AWARDS FOR STARTUPS

The Oscars, Baftas and Olivier awards are behind us and now the important awards season begins! From travel to marketing, fashion, innovation and technology, a whole host of awards events are are on a roll, with entry deadlines looming. 

The awards landscape has changed rapidly. To start with, there are lots more of them! I’m not sure that an increase in similar awards events is necessarily a good thing. The value of a hard earned business award could be undermined if its easier to win one? 

However its true that a greater number of award platforms bring much needed recognition to emerging business owners. Many awards are now free to enter, meaning that startups and organisations with small marketing budgets can compete for a variety of performance accolades. 

Having recently secured a shortlisted place for digital startup: Grafter www.grafternow.com at the Digital Technology Leaders awards https://events.computing.co.uk/digitalleadersawards/static/2018-shortlist, I recognise how important awards are.

From both an internal and external perspective, I strongly believe awards for startups are vital part of the growth journey. Research has shown the many positive effects involved. For example, 70% of customers are positively influenced by an award when buying a product or service.

For startups on a tough journey of growth, fighting for awareness, recognition and credibility - often with shoestring budgets – these benefits are magnified. Here’s just a few of them: positive business recognition, great PR coverage, networking opportunities with 'hard to reach' people, a boost to staff morale & pride, ‘ever green ‘content that can be shared throughout the winning year and of course, a potential increase in sales.

With a wider landscape of new award opportunities, the great news is that different sector awards are recognizing an innovative or disruptive idea or design development as equal in achievement to sales stats. 

And even better news, if you're time poor, there are dedicated and experienced people and agencies out there like Reflection PR Awards https://reflectionpr.co.uk/ who can take the pain out of writing the award submission for you.

So good luck to all the startups out there who put awards as a key component part of their marketing strategy – it will be worth it!