Launch Awards to Boost Traffic,
Revenues and Retention for Your Site

Awards can be a powerful tool to drive traffic, revenue, and member retention. But it takes planning and foresight. In this quick how-to report,

Awards can be a powerful tool to drive traffic, revenues, and member retention. That’s why our publisher Anne Holland has launched an award offering for nearly every industry she’s ever published paid content in. However, awards take more time and work than you may be expecting. Here’s our quick guide to make launching awards easier, including 15 how-to tips and a downloadable checklist.

Top 3 Awards Program Goals

Generally, you should pick just one of these goals and execute vigorously against it annually — plan to run the awards for at least two years before you see “hockey stick” traction in the marketplace. (Even awards that are successful from the start tend to rise sharply in popularity around year three.)

1.Revenue Stream:

Odd but true, many business execs and bloggers who’d think twice about paying for useful content will happily shell out $99-297 per awards entry that could net them nothing. And some companies will pay for multiple entries without blinking. In addition, sponsors may eagerly pay thousands to underwrite an awards program, even if they shy away from far cheaper “regular” ads on your site. It’s about perceived value.

However, to pull it off, your media brand must already have a high perceived value in the marketplace. The more esteemed you are publicly; the easier it is to make money with awards. Site brands with official-sounding names, in particular words such as “Association”, may also be able to pull off an award. It’s a name a would-be winner or sponsor hopes will burnish their reputation through proximity.

Also, you’ll need a large list of press, bloggers, members, and top prospects who you *already* have warm relationships with, in order to promote paid nominations effectively. During the first couple of years of an award, getting nominations — paid or free — can be like pulling teeth. (Luckily, after that it can get super-easy.) So, you’ll need to pull every string, and perhaps even secretly comp some entries or even sponsors just to get the ball rolling.

2.Traffic Generation:

If you’re not already well-known, branded awards can be terrific for traffic. Awards give you an excuse, beyond your regular subscription offers, to trumpet your brand loudly and get links back to your site.

  • SEO wealth: bloggers and social media users may spread the word about your free entry deadlines. Also winners eagerly post their award icon on their own blogs and sites with a backlink to your site.
  • PR glory: give your winners custom press releases (easy, just email them a word doc) and some will pay for publicity about you!

Example: A press release announcing an awards winner that appeared on a local newspaper’s business section:

  • Brand building: Invite “celebrity” judges and plaster their names and/or brands all over your promotions for the awards. These may be top execs for a famous brand company in your niche, famous bloggers, niche media personalities, etc. (not Kim Kardassian.) Their brand then casts a halo of credibility over your site for the entire period of the awards — which can be several months from the start of nominations to final winner announcements.
  • Email list building: be sure to add an overlay to your awards homepage to ask everyone to sign up for your free awards newsletter. Add a checkbox for them to also receive your regular prospect newsletter. If the newsletter is a fun read, complete with winner interviews, awards party snapshots, fun factoids, etc, you can keep enthusiasm building for your awards year-round.

3. Member or Subscriber Retention:

These awards generally don’t cost money to enter, but only members can enter and win them. The purpose is to raise their profile in the community and let them show off their pride in being a VIP. You can reward behaviors such as best community post, member photo, or member creation, that lead to higher retention rates.

Example: Here’s an ad City Data runs to promote forum interaction:

If you run awards as a retention device, try to schedule nominations to occur the 30 days before your largest group of member accounts tend to be up for expiration, and schedule winner announcements for 30 days after that, so folks are tempted to stick around to see if they won.

Also, if your site includes member profile pages or images, be ready to add an ‘award winner’ icon to these where relevant, as well as distributing backlinked icons for members to add to their blogs or other online presence.

We’ve created an Awards Checklist to make launching and running awards easier for you. Here’s the link for it. In the meantime, here are our tips on running awards effectively:

Tips on Nominations & Entries

  • Categories: You want as many categories as possible, as well as levels (gold, silver, etc.) so you can encourage more people to enter and you can give more awards out. However, too many categories may mean you’ll have too few entries per category to give an award at all. It’s a balancing act. Best practice is to launch with fewer categories and expand over time.

    Yes, you can announce a category and then just not give an award if no one is worthy. (You don’t even have to mention it later.) You can also invent new categories on the fly during the judging process if you end up with entries that demand it.

  • Deadlines: Pick a deadline that’s on a memorable date, preferably the 15th or end of the month; also preferably near the end of the week. Be prepared to extend the deadline either formally or informally by a day or two for late entries as inevitably you’ll get a glut of requests to do so. Also be ready to whip your entry form down the microsecond the deadline hits, so it’s visibly enforced to teach people to enter on time next year.

    Promote your deadline heavily on all materials. Aside from the name of the awards, the deadline must be the most prominent content on every ad and page for the awards. Otherwise people forget.

  • Entry forms: You may use the term “nomination form” instead because it’s classier for entrants to say they are “nominated for” an award than to be entered for it. However, some people may think they can’t nominate themselves, so make sure it’s clear if they can. Any form-builder software — or survey software — can be used to create a form.

    Be sure to ask for multiple contacts — the person filling out the form, the person’s name on the credit card, team-members who may have been involved in the project that’s being nominated, and vendors who were involved in the project. That way you can give more people recognition and backlinked award icons!

    Add verbiage to the form that clearly states incomplete entries will be automatically disqualified.

  • Payment: Make sure the entry price is clear to people before they begin the entry process, but put your request for payment info at the very end of the entry form. After prospects have invested effort in writing all about themselves, they’re more likely to pay. If you’re anticipating lots of paid entries, you may want to set up a merchant account just for the awards and arrange for resulting credit card statements to have the awards name on them. That way there’s less customer service and chargebacks due to “what is this charge for?” confusion later.

