Entering industry awards is an effective way to ensure your business gains recognition for its achievements. With the potential to create new business relationships, the benefits of awards can be both measurable and far-reaching.
According to Best Business Awards, winning an award can bring a 63% increase in income for small businesses and a 48% increase for large businesses. Winning or being shortlisted for an award enables organisations of all sizes to prove trustworthiness among potential customers and capture greater business outcomes.
The challenge is to make sure that your entries communicate your successes in a way that is clear and concise to the judges. The entry must summarise the impact and results of your initiative whilst demonstrating why it matters to the industry.
To achieve success within award programmes, organisations need to ensure that their content stands out amongst competitors.
Here are our top tips for writing an entry that will leave a powerful impression with the judges.
Tell a Unique Story – Your entry should create a compelling story around why you deserve this award. The story you present to the judges should prove what you are bringing to the market compared to other innovations offered by competitors. It is an opportunity to showcase any aspects that are especially creative and innovative about your initiative.
Starting and finishing every response with a key message will grab the attention of the judges and enable them to easily identify the most important and interesting aspects of your initiative.
The use of snappy headings within the entry is also a good way to structure your story and frame the different sections within your responses.
Ensure Accuracy – How well an entry is written can be the difference between getting shortlisted or not. It is therefore absolutely essential to check your entry for spelling and grammar mistakes.
On top of this, accuracy within your entry also includes keeping your responses within the allocated word count. Entries that exceed this risk being disqualified by the judges. A strong entry will answer questions accurately and succinctly, without flowery writing, or highly technical text.
Focus on the Hard Facts – Judges can’t argue with solid facts. Entries need to be centred around facts that can support the core statements made within the entry. This can include customer and employee centric metrics and internal results. Where possible, you can also provide data that shows before and after results to build a fuller picture of the impact of your initiative.
Hard facts should be laced in throughout your entry to constantly back up the statements about why you deserve to win.
Include a Human Element – To truly prove the impact of your initiative, your entry needs to show how it has benefitted the audience it was intended for. A strong entry will demonstrate the value it has brought to its end users.
Judges are not likely to be technology experts so entries should avoid industry-specific terminology. Instead, they should focus on the real-life benefits that the innovation is delivering and the problems that it is solving.
Organisations can add an extra level of perspective to the entry by including customer testimonials.
Remember Relevance – An important consideration for the judges is how relevant your entry is to the criteria. This includes ensuring that the entry has a local angle if it is based within a specific region and telling a timely story.
Many awards will specify that the innovation must have taken place within a given timeframe. In any case, it is best practice to submit a fresh and recent initiative to demonstrate that you are matching the needs of modern customers.
The entry should also reflect the language used within the questions and directly address the chosen category.
With the right structure and effort, you can create a solid entry that stands out from heavy competition. The benefits incorporating these aspects into every submission will result in an elevated business reputation, greater industry authority and an increased competitive advantage.
Ilex has an expert team able to draft winning award entries for B2B tech and telecoms companies around the world. To learn how we can help your business, get in touch with us today: https://bit.ly/3A8SRoc
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