Tips to writing an award entry!

The opportunities from entering an awards programme are endless, it creates a thirst for your employees to succeed, the tools to create a strong business plan and it’s a chance to celebrate what you have done well.

To benefit from these awards, you do need to put your best foot forward from the outset, so here are six tips to help you complete your awards application and stand out to the judges.

1. It starts with the basics!

Things everyone must do - answer every question! Say enough to provide what you have been asked for, but don’t repeat yourself too much to “hit a certain word count”, for the Westpac Auckland Business Awards we suggest that 500 words per question are enough to provide the judges with a good understanding of your business.

Look at what you do well and see what categories fit those achievements. Entering more than one category not only gives you more chances of becoming finalist, it gives you more feedback across many areas of your business.

Previous award winners have used the awards as an opportunity to celebrate what they do well, and to collect feedback from the judges so that they can apply successful business strategies to their businesses in the future.

2. Focus on storytelling

Look for opportunities to inject the keywords from the question into your answer and tell a story while doing it.

For example, let’s say you are entering Excellence in Marketing, and to achieve excellence you identified you had missed a gap in the market and decided to invest in your digital marketing to overcome this in the last 12 months. This investment has allowed you to expand your team and employ a specialist to drive your digital marketing. 

You can speak to this in a number of ways, it could demonstrate growth in your business and innovation. If your new employee is helping you with a fresh approach to achieve your strategic goals by delivering digital marketing.

They may have come up with new ideas that place you at the forefront of the industry you are in. It might sound as if it is employee-based, but you can showcase the overall business decision that was made, to then provide success within the marketing arm of your company.  

Don't be afraid to share the hardships - business is never perfect. The judges like to see and understand your challenges, how you have overcome them, or how you are planning to overcome them. This is all part of storytelling, remember that you want to take the judges on a journey and have them feel the pride and pain in your business. 

3. Make sure you answer the question

It sounds obvious, but this is quite common. You start off answering the question, “Explain how you market your business. How do you measure and evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing activities?” and 300 words later you realise you’ve started talking about your commitment to your community.

In the previous question, we talked about an employee investment, however the focus of the answer was marketing and how that employee has a positive impact on the business through marketing initiatives. The answer remains to be an answer to the marketing question, even though we spoke about staff. 

4. Keep it simple and specific

Don’t overcomplicate your submission to sound fancy with big words and bigger sentences. Judges are reading dozens or even hundreds of entries – the last thing you want to do is make their jobs harder, so they gloss over and potentially miss all the best bits!

Keep it simple, highlight and bold the things you want to stand out - this will pull the reader in, much like an article. Use graphs and supporting documentation that highlight your statements, and make sure you follow up a statement with facts in your entry.

If you are using acronyms, make sure you have explained that, an example would be "our SaaS (software as a service) product is B2B (Business to Business)". Acronyms become common knowledge within our sectors, however, may not be common in the public.

Be as specific as possible, with as many metrics, facts and figures as you can muster up. What has revenue growth been? Have staff or resources increased? How have you invested in new tech and what other aspects of your business can you quantify?

5. Get it reviewed

Now that you have proofread your entry, it’s time to get some "fresh eyes" to look over it. Pass it onto a colleague, friend or family member to check for clarity, errors and omissions. When you’ve worked on a piece of writing for so long, you can no longer be objective about its impact because you know what you mean, but the judges might not!

Ideally you want someone who is not across the finer details, or have little understanding of your business to review your application, as they’ll be able to give you honest, objective feedback about how compelling your entry is and highlight the areas they didn’t quite grasp or understand.

If they have questions or are confused by something within your entry, it gives you an opportunity to look at possible edits to your entry.

6. Make your claim... then back it up

Backing up a claim you have made is extremely important. If you tell the judges that your employees are the happiest they have ever been, prove it!

Use reports, graphs, or images for evidence to back your claims; preferably within the body of your entry. If there isn’t the option to place a graph or figures within the body of your entry, then refer to your supporting documentation – but don’t leave it out!

I hope that these six tips can help you towards a great entry. Whatever the outcome - winner, finalist or entrant – the process of preparing an awards entry is a valuable exercise, allowing you and your team to consider your work and its impacts in detail and take pride in a job well done.

In addition, the potential exposure gained from an awards entry could bring you to the attention of new clients, new collaborators, new projects and it might help you reflect on what you have done well, as well as what you might do differently in the future.