MARKETING 101: “What Do I Need to Know About Awards?”
• Everyone loves winning awards.
• But are you struggling to gain recognition? Are you entering the right awards for your business goals? Or do you not have a clue where to even start?
• Our awards expert, Stef Brown, will be on hand to answer all your questions in our awards surgery.
“Agencies think they need to enter awards, but they don’t actually think about why they should. That’s where agencies go wrong.”
Stef Brown is an expert in all things awards – and it starts with your business plan.
“If agencies don’t have a business plan, or any business objectives, then they shouldn’t be entering awards,” she says.
Everyone loves to win an award. It’s a piece of bright and shiny recognition you can shout about on your website and social media.
But entering and winning awards is about more than just that LinkedIn banner.
“It’s marketing 101,” says Stef. “If you’re going to invest in a particular initiative or channel, you need to understand the paybacks of that in terms of helping you achieve your business objectives.”
Stef says that awards fall into three camps:
- Recruitment and retention
“How do you attract designers and writers? If you’re winning lots of creative awards, you’re making noise, that will attract the cream of the crop,” she says.
“I’m not saying it’s the only way, but at the moment, it’s so hard to find good people. It’s a stamp of approval.”
- Business development
“The more effectiveness awards, client category and client sector awards tend to be much more for a business development perspective. If you fish where the first are…”
- For sale or investment purposes
“For companies that are looking over the medium-to-longer term to be sold and gain investment, entering awards is often the way to enter and win more,” she says.
“Awards related to your senior leadership team or related to the agency as a whole are the sorts of awards angel investors and VCs often turn to when they’re looking. It makes an agency much more appealing to those sorts of people.”
This session won’t be a presentation or story-led like our others – Stef will be on hand to lead our awards surgery.
Come armed with your questions, queries and quandaries and she’ll be your guide.