Launch your next awards program in under an hour with Evalato’s pre-made templates and intuitive design.
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Awards are meant to be seen, competitions announced far and wide, and potential participants targeted and reached! However, marketing awards has its specifics that you should know in order for submissions to start piling up in your awards management software. Here are 101 effective tips to help you boost your awards marketing ROI.
Your website should be the starting point of your awards marketing endeavors. If not planned and designed well, it might turn out to be the stumbling stone of all your marketing efforts. Here are some useful tips about creating an enticing website.
1. Have a dedicated webpage for your awards. Even if you don’t have a budget for an expensive webpage, you can always craft a top-quality page with just some basic coding using WordPress themes and plugins.
2. Yet, the fastest and most hassle-free option if not having a webpage for your awards competition is using Evalato webpage creator. It requires no coding – just a few clicks from your part and you’re good to go.
3. Craft an enticing web copy. Put some extra effort and time on this, it will pay off. Start with your awards’ unique selling point (USP) – what makes your awards stand out from the rest? And let people know!
4. Create a “Why participate” page where all the benefits of your awards competition are clearly outlined to potential contestants.
5. Remind them that through participating, they will build credibility, be seen and recognized as one of the best in the industry.
6. They will have their work introduced to and reviewed by leading industry experts and will receive valuable feedback.
7. Present your awards as a challenge for them– a competition with the best of best.
8. Participants might benefit from year-round publicity in the form of press publications and social media mentions.
9. They might also generate new business leads by using the awards competition as a networking opportunity.
10. They could demonstrate their participation proactively within their current marketing strategy. And respectively impress their clients, partners and potential customers.
11. From a strictly practical perspective, participating in an awards competition shows that one has the budgetary means to take part. Your participants’ business must be doing well!
12. … and of course, let’s not forget the chance of them winning a prestigious award trophy, certificate of excellence and a “winner of…” logo for all their digital communication channels.
Be honest and transparent. The more people trust you, the more sales you’ll make.
13. A great way to make your awards transparent is to have a “Submission page”. With Evalato, you can choose to show submissions, submission details, average ratings, individual judge votes, comments. Again, no coding or efforts from your part required.
The registration form is often underestimated but that’s a crucial point when building your awards marketing strategy. Incorporate some (or all) of the below-listed tips to your marketing plan and watch your sales go through the ceiling.
14. The registration form should be an integrated part of your awards webpage. Don’t interrupt your customer experience by sending your contest participants to a third-party website. It’s not only annoying but you might also lose their trust. And that’s the last thing you want, right?
15. You can ensure a flawless customer experience by embedding the Evalato registration form directly on your own website. It’s as easy as embedding a YouTube video, only it’s an awards registration form.
16. Design a registration form to impress! Use special offers, conversion triggers and promo codes. Keep in mind that conservative spenders make up a large portion of almost every customer base, which means there are many people out there who want to enter your contest, just not at their regular price. Adding effective special offers and conversion triggers to your sales process will increase the contest’s bottom line.
17. Evalato’s (not-so-secret) 4 secret ingredients to special offers:
18. You need to be able to cross-sell, up-sell and entice participants whose submissions fit in more than one category.
19. Here are some special offer samples: pre-launch offer (discount); early bird discount for the first to enter; 2-for-1 limited time offers; volume discounts (for multiple submissions); free submissions for a cause.
20. Special offers need to be few and far between. Don’t go overboard though because you don’t want to establish a third store image!
21. If you want to have a larger variety of pricing offers to attract more submissions, try targeting groups of organizations with special deals only for them: startup, NGOs and charities, students or academia, partners.
22. Use conversion triggers: persuade potential applicants into joining the program with dynamic visual notifications and conversion triggers on the registration form.
23. Attract new clients with promotional codes and create loyalty programs for easy customer retention.
24. Use the crossed price feature to show the usual price, next to the current and improved one, right on the registration form. Simple and effective.
25. Evalato has all the above marketing tools to help you sell more submissions: from the cross-the-price feature to dynamic conversion triggers, custom special offers and promo codes. Try Evalato - awards management software for free!
26. Always measure your results and adjust your marketing strategy accordingly.
27. With Evalato you can track real-time statistics and reports on your key performance indicators, so you can keep improving all the time.
