How Business Awards can Help Small Businesses Grow

The reputation your business has will have a big impact on its success in the long-run, which is why earning awards and having a reputable history is so important in the corporate world.

We live in the age of information, so whenever somebody wants to know more about how you operate, what services you offer, and if you’re reliable or not, they can just do a quick google search. The results that come up will most likely determine whether that customer will choose you or somebody else. In fact, awards consultancy Boost found that 82% of business decision-makers admitted to being influenced by awards when buying for their business.

This is why we’ve put together this article about business awards and the impact they can have on your business -especially if you have a smaller, early-stage enterprise. It’s an interesting subject so we’re ending this introduction right here and jumping straight into the content.

They help increase brand awareness

Receiving an award can make your brand more recognizable, and marketing is just so much easier when you can display your award on your campaign, ad or homