Top 10 Tips for Writing Successful Awards Nominations

There are lots of awards about at the moment, but sadly it's often not the best company that wins them, but the one with the most well written and compelling awards nominations.  So here's some advice to help you showcase your business and win those prestigious accolades!

1. Bear in mind that the judges have to read anything up to 100 submissions – always keep within word/character counts, and if they are not specified, remember that less is more!
2. Where you are asked a question – answer it specifically and directly. Provide ONLY the information requested and don’t be tempted to digress.
3. NEVER include generic marketing literature or general text from your website unless you are specifically asked for it.
4. Avoid using technical or industry jargon – use simple language that anyone can understand as some of your judges may not be from within your industry sector. Get someone you trust who doesn’t know your business sector well to review your awards nominations to ensure they are easy to understand. Write your response as if you were answering the question verbally avoiding the temptation to throw in long words, technical terminology and “marketing speak”.
5. Break down the question or topic to ensure you answer every element of it.  Example: Describe your employee training and development programme. Please focus on how employees have benefitted and how it supports your recruitment & retention.  There are 3 parts to this question and you need to answer all of them. Use 3 headings: employee training & development programme, how employees have benefitted from training & development and how training & development supports recruitment & retention.  Now write RELEVANT narrative under each heading to ensure you cover all of the elements of the question.
6. Create impact by using examples, case studies, testimonials, evidence, facts and figures to demonstrate any statements you make. Example:  poorly written statement “We have exceptional staff retention and much of this is attributable to our new training & development programme.” could be better written as “Since implementing our new training & development programme 12 months ago, our staff retention has increased by 37%. Additionally, 89% of our workforce scored us as ‘excellent to work for’ in our last independently carried out employee satisfaction survey.”
7. If you are asked for a case study, try using the following 4 headings – (1) Background, (2) Challenges, (3) Actions, i.e. what you did, and (4)Outcomes. Make it very specific, full of facts and figures and relevant to the question.
8. Collect relevant testimonials. Ensure they are not generic, but rather back up the content of your case study or response to the question to add further impact.
9. When proof reading the your final version of the awards nominations, ask yourself the following questions:  Have I answered every part of each question that I’ve been asked?  Is there information in my response that is not relevant to the question? (if yes, then remove this)!  Have I included evidence, facts and figures to make it more compelling?  Have I got relevant examples, case studies or testimonials to make my response more impactful?  Have I used UK English spell check and proof read the submission thoroughly?
10. Don’t underestimate how much time you will need to do this well. Winning awards nominations containing say 5 questions could take several days write from scratch!