Some marketers ignore media and rely solely on other ways of promoting their awards competitions. Huge mistake. Media will always influence people. It might change together with the development of technology, but it stays a trusted source of information and a great channel to spread the word about your program. Here are some tips regarding your PR efforts.
28. Find the right media partners. You will need to scour the Internet for industry-specific and general media outlets that cover your industry as well as influential industry bloggers.
29. Create win-win media partnerships. For any partnership to work, it needs to be mutually beneficial for both parties. You should give something extra to your media partners that non-partner media will not be receiving. In return, you can ask for something extra as well. In addition to the publication of press releases, interviews and other promotional materials, ask the media outlets you are partnering with for.
30. Permanent or periodic presence in their publications (online and offline)
31. Place your organization’s or program’s logo as their partner
32. Ad space (e.g. banners)
33. Publish some promotional materials for the competition
34. Permanent or periodic presence in their newsletter or bulletin
35. Target and localize as much as possible. If your awards competition is local, create a targeted media list. Set your sights on local media outlets and get as local as possible. Journalists are after stories that are important to the community they cover, so if your competition is calling for submissions from London, look for media based there. Localize by industry too. Find media outlets that cover your particular industry or field, or that of the awards competition and add those to your list as well. That is not to say you should avoid big media outlets, just tailor your message and focus more on the ones above.
36. Build a trusting relationship with media representative. Don’t just send press releases hoping to get published – introduce yourself and your idea first. Explain how your contest matches the interests of their readers. Mention the names of your prominent judges and the companies that will be partnering with your awards competition.
Now that you have your list of media outlets, you need to prepare an engaging press release.
37. Make sure you are covering your PR basics – the five W’s & one H:
38. Awards competition announcement
39. New category announcement
40. New partner onboard
41. New sponsor onboard
42. Interview with a judge or contestant (careful not to enter into a conflict of interest)
43. New prize announcement
44. New promotion or offer announcement
45. New milestone reached
46. Why Not Start a Blog?
Although it may seem difficult to organize and follow, try to have a schedule for your blog articles and post regularly. A blog is only as good as its updates, so keep it active.
47. Any of the press release (news) topics above re-written in a more casual, everyday tone of voice
48. An exciting, new development in your target industry
49. Advice, how-to, useful tips, tricks or “hacks” article related to your audience or industry
50. Interview with a judge or contestant from your competition
51. Interview with someone from your team
52. Interview with a partner, sponsor or endorser
53. Will you have a gala awards ceremony? Give the audience a teaser about how awesome it’s going to be!
54. Some off-topic banter that people are likely to relate to, for example “5 Ways To Be Happier” (keep this type of posts to a minimum, otherwise you risk making the blog irrelevant)
Use influencers in your industry to spread the word for your awards competition.
55. Find the right influencers and offer them incentives to raise awareness for your awards contest. It could be a referral program or any kind of partnership agreement.
56. Ask your jury to help you spread the word about your contest
Your jury members are most probably among the influencers in your industry. That, plus the fact that they are already an important part of your competition, makes them the perfect ambassadors for your awards. So don’t forget to ask them to help you promote your program through their social media channels, newsletters or blogs.
57. Find the right social media channels: be only where your target audience is.
58. Join conversations. Don’t just “like” other people’s comments, add a reply and make it more personal.
59. Share useful information with your audience like industry-related articles, blog posts from your blog, tips and tricks etc.
60. Start meaningful and engaging discussions.
61. Of course, all of this will go alongside the promotions, updates, press releases and news coverage you will be publishing on a regular basis.
62. Never use social media solely as a platform for promotional content though.
63. Visual (pictures/graphics/video)
64. Relevant to the program and its topic (at least 80% of the time)
65. Useful or fun for your potential participants
66. Positive rather than negative
67. Engaging and encouraging conversation
68. Your Twitter profile should be an engaging, up-to-date conversation about your competition, industry and audience.
69. Reply to people and companies instead of just liking their Tweets
70. Engage new followers in a conversation instead of just “thanking” them for the “follow.” Sell them submissions by explaining how awesome the awards competition is!