    On your thank-you page for payment, include a link to the start of the entry form to make it easy for people to submit multiple entries if they qualify for more than one category or want to enter on behalf of more than one client.

  • Soliciting entries: Roll your sleeves up — this is hard work! In addition to various blasts, house ads and PR, you’ll also need to contact top prospects on a one-to-one basis *repeatedly* to get their entry. Even people who promise you they’ll enter, then forget to do so.

    Create a list of the people who you most want to enter (or vendors who should enter on behalf of clients) and hound them individually via multiple media. Don’t rely on email or social media alone. Best practice is to use the phone 48 hours prior to deadline. Obviously you’ll need a way to cross people who already entered off your list prior to phoning them.

Judging Tips

  • Criteria: Prior to launching awards, you must define the judging criteria because that info drives your entry form and also must appear on all info pages about the awards. Potential entrants are keenly interested in it!

    Criteria should be as specific as possible. Perhaps three to five factors that you can spell out clearly. When you actually judge entries, assign a range of points to each criteria (such as 1-5) and ask judges simply to give points. The math at the end gives you your winners. Judges use discretion in tie-breaking.

  • Celebrity judges: External judges are there for window dressing, not for heavy lifting. Give each an easy category to judge (something without a mountain of entries) or ask them to act as a tie-breaker judge. Anything you can do to make the judging process easier is worth doing for them.

    If your award is sponsored, you may allow the sponsor to act as a judge, but they should never be allowed to put their clients’ or customers’ entries above the rest.

  • Internal judging: Don’t judge entries as they come in (aside from reviewing them to be sure all the people who said they would enter, actually have done so.) Wait until the entries are closed. Have one staffer do a quick run through of all entries to make sure each is (a) complete and (b) in the right category. (You’d be stunned at how many entrants screw categories up.)

    As noted above, you may decide some categories don’t have enough worthy entries to give an award; while other entries, while others may have so many entries that it’s worth creating sub-categories or other extra categories in order to reward excellence.

    Internal judging takes longer than you expect. Clear the decks. Order pizza. Call everyone into the conference room and slog through it together.

Winner Promotions

  • Award icon: Prior to launching awards, have a really nice award icon designed. It should be small enough to fit nicely in the sidebar of a typical blog. You may also want to do Facebook and/or Twitter versions of the icon. Include room for the year so you can update annually. Do versions for various levels (gold, silver, etc.)

    Get winners their icons ASAP (hopefully within seconds) after the awards are announced so in their excitement, they are more likely to post the icons online, along with your backlink. The link should go to an Awards microsite (or main site section) homepage which you intend to keep live, and probably update routinely, for years.

  • Real-world award or trophy: If people pay to to enter, you probably should send some sort of physical award as well. It should be something they will proudly and easily display. It may range from a plaque to a cup. A computer mouse embossed with your logo is also a great idea. (See below for sourcing.)
  • PR outreach: Along with your own press release, you may wish to send each winner a custom press release that they can use to announce their win to the press. Not everyone will use it, but more will than if you didn’t make it easy for them!
  • Social media: Use social media to congratulate each winner publicly separately. For example, you should do a separate Tweet for each winner (stagger it over a few days if you want.) Folks are more likely to pass-along social mentions to their friends and colleagues when the entire mention focuses on them.
  • Real-world ceremony: Best practice is to hold a ceremony in a location that most of your subscribers or members can get to easily. If your customer base is too geographically diverse, consider holding your ceremony in conjunction with a real-world event that many may be at. This might be your own conference, or you could ask a third-party conference to allow you to hold the ceremony either formally or informally at their event. Conference organizers are always looking for ideas for great parties and lunch speakers — awards work well for this.

    However, if your awards are sponsored, you must make sure your sponsorship does not conflict with event sponsors or sponsorship policies. Sometimes an award sponsor who is also an exhibitor at a major event will be thrilled to use the ceremony as an excuse to put on their own private party there… and they may even pay for the whole thing!

  • Webinar: Whether or not you have a real-world ceremony, you should consider doing a webinar to announce winners. Include screenshots of any relevant graphics, such as their logo, their headshot (if submitted), and anything visual related to their entry. Be sure to mention anything a celebrity judge said about their entry, as well as giving your own staff’s quick analysis of why in particular the entry was award-worthy.

    If your award is sponsored, ask your sponsor to co-moderate the awards. Their logo should also go on the first and last slides of the deck. However, it’s inappropriate for them to include a sales pitch or offer in the presentation. If they are interested in lead generation, you can give them a special offer checkbox on your webinar registration page, and/or a one-time email blast to all registrants the day after the event.

    Although award ceremony webinars are generally incredibly popular (some get twice the number of registrants as your other webinar topics), replays are less exciting. Instead of a replay, we recommend you post a Hall of fame.

  • Hall of Fame: You’ll want to post winner’s names on some sort of Hall of Fame page on your awards microsite (or site section) for all the years to come. It’s not only public recognition, but also gives credibility to your awards for potential future entrants.

    Your own paywall policies will help decide how much of the information about winning entries is public vs paywalled. (For example, our sister-site WhichTestWon.com posts winning entry Case Studies publicly for 30 days, and then pushes that info behind the paywall while leaving winner’s names public.)

    You’ll also have to decide whether or not to link to external sites. Bear in mind, that link is sometimes as valuable to winners as the award itself.

Useful links:

[Checklist] Running an Awards Program

[Checklist] Maximizing Online Public Relations For Year-Round Impact Requiring Little Work

CafePress — One of the easiest-to-use sources for short-run orders of customized mousepads, t-shirts, mugs & more.

Branders.com — Offers computer mice custom-embossed with your logo, as well as full line of other logo-ready schwag.

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