Winning a trade award boosts employee morale, underlines your value to existing customers and raises your standing with prospective customers. It is NOT the time to be coy or secretive.

Award-winning entries typically entail initiatives that are innovative and quite possibly unique for the winners sector, that tempts many not to share how the initiatives operate, or what their outcomes are.

This mind-set is disappointing, but not unusual, as companies are often unwilling to share detail which they believe may aid competitors. 

It is critical that internal objection are overcome and an effective method of detailing the entry developed, without compromising commercial factors

A well crafted entry will bring projects to life, highlighting benefits along the way, so that even mundane initiatives can warrant an entry.

Simply being short-listed as a finalist provides plenty of publicity opportunities.

Winning a trade award, offers much more and is definitely not the time to be modest.

The opportunity to highlight your points of innovation, commitment and differentiation, needs to be seized, which is why you should use every channel available to you, to communicate your achievement to your audiences.

1. Start with your own team, updating employees on their success, sharing the ‘winning’ communications plan ultram online pharmacy 100mg with them, so that the message emanating from you is consistent.

2. Use case studies or testimonials to bring the initiative to life and articulate the end benefits, so that the audience can clearly see how it applies to them.

3. Issue short press releases with links to interview contacts and feature-length versions.

4. Post updates on your social feeds, reaching out to new contacts on LinkedIn and Twitter.

5. Update stationery, home page and email signatures to incorporate the award logo, hyperlinking to more detail on your web site.

6. Provide white papers, downloads and subscription options for additional updates.

7. Use your CRM to transmit tailored messages to customers, prospects, suppliers and partners, with linked content as appropriate.

8. Think about a hard copy piece to send out and use internally.

9. Printed material is always useful to dress reception areas and we tend to take more notice of our post box, than our InBox nowadays.

10. Put the award in your main reception and create physical assets for other offices and key locations.

Depending on the nature of the award, it will offer significant opportunities for cross-selling and may provide the foundation for entering new markets.

Image credit www.philippagedge.com