Five reasons why you need to blow your own business trumpet and enter awards

Love to celebrate your success (and maybe even win new customers)? Find out why it’s important to blow your own business trumpet by entering awards. 

As Brits, we’re often told it isn’t appropriate or good manners to blow our own trumpet and be proud of our successes.

But, while it’s true that boasting about how fabulously you’re doing isn’t going to make you very popular, it is important to take stock of your achievements. And to get recognition from the wider world at how well you’re doing.

How can you find business awards to enter?

At Pinpoint Marketing, we believe that an important way to celebrate successes is to enter awards. There are many business awards locally and nationally for small businesses to enter. Here are just a few:

These are all generic business awards for small businesses or for women in business. There are also many awards that are market or industry specific, such as Elektra for the engineering world, CIM for marketers, and CIPD for HR and personnel.

If you Google your industry and the word ‘awards’, I’m sure many options will come up. You can also check via your market or industry trade publications and magazines.

Five reasons why you should enter awards

Some of the award entry forms or processes can be long winded and timely to complete. But if you’re selected as a finalist or as a winner, the rewards and benefits will far outweigh this time and effort.

So why would entering (and even better, winning) an award be beneficial for your small business? Here are five reasons.

1) Boosted brand awareness

Being selected as a finalist or winning an award can boost the awareness of you, your brand and your business.

Most of these well organised awarding bodies will have great PR machines behind them to help you with advice and templates etc for distributing good news press releases.

There will also probably be options for photo opportunities that you can use and share on social media. Many will also include logos and hashtags that you can use too. Finally, such improved awareness is highly likely to have a positive impact on increasing the number of social media followers, likes, reach and engagement.

2) Attracting new business

Winning an award is a great way to attract new business through the above-mentioned social media posts and PR opportunities.

A nomination or a win could also attract new staff which in turn could lead to new business opportunities and an increase in prospects and sales. Internal marketing and internal reputation are just as important as external and wider marketing.

3) Reinforcing your clients’ and customers choice

Winning an award reinforces to clients and customers that they made the right choice with you, and maybe even see you in a new light.

They’ll be pleased with your win and will take comfort in knowing that their chosen partner or supplier is worthy, professional and an expert in their field. You can even thank loyal customers and clients by inviting them to the awards ceremony.

4) Improved staff morale

When you win an award it’s a reflection on your entire team, and can be a great way to improve staff and team morale and motivation.

Staff will feel involved and they will know that their contribution matters and will have helped towards the win. If there is an awards ceremony, then staff invited to go along will relish the opportunity to socialise and enjoy the celebrations.

5) It gives you a new USP

Finally, an award nomination or win is a great USP and a powerful way to differentiate yourself from your competition. Prospects and customers may use your win to benchmark you against a competitor they may be considering.

Why do we know so much about winning awards?

So why does Pinpoint Marketing know this about award wins? Back in early October, we got a Twitter boost from small business champion, Theo Paphitis, in his ‘Small Business Sunday’ initiative.

Since then we have seen a large increase in followers thanks to the retweet by Theo to his 500,000 Twitter followers. It’s great to have support from Theo because it can be hard to raise our profile, and he’s has recognised our hard work and helped spread the word about what we do to his following.

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