Often underestimated in value and moved to the “nice to have” pile, awards are an important part of growing and maintaining your brand and reputation in the industry. In the B2B world of advertising, marketing, insights and technology, competition is especially stiff as the proliferation of companies in the space continues to grow rapidly. Industry awards thus play a critical role in allowing organizations to stand out – raising your company’s profile and providing credibility.
In fact, awards have an ever deeper impact as they can create further opportunities for organizations in a number of ways, including supporting branding, marketing and sales efforts, hiring and employee retention, and more. Below are eight ways in which awards can impact your organization:
- GROW YOUR REPUTATION: One of the key areas for growth in B2B marketing is reputation – it’s critical for organizations in the industry to be considered experts in particular areas and/or verticals. Awards allow you to not only showcase your expertise, but by winning, indicate that your expertise is at the top of your field.
- RETAIN + GROW CLIENTS: Many industry awards encourage or even require that submissions for work include a client. This is actually a fantastic opportunity to build relationships with clients by exposing their work and brand to the industry, including elevating the personal brand of key stakeholders. While it can sometimes be a challenge to obtain client agreement to submit to an award, a strategy for avoiding this is to set expectations during upfront client-agency agreements and build it into the scope of work.
- ATTRACT PROSPECTS: Obtaining new business is at the forefront of almost every marketing strategy, and awards support that growth strategy. By exposing your brand, successful work, strong client relationships, and experts, you create opportunities for new companies to become aware of your organization and shorten the conversion cycle by establishing reputation.
- ENHANCE CASE STUDIES: As you get prospects further down the funnel and/or make efforts to grow existing relationships, case studies are beneficial in helping to convince potential customers of the process and results of your efforts. By winning awards related to work, case studies are further enhanced and given industry credibility.
- DEVELOP PARTNERSHIPS: By participating in industry awards, you’ll create opportunities to establish and grow partnerships through inclusion in submissions and with the organizations that host the awards themselves.
- SUPPORT RECRUITMENT: Award-winning organizations are much more appealing to candidates, as they indicate a commitment to creating impactful work.
- NURTURE INDIVIDUALS IN YOUR ORGANIZATION: Growing the reputation and personal brands of senior leaders and experts in your organizations not only helps to grow the overall company’s credibility and brand, but allows organizations to help retain those employees by highlighting their efforts.
- GROW YOUR BRAND: While awards support many shorter-term objectives, they play a critical role in growing your brand. Companies that win awards, and even more so those who repeatedly win year after year, are likely to be seen as leaders in the industry, garnering the respect and benefits that come with such positioning.
By including awards as a key tactic in your marketing strategy, you can achieve not only your marketing objectives, but also create impact across your organization. If you need help with your awards strategy development and execution, reach out to see how DBC can help your team find success in 2024 and beyond.