Why entering awards is good for business
Entering awards are good for your business, your brand, and your people. This article explores the benefits of entering awards and how to get the most value for your business.
Awards give your business a story of excellence, build your industry profile, and recognise the hard work and achievements of your team.
While winning is great, and is often rewarded with a trophy, press interviews and bragging rights, but don’t underestimate the value and promotional opportunities of entering and not taking home the gold.
This is why you should enter awards and thoughts on how to leverage your entry, and how to step it up when you win.
Brand differentiation
Becoming an award-winning business is a great way to set yourself apart from your competition. It also aligns your business with the best of industry, giving your customers another reason to select you over another business in your sector.
Promotion - celebrate your entry and your result
Being associated with an industry or business award is an excellent PR opportunity before, during and after the event. As soon as you have entered, start sharing your story, pride at entering and aligning your brand with the award brand which is likely to include; excellence, leadership and prestige.
In the lead up to and during the event share your journey with your audience; build your story of excellence, share your teams excitement leading up to attending the awards, and pride at attending the ceremony.
Building Relationships
It’s not what you know, it’s who you know, and building connections with other entrants cannot be under-estimated.
Win, loose or draw, be gracious and promote, celebrate and support all entries in your category with a post on social media and phone call to personally congratulate fellow entrants. Not only is it good manners, it aligns your brand with the best in class and that’s always a good thing.
Take a step back from your business
Preparing your entry forces you to step back and look at your business from a different perspective. You will identify your strengths, weaknesses, achievements, uncover new opportunities and interrogate and refine your business and marketing strategy.
The process will uncover opportunities for improvement, and that’s got to be good for business.
Boosts team morale
Awards remind your team of the great work that has been done, why they should be proud of their effort, and give everyone an opportunity to acknowledge and celebrate their achievements.
Regardless of winning, entering or being a finalist, awards are a very public way of recognising everyone’s hard work and commitment.
Build your credibility
When awards are judge by industry-leaders and experts, winning builds recognition of your teams work, and certifies your place within the industry. Feedback on your entry from industry experts is invaluable resource you may not normally have access to.
Attracting talent and investment
Businesses who enter and win awards are recognised as being or inspiring to be best in class. This positioning helps attract and retain the best employees, and opens doors and dialog with partners, alliances and potential investors.
Entering awards are good for your business, your brand and your people, giving you a story of excellence and commitment to share with your audience to build your business profile, and recognise the hard work and achievements of your team.
Nominations for the Victorian Tourism Awards close on 30th June
We encourage our tourism colleagues to nominate and enter the 2021 Victorian Tourism Awards.
Now is the time to celebrate your business, tourism in Victoria, and share your story of resilience and excellence with your loyal supporters and potential visitors.
Our founder, Alison McDowell is a six year veteran Victorian Tourism Awards Judge. If you need to be convinced how important entering the awards are for your business and your town, give Ali a call on 0411 135 317 or email alison@roadmapstrategy.com.au
Find out more
About the 2021 Victorian Tourism Awards
Smart brands don't go dark
When the people couldn’t visit the little penguins at Phillip Island, Phillip Island took the penguins into lounge rooms across the globe - 25 million times.
Madeline Blaer, Monash University uncovered a number of insights from this virtual initiative that included; watching the penguins became a ritual for people, helped people cope during lockdown, built communities, audiences built relationships with Rangers wanting to visit to meet them, conservation messages connected and the audience took action, and the initiative positively influenced future visitation from intrastate, interstate and overseas.
Phillip Island Penguin Parade did not go dark. They built stronger relationships with existing visitors, amplified their voice globally when competitor brands fell silent, and built their brand awareness and knowledge.
Phillip Island Nature Park grew their share of voice in a mostly silent market, as a result the little penguins and Phillip Island have entered the consideration set of a higher proportion of consumers.
Congratulations Phillip Island Nature Park on an exceptional industry leading marketing initiative.
If you need a hand developing with your marketing or brand strategy, or next marketing campaign, give Alison McDowell a call to discuss how Roadmap Strategy help you get the rubber hitting the road and your business achieving their marketing and business goals.
