We’re delighted to share that we took home the award for best small business website at the Cork Digital Marketing Awards 2023. 🥳
We had a wonderful night, sharing stories and ideas with some of Cork’s finest businesses. Our sincere thanks to Cork Chamber who created and organised the awards and to digital design experts, Spéire, who sponsored and judged our category. It’s lovely to be part of such a vibrant event – we chatted about everything from legal matters to marketing in multiple languages to meerkat videos!
Write an award-winning application in 10 steps
Win or lose, awards’ nights are a fantastic opportunity to take stock of the incredible things you’ve done and showcase them for the recognition they deserve. The Awards nights are a low-cost high-visibility way to network and elevate your business – and also often a lot of fun to attend!
We write and polish-up award applications for clients regularly. Here’s our top tips on writing an application that stands out.
- DO READ IT, DON’T RUSH IT. Read the whole application before you start writing your answers. Also read what they say about the category and the criteria – note the adjectives they use. Think about your angle. Make sure you are answering the questions they are asking.
- DO LOOK BACK. Looking through their past winners and see what approach they took to the answering the award questions. Look through your own testimonials and reviews for examples you can use. You might get inspired!
- DRAFT IT OFFLINE. Hitting the submit button by accident is all too easy. Also if you do it in Word or Google Docs you have access to all the proofing tools you won’t have online and you can share it before you send.
- TELL A STORY. An interesting award submission connects the dots to tell a bigger story. Maybe you have a unique take on what the award is about, or something amazing has happened recently, or you have overcome a challenge.
- BACK IT UP. Support your award story with quotes or stats. Personalise it with a human story or make it specific with a number. Meatloaf once said 96% of people would read anything for love. (Yep, this is a complete lie but it’s fun to read, right?)
- BE YOURSELF. Stuffy business writing is deathly dull to read. Try dictating your answers into speech-to-text instead of writing them to see how you would say it in person. Don’t get too formal – let your enthusiasm for what you do shine though.
- LET IT SIT OVERNIGHT. Re-read it the next day, you will almost always spot errors or come up with better ideas.
- WATCH THE WORDCOUNT AND KEEP IT SHORT. Avoid waffle. Get to the point fast in each section. Use bullet points or online editors like Hemingway to turn epic prose into snappy reading.
- GET IT PROOFREAD. Hire a professional, ask your co-worker, bribe a family member with tea and biscuits but get someone else to check it out before you hit send. Spelling or grammatical mistakes look sloppy and distract from your story.
- SAVE A COPY. It might be two days, it might be two years but I can guarantee at some point you will say “I wish we had a copy of that”. They’re handy for everything from end-of-year reports to project tenders to media interviews to your “About Us” webpage. Don’t hit submit and discover it’s gone into the void. Hang on to that good stuff!
If you’ve always wanted to put your business forward for an award, but been intimidated by the application process, consider this your wake-up call. Give it a go – you have nothing to lose, and everything to gain.
