mentioned above) or media articles published.

At Elevate, we have a wealth of experience in writing, submitting and winning industry and business awards for our clients and ourselves!

If you’re interested in learning about our award submissions or elevating your award success, give us a call today on 07 3180 3666 for a free non-obligatory quote.