Dotty Scott explains why local awards boost credibility for small businesses. Winning awards signals expertise to clients, and AI search tools like ChatGPT now rank businesses partly on award signals. Beyond displaying a badge, repurpose wins with press releases and local media coverage for SEO backlinks.
Excited today to talk about awards and contests. This is day 13 or chapter 13 in your amazing Itty Bitty Visibility book, 15 Chapters to Marketing Made Easy. Today we're talking about awards and contests. I know you've probably seen some of these. Industries have awards, local businesses or local cities have awards, states have awards. There's awards all over the place. So I want you to think about this as your perceived expertise, because a lot of people give me pushback. Dotty, those awards don't mean anything. They're just a vote. They're like going back in high school and voting for who's the most popular. And yes, as business owners, that's exactly what they are. So we know that, but our future clients, don't know that. People put a lot of emphasis on awards and they think that you are a better business because you have awards. And I'm going to get into that a little bit later as to why that's becoming more important as we move forward in the world of AI. So look for local contests in your newspaper. Here in Vancouver, we have the Columbian and every year they put out a Best of Clark County awards program. Yes, it's a voting thing, but if you win, you get an emblem that you can put on your website that says that you won this award. And for in-person places, they get stickers and stuff that goes on the windows. It's like a big thing in this local area. So does your local area have a newspaper that does some sort of this big thing that you've never participated in because you feel like it's just a waste of your time? It's not. We're getting to why in just a minute. Some social sites have awards. Alignable is one that I've participated in for years, and it's super easy to win in that particular one. But are there other social sites that you're participating in that might give awards? Some businesses on the internet do best of every year. I've got the best 3 web designers in Vancouver, Washington. I've won year over year over year, and it's just something a website that just hands it out based on whatever criteria they have, which I don't even know what it is. I just display that on my website. So those awards really mean something to people who are looking to use your services. They really are important. And it's all about perception. Many of these awards are given to those who garner the most votes and badges are awarded to post on your website. That's what I have in the book. But the reality is those badges give you credibility, whether you think they do or not. In your industry, in your local area, do your competitors have something like that and you don't? That's a big edge that they have. So you wanna make sure that you have that edge. Now, What do you do with these awards? And I want to revisit the concept, I believe, of yesterday of repurposing content. When you get one of these awards, think to yourself, what's next? What can I do next with this? Some things I've done is I have submitted press releases whenever I win an award, and then that goes out to the local newspapers as well as online. Gets you links back to your site, which of course helps your SEO or search engine optimization. One year I had a local business journal here. It's called the Vancouver Business Journal. They actually reached out when I posted an award that I won and did a full-page interview with me in their newspaper, color pictures, everything. So it looked great. And I know I got at least one client from that interview in their newspaper, the write-up in their newspaper. Because they told me that. So they are important. They do lead to business and it's what you do with it next. So if you're just displaying it on your website, that helps for online credibility. If you take an extra step and do some things with it, like a press release, then you can get more benefit out of the same award. Again, repurposing content. Another thing that I've seen happen is local morning shows like your local news morning show. They want to interview award-winning businesses. So use that, pitch them if you have one locally that does that. Now moving forward, we all want to be found by artificial intelligence engines. So when somebody goes to ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini and they put in a query about your business or your industry, and hopefully your business shows up. Well, it's really changing in the sense that it used to be, they'd go to Google or Bing or wherever, and you'd get like 10 links on that page. And you hope that you are one of those links. And then the person that did the search would decide which one of those links they'd click on, or they'd click on one and click out, compare, and they would do their own comparison and figure out what company they're going to use based on whatever they saw or found on the internet. Now, if they're going to one of these AI programs to do their search, the AI system is determining who to show. So no longer are they getting 10 options to then go and figure out which one they want to do or use. The AI system is giving them back 1, maybe 2 options and basically making the decision for them, which you want to be. That decision. You want to be the one that's recommended. One of the criteria that is being used in these AI search engines is, or I should say AI software, is this an award-winning business? If they don't see anything on your site about being an award-winning business and your competitor has something, the competitor is the one that would be chosen based on that criteria. There's other criteria as well, but this is an easy one for you to win. So get out there, figure out exactly if there's any in your industry locally, get them. If you need to go to Alignable in their annual award system, it hasn't started yet. I'm assuming they're doing it again this year. You want to go ahead and participate in that. If your industry has any sort of awards, apply for them, try to get them, do whatever you can to get one or two so that you're the one chosen moving forward instead of the one that gets passed over because they don't have awards. It's becoming way more important moving forward than it ever has been in the past. Tomorrow we get to talk about referrals, another one of my great business sustaining things that I have done over the years. So referrals is tomorrow. If you want to get your own copy of, um, 15 Chapters to Marketing Made Easy, there will be a link in the YouTube description or in in the comments depending on where you are watching this. I look forward to seeing you here tomorrow.
