Ever wondered what it takes to win a business award in Australia? Awards submission processes for businesses are famously lengthy and complex, with hundreds of awards to enter and thousands of categories to choose from, it can all feel a bit much.
Where do you start?
What awards do you enter?
How do you know what to write?
At Green Door Co., we have extensive experience writing and entering awards for businesses, individuals and organizations across Australia.
Here’s a snapshot of our three step methodology, which has led to our 97.5% success rate:
1. Strategic Research
Successful award submissions require brutal honesty about your business, as we reflect on how your team exhibits excellence, along with why your business deserves to be recognised.
Business Research: Using our experience as writers and journalists, we will ask the right questions about your business to get the information we need, including what you’re doing well, what makes you stand out from the crowd and any challenges you may have.
Awards research: A dream without a plan is just a wish, right? That’s why research is key to developing an effective awards strategy. Reviewing a range of awards, their categories and their entry requirements, along with comparisons to past winners and the alignment of each award to your key business objectives, ensures we recommend awards you have a shot at winning.
Awards Deadline Management: Once the award strategy has been finalised, the next step is to research all awards deadlines and create an awards calendar. Then, you can link this calendar into a project management pipeline with automated notifications for feedback and review stages, to ensure you never miss out on an opportunity.
2. Clever Copywriting
Once the research stage has been completed, the in-depth interviews and award copywriting begins, to craft the most compelling message for the judging panel.
In-depth Interviews: These interviews, when held by professional journalists and writers as they are at Green Door Co., are crucial to developing award-winning entries. Asking the right questions, managing the time wisely and inducing interviewees to provide compelling evidence as to their successes, all help us gather the information we need to help businesses win awards.
Awards Copy: A good business awards submission is cleverly written, and articulates clearly why you deserve to win the category of the award you have chosen to enter. A compelling awards submission needs to be succinct, powerful and an honest representation of your business and its achievements. Good submissions hit the awards criteria as well as answering all the questions in a way that takes the judge along with you on your business journey.
Supplementary evidence: Standout awards submissions provide supplementary evidence whether it is required or not. Some business awards require videos, some require PDF pitch documents, others photography, testimonials or in depth financial reports audited by your accountant. It’s important that all relevant documentation or assets which substantiate any claims throughout the submission are included, to ensure the evidence is clear.
3. Check, Check, then Check Again!
Review your submission: After putting together an awards submission you can be exhausted. Days of editing, reviewing and re-writing can leave your mind a little blurry. However, it is crucial that you double and triple check your work before you submit, and get high level executives to provide their feedback and approval.
Submit your entry: After triple checking your submission for any grammatical errors or mistakes, it is time to submit! Make sure before you submit that you double check any specific submission requirements, such as the file type you need to upload or the document size. Finding out at the last minute that you need to resize your PDF attachment, could mean you miss the deadline and all that hard work was for nothing!
Why hire an awards agency?
Completing the awards submission process can be time consuming and tiresome. Everything from researching which awards would be suitable to enter, right through to writing and finalising your award submission takes up a whole lot of time which many businesses do not have. Depending on the requirements of an award submission, completing the entire process could take up to several days, even weeks!
Luckily, there are awards agencies (like us!) who can take care of the entire process for you. Outsourcing the awards process means that you get to save time and stay focused on doing what you do best, whilst someone else ensures that you are putting your best foot forward.
Reach out if you’d like to get a quote from the awards experts.