71. Join in and start your own conversations. Ask questions and ask for opinions.
72. @Tag organizations, people and partners when possible.
73. Make a unique #hashtag for your competition. Use it regularly and make sure you are tracking it. The bigger the momentum, the higher the chance your program will reach more of the intended audience.
Facebook is introducing new updates and changes in its algorithm all the time. Here are some tips that could help you spread the word about your awards on Facebook:
74. Post more videos, especially live videos (they receive 6 times more engagement than regular videos)
75. Allocate at least a small part of your marketing budget for Facebook advertising. It’s almost impossible to reach your target audience relying only on organic reach.
76. Whether you have a separate page for your awards or not, make sure you also create a Facebook event for your awards gala.
77. Details. In the details section start with a link to your competition’s website. If participants need to register elsewhere make sure you explain that clearly. Always add the necessary links.
78. Add more hosts. Click Edit at the top right of the event and then add sponsor or partner names in the Host field.
79. Event wall. Don’t tick the “Only admins can post” on the wall option. You want everyone to be active on the page – organizers, sponsors and participants.
80. Use Tags. To generate even more likes, shares and comments, get the sponsors involved. Tag sponsors, partners and entrants in your posts. Encourage their activity online.
Instagram is all about visual content. It’s simply an indispensable social media channel for some awards competitions, like photo contests, for example.
81. It’s the perfect place to visually present your jury, entrants, values and story in a creative way and win the hearts of your target participants.
82. Use #relevant #hashtags.
83. Use ‘Live Stories’ regularly (they get the same results as Facebook live videos)
Email marketing is a good way to generate more buzz around your competition and even increase the number of submissions.
84. Make sure you are not sending spam, have a list of contacts that have subscribed or have signed up to receive your emails.
85. Never send only promotional content. Send useful information like your top blog posts or interesting articles in your industry.
86. Don’t forget to remind your email subscribers that they are special for you: send them exclusive special offers or promo codes for them only.
87. Use a smart e-mail marketing solution to automate your work.
88. With Evalato you can add and update contacts in email marketing or CRM software (e.g. Mailchimp, Hubspot CRM, Salesforce, Activecampaign, etc.).
89. Test before you send! Really, testing is always important, and if you can test something by all means, do so! Test on multiple devices.
90. Make it responsive. A lot of the people receiving your email will open it from their mobile devices. You want them to be able to read it effortlessly, otherwise, they probably won’t read it at all. Test the email on a mobile device.
91. Always add a Call-to-Action. Make sure it’s obvious, but not too obvious to the point where it takes the whole screen of the mobile phone. Links are better CTAs in emails if you’re going the responsive route.
92. Keep your message brief! Anything above 3 or 4 sentences will not be read, or may even have negative effects, such as people flat-out refusing to enter your awards competition, unsubscribing, adding your email to the spam filter or all of these together at the same time.
93. Always check your links. Check if they work, check if they lead to where they’re supposed to.
94. Add a personal touch. Personalize your messages so that the recipient feels as though you’re reaching out to them alone. Try addressing them by their first name only.
95. Use the right language. Know your audience and address them accordingly.
96 Just don’t overdo it with the mass emails or else they might end up in the spam filter.
97. Evalato lets you export the contestant data from your award program. Use that data for future mass email marketing campaigns. The awards management software Evalato also integrates effortlessly with the most popular email marketing solutions out there. You want automation – we have it!
98. Use awards management software! Not only will it help you with your marketing efforts, but it will save you tons of time and energy that you can invest in being more creative and attracting more applicants.
99. While there are lots of awards management solutions out there, aim for one that could cover all your awards competition needs: from encompassing all phases of your awards competition to the option to connect with other apps you use like CRM system, email marketing software or accounting software.
100. Try Evalato 2-step application process to increase the number of entries and make it all more convenient for your applicants:
101. Evalato is a next-gen awards management software to manage your nominations, awards, competitions, contests, recognitions, prizes and more. With Evalato you save hundreds of hours with all the features you need built into a single platform. Powerful, versatile, super customizable, highly scalable, lightning fast and mega secure – Evalato will help you with every phase of your program – web presence, marketing, registration, submissions, evaluation, and analytics. Try it out for free!
