Affiliate awards season is very much around the corner, providing a great platform to shout about your affiliate brand and get noticed. Whether you have an excellent team of affiliate managers or are driving an innovative marketing strategy for your affiliate website, you will want to make sure you get your brand out there in a cost effective way and everyone knows what you’re doing.
Industry awards competitions allow you to do this. In this article, we’ll be teaching you how to write a compelling award entry that will be sure to help you stand out form the rest of the applicants.
Tell your story
You’ll appeal more to the judges by telling the story of your brand, rather than just extolling your own virtues. Take them on a journey with you, from the brand that you imagined to where you are today and beyond. This creates a better connection to your brand, which makes it easier to add you to the shortlist.
Adding in goals for the future also shows that your brand is ambitious and ready to grow. We love to support brands that are accelerating their own growth, so make sure you show this facet.
Anyone can explain that they have a highly successful brand, but you want to create a connection to the people behind the brand.
Keep it interesting
Judges tend to have a lot of award submissions to look through, so you want to ensure that they’re interested in what you have to say. This is a tough task, as the same clichés tend to come up in awards submissions over and over again. This tends to make the user tune out and you won’t be remembered when it comes to the shortlist.
As you write your entry, think about what you would like to read about a brand that would make it stand out. This kind of innovative thinking is what will get you noticed.
Mix it up
If you’re not leading the crowd, you’re falling behind. Think about ways that you can mix things up and knock the judges socks off. Video is becoming much more common for awards submissions, as it can give a better impression of your brand than the written word. If you want to be able to stay in the minds of those judges for as long as possible, then show what makes you special.
A video doesn’t have to be a huge investment either, as you can find cheaper ways to show off what makes your brand interesting. Even slide shows and carousels can give your entry a dynamic edge.
Be concise
If you have a lot to say about you’re brand, that’s great! But, you want to be able to boil this down to the key facts in a concise way. These judges have a lot of entries to read through, so they don’t want to get stuck with a lot of waffle that doesn’t make much sense. If you have a lot of repetition within your entry, they might tune out and skip over the important parts.
Think about the format you want your entry to take. Some people prefer flowing paragraphs, whereas others prefer simple bullet points. Whichever one of these you opt for, make sure your entry is structured logically and easy to follow. Lead from one point onto another, don’t jump around onto different topics and back.
Judging processes and times are hard, if you can make it really easy for the reader to understand why you think you should win, then you’re half way there to standing out from the other entrants.
We hope that you’re successful during awards season, take these tips and you’ll have a stellar award winning entry. Remember you don’t always have to win, getting your brand out and about on shortlisted nominations is just as useful if you’re building a growing affiliate business so make sure you are seen and heard.
Apart from the prestige, awards evenings , like the upcoming SBC Awards on the 4th December, also offer a great opportunity to meet your peers and take clients out for an evening of great entertainment and a chance to celebrate successes over the year.
