In this Speak PR podcast episode, host Jim James explains how businesses can use awards as a powerful PR and branding tool. He begins by sharing his personal experience receiving the Global Business Innovations Award in China, then outlines ten practical, free strategies for finding, entering, and capitalising on awards. He categorises awards into industry, regional/national, and media‑driven types, and advises listeners to target at least one award in each category, aiming for around ten entries per year. He highlights resources such as awards‑list.co.uk and PR agencies that can help craft applications. Once entered, Jim stresses the value of promoting finalist status, using award logos, issuing press releases, and updating websites, business cards, and email signatures. He recommends linking the award to broader industry narratives to attract mainstream media, offering special promotions tied to the win, and tagging judges and fellow winners on social media to expand networks. Jim also discusses the internal benefits of awards, including staff morale, team celebrations, and the credibility boost that can lead to speaking engagements. Finally, he encourages listeners to consider sponsoring or even creating their own awards to further embed themselves in their industry community. Contact details and a call to action for the EastWest PR newsletter conclude the episode.
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Hello and welcome to this episode of Speak PR. My name is Jim James and I'm your host, and today I'm going to talk about winning awards. Now, awards can be a tremendous way of building your brand and getting publicity. The reason I'm thinking about that today is because I just dusted off a trophy that I was given a couple of years ago in China by the group at Top Marketing. It was the Global Business Innovations Award, and I was given that for my international business mentoring and entrepreneurship in China. Now today I'd like to talk about 10 different ways that you can use awards, and these are all free tips and ways that we as business people can enter and use awards to build both our brand awareness but also level of confidence inside the organization, both for our staff, for our partners, and also of course for our clients. Now, there are many different kinds of awards, as we all know, and summer tends to be the quiet time. We tend to have awards towards the end of the year. Now, there are awards by, let's call it, industry first. So every industry tends to have its awards, and those are often organized by the industry association. So being a member of the industry association is obviously a key and normally a prerequisite. And then secondly, there may be, for example, national or regional or local awards that are taking place, and those will be a function, for example, maybe of local government or a local business council, or a local government or local business council. The next category would be, for example, run by the media, and we all know that for the media The awards create a highlight. It's an opportunity to recognize and to celebrate the readers, the subscribers, and also from a commercial point of view, awards are really a lucrative part of the publisher's franchise. Because whilst online has taken a lot of the advertising revenue, the desire to sit in a large room with your peers and to be celebrated for your winnings is something that just can't be replaced by being online. So first, let's just look at how to enter the awards. Now, there is a group called awards-list.co.uk that claim to be the world's first and largest award entry consultancy, and they've helped their clients win over 1,400 awards. And they have a team of people who are dedicated writers and sort of application scries, because entering an award can take quite a lot of time. Obviously, the, the harder the award is to win, by and large, the more prestigious it is. Now, on this, uh, awards list website, they count over 4,000 awards, both in the UK but also internationally, and I would say that's just a fraction of the number of awards that there are out there to be entered and to be won. So if you don't want to contract an agency, a specialist agency, public relations agencies will also help to craft the application because often there's a fair amount of writing involved, maybe getting together of case studies, for example, submission of photographs, and maybe interviews. In 2008, I started the British Business Awards in China. And we had the British ambassador as the patron, and we had the British Council and the government and a number of other stakeholders, including the DTI and the 48 Group, all getting involved together. So we had there a large number of judges and stakeholders. And if you look at the kind of award that you're entering, the more complex the award is in terms of the groups that are in the judging panel, for example, the stature of the awards, then the more power that award is going to have when it comes to winning and putting that out in a press release. You can, of course, enter these awards yourself. Almost all of them are free to enter because the money isn't in the awards entry, it's in the gala dinners and the profiles. There are some that charge a nominal fee to enter just to remove those people that enter without any real commitment to the process. Now, so you can find those through your trade association, through your publisher, through local government, for example. So I would suggest looking for at least one in the, like, local or regional or national category, one in an industry category, and one in a media category. So minimum really of one, but ideally 2 to 3 awards per category that you could enter. Maybe we can set ourselves a goal of entering 10 awards per year because they don't all happen at the same time of the year either, and many happen towards the tail end of the year with submissions in September and October, but they're happening throughout the year, and it's a really great way of both identifying what your company is doing but also starting the process of promoting it. Now, just let's look at a number of different ways that you can leverage an award. Now, first of all, once you've entered, especially if your company is a finalist, then it's an awesome opportunity to be saying that your company is currently a finalist. In this category or this award. Normally you're allowed then to use the logo, for example, of that award. Now it could be a physical, it could be a physical award, it could be an award that's taking place through online entries, but there's a way then of starting to announce the fact that you're entering, that you're competing. Now let's assume that you do actually get to win, which is a fabulous thing. And I was very