The PR and marketing strategy you're overlooking
6 reasons why your business should focus on award recognition
Starting a business is one thing.
But standing out from the crowd so you can grow and scale is a challenge many leaders find overwhelming. And while many businesses invest heavily in traditional PR and marketing strategies, one powerful yet often overlooked approach is award recognition.
Winning a business award not only adds credibility and prestige to your business but also provides opportunities for networking and boosting team morale—all without hiring a PR firm! Despite these benefits, many business leaders aren't applying for awards.
What are business awards?
Do you admire someone because they won CFO of the Year or 40 Under 40 for your city? Or maybe your insurance company is the Top Inclusive Workplace in your town?
Those are business awards. And you can win one.
Unlike sponsorships or advertisements, business awards are often free and come with instant third-party credibility. From a local chamber of commerce prize to global awards, there are plenty of opportunities to win an award for yourself or your business.
Here are 6 reasons why you should focus on business award recognition:
1. Gain visibility and brand awareness. When you win an award, you and your business will receive free publicity. Depending on the size of the sponsoring organization, there will likely be a press release and an event promoting your win. The sponsoring organization might also place your business on their website, create media placements and provide promotional material for you.
Not only that, winning an award for yourself or your business creates an opportunity to talk about what you do and how you do it differently. You can immediately leverage a win by spreading the good news to your customers, leads, employees, and supporters.
Who doesn’t love a glow-up?
2. Improve your personal networking opportunities. Usually, a business award win comes with a ceremony or recognition event. You'll get to meet the other winners, who are most likely business and community leaders. Suddenly you'll be in the inner circle in a very authentic way. This isn't like attending a networking event where you might feel awkward or shy.
Winning an award means the chance to organically connect with other inspiring people who are contributing to their community. When you win, you might meet new customers, mentors, brand evangelists, or even (powerful) friends.
3. Boost company morale and productivity. Being nominated for a business award can be deeply rewarding for employees—even if they don't win. It's an opportunity to recognize your high achievers and loyal team members for all their hard work. Even better, if they or your business win the award. You can celebrate as a team or a company, creating a shared culture and boosting engagement, which leads to better productivity.
And don't forget to repackage the nomination content! If you've already done the work to interview employees, use what you learned to create more content, including:
Internal employee profiles,
Website "About Us" section,
Social media profiles celebrating heritage and diversity celebration (Women’s Day, PRIDE month, Black History Month, etc.) by highlighting your company's best assets: your employees, and
Additional award nominations.
4. Increase sales. Have you ever researched and had to choose between two products with the same deliverable and price? But the key difference is that one has a banner full of awards, and the other doesn't. Which one do you choose? It's a no-brainer, right? The one with the awards.
According to a study on U.S. businesses, small award-winning companies saw a 63 percent increase in operating income and a 39 percent growth in sales compared to non-winners.
Be the company with the banner full of awards.
5. Attract and retain talent. Just like customers want to buy from award-winning businesses, job seekers want to work for award-winning companies. If they're choosing between two similar job offers, they'll pick the one that is the Best Place to Work in their city. I bet you have a mental file of places where you'd love to work because you read about them on a Top Workplaces list. I love running my own business, but if Patagonia offered me a job, I would take it—because it's Pata-freakin-gonia.
Winning a business award will make it easier for your recruiters to recruit, and suddenly, the top talent in the industry will work for you. Your current employees, of course, will want to stay because success and morale are contagious. Suddenly you're the Pategonia of your industry.
6. Build trust and credibility with your customers. Listen, you can tell people how great you are all you want. But they're way more likely to believe it if someone else tells them. Just like reviews and word-of-mouth recommendations will bolster your business, business awards add instant credibility to your brand.
If you're ready to boost your brand and bring your business successes to life, it's time to prioritize a business awards strategy. Getting started can feel overwhelming—you might be thinking, "Don’t I need a PR team for this?" (Spoiler alert: you don't.)
To make this initial stage easy for you, I compiled a database of 250+ credible awards.
And when you submit your first business award nomination, let me know. I want to celebrate with you.