Destination Canada - a campaign on point
Destination Canada’s ‘Heartbeat of Canada’ campaign has been developed to inspire Canadians to travel locally, and it is brilliant.
An integrated campaign that launched on 23rd May with National Tourism Week, it was supported by a tourism anthem video, locals sending postcards to their friends, and now regions strengthening the campaign with local messaging.
Our article takes a quick look at each aspect of the campaign, and explores how this campaign is connecting with the people and how it will make a real difference.
Launching with National Tourism Week, the industry came together to demonstrate the enormous value tourism brings to the life of Canadians. While they acknowledged the incredible difficulties of the past year, they showed their industry is strong, and ready to welcome back visitors when the time is right.
National Tourism Week was marked with the launch of their new Tourism Anthem. Set to the timing of our beating hearts, it highlights the makers, business owners, performers and people that make up Canada’s tourism sector. It showcases the richness of diversity, heartbeat of their country, and spiritual connection to place. I dare you not to be moved watching this video.
With 39% of Canadians expecting their first trip to be visiting friends and relatives, Destination Canada’s local postcards initiative connects and inspires and VFR travel. Canadian’s simply enter the web portal, select a postcard with a message such as ‘Miss You, Come Visit’, type a personal message and recipients address, and Destination Canada print and mail the postcard at no cost to the sender.
Destinations across Canada are now releasing their own campaigns to build on the Heartbeat of Canada campaign. Destination Toronto has just released their Love Letter to Toronto. Another exceptional production, the video that connects the audience with Toronto Ambassadors who offer their diverse perspectives on the city they love and call home.
Heartbeat of Canada is an integrated campaign at its best. Powerful, emotional, spiritual and most importantly authentic, the campaign connects its audience with the place, the industry, their friends, its cities, and its people.
It's like an orchestra, with each piece adding to the brilliance and power of the performance. An exceptional campaign, that shows that when we work together, and all sing from the same hymn book we are more likely to be heard.
I cannot wait to watch this campaign continue to build, grow, and roar.
If you need a hand developing your destination marketing campaign, give Alison McDowell a call to discuss how Roadmap Strategy can work with you to create a campaign to build your destination brand and achieve your business goals.
How to choose the right advertising channels
Consumers are served over 10,000 advertisements every day.
Understanding how to develop and execute an advertising strategy that will cut through the noise, and achieve your desired advertising goals is more important than ever.
Success relies on a number of factors including; your brand, your target market, your creative, getting the media mix right, and of course your budget.
It’s about constructing integrated messaging across the right media, that seamlessly engages the target audience. And when you get this right, your audience responds, and you achieve the desired goals for your company.
Here are some tips to consider
Budget - Be clear on your budget. This will help you prioritize the channels that will give you the best return, and achieve your campaign goals.
Know your audience – Have a deep understanding of your target market, know who they are, where they are, how they consume media, understand their values and how to speak to them.
Good creative and messaging will make your campaign – work with the best agency you can afford. Develop a solid brand and creative platform and stick with it – remember you’ll get tired of you creative before your consumers have even caught on to it.
Know your competitors – Know what they are doing, where they are advertising and if it is working. Don’t be obsessed, but learn, listen and leverage.
Be clear on your advertising objectives - Prepare a cracking brief – the best briefs return the rockstar status work. And ensure your product, brand, and value proposition are clearly defined.
Be brave– your media choice will be informed by your brief, budget, product and brand. At all times keep the customer at the centre of your media decision making, and think beyond social media and digital - traditional media will often deliver better cut through in a less cluttered market . And be brave, test and trial new media .
Measure, measure, measure – Measuring and monitoring the performance of your advertising is critical to allow you to adjust your advertising strategy to continually improve performance
When you reach the right person, at the right time with the right message you will achieve your goals.
If you need a hand developing your advertising plan, creative and messaging, give Alison McDowell a call to and let Roadmap Strategy help take away the pain and get the rubber hitting the road.