blessed that in Singapore quite some time ago, back in '98, I was the winner for the British Chamber SME of the Year Award, and the following year the Entrepreneur of the Year Award. So I've used and enjoyed the benefits of awards myself, both as a recipient and also creating them. So obviously, if we win an award, we we have a third-party endorsement of our business or of ourselves. So being able to say that we are an award winner is a great differentiator against all those other players that are also competing for our customers or for our team. Now, another thing to do then is to connect the award to a broader story. So there can often be an award won inside a vertical niche, an industry, let's say technology or security or maybe, you know, home decor, if that in itself is struggling to get publicity in the broader media, then it can be used to link, for example, that award as being an indicator that the industry is important. So for example, if you were to be working in cleantech and you were to win an award for, say, a best solar or best water product, To then attach that to the growth story of sustainability and being an award-winning company in that sustainable industry sector could carry enough to get a journalist in a mainstream publication interested. Now, of course, if we win an award, we need to promote it to our own circles, to our staff, to our customers, to our partners, but we can also then put it, for example, in our stores. We can put it in our literature. We can put on the back of our business cards. We must certainly put it on our website. Now we can also write and issue a press release. So getting the news out that we've won is tremendous in a press release. But don't be disappointed if it's an industry magazine that's given an award and that therefore the other publications will not cover it. So if you win, for example, a Forbes award, then it probably won't be covered in Fortune, for example. So just bear in mind that if it's an industry vertical media, that may not get picked up by the other media in the same industry. Now obviously, we want to include on our website and in our auto signatures— you know how I feel about email auto signatures, I covered that in an earlier podcast— we can also use it to offer, for example, A we're so proud, would like to make a special prize promotion, give a special discount, for example, if you've won. So this can be then, for example, the prize-winning product will be on offer at a lower price for this length of time. It gives you a reason to make a discount, for example. Now, the other thing that you can do if you're going to an awards itself is you can start to affiliate with the other judges and the organization and the winners. Now, certainly that's useful in itself because you're mixing by definition with winners. But also what I like to do, if I ever win, I'm lucky enough to win, when I send social media out, I always tag the judges and the organization, the winners, because that way you are possibly going to be able to connect with them on social media. And you get some uplift if everyone starts to promote one another. So I always include the names of other winners. And when we did the public relations for the Asian Entrepreneurs Awards in Singapore back in 2018, we made sure that all the press releases included all the names of all the winners and the judges. Now we can also, of course, start to see ourselves as authorities. Either as an individual or as a company if we've won an award. So that endorsement that I mentioned at the beginning gives an opportunity to create some leverage for speaking engagements, to say, you know, as an award-winning entrepreneur, an award-winning scientist, an award-winning, uh, therapist, whatever it is, it's a great line because that authority means that other people will want to listen maybe more than if you're just someone who has been doing that for a number of years. So awards entries are things that can absolutely create opportunities for publicity. They're in themselves a good exercise because they force us to write down what we're really doing, what we're doing well. And in my experience, both of being lucky enough to win awards but also to organize awards. They're a great way to connect with members of the industry. So in the British Business Awards in China, we had 8 awards, and each award had its own panel of judges, and they operated independently of one another. And many of the judges told me afterwards that they had enjoyed the networking with the other judges as much as the rest of the process. So it's one thing to enter, but as I say, it's also just as great to take part because we learn from the process, but also we might just meet someone who may be a great employee, investor, partner, or customer as a result of taking part. Ultimately, business is a competition. And we have our own internal metrics, but if we can win awards and be seen to be winning awards, then that is the best endorsement that we can possibly get for our business. So I'd encourage you to look for 2 to 3 awards from your national, for example, your regional, your country. Look for industry and look for, for example, local media or vertical media awards. That should give you a nice round number of 10 to enter. And if you are winning 10% of that, then, you know, at least you've got one big award that you can come out, take the staff, take the team to reward them as well for all of their hard work. And let's not forget then the, the benefits of winning an award for morale. And even if we don't win at least we've shown people that we're there and we're competing and that we are potential award winners. And even in competing, that we are actually very much a vibrant and alive business. So with that, I encourage you to look at the events that you could enter. Think of the awards that you can take part and maybe even sponsor an award if you feel like you would like to do that and get the benefits from sponsorship. Or if one doesn't exist already, as I did in China in 2008, take on the mantle and create an awards for your industry, your town, your city, your industry, because we all need recognition and awards, especially by peer group, are the greatest recognition of all. So thank you. My name is Jim James. If you like this Speak PR podcast, I invite you to listen to all of the other ones. I also invite you to come to our website at eastwestpr.com, where we have a newsletter which goes out every Friday. And once you've had that, maybe you'd like to contribute to this podcast. Do please reach out to me. I'm jim@eastwestpr.com. You can also find me on LinkedIn, and my contact details are in the show notes. So with that, I wish you the best of health, a profitable business, and that you keep on entering awards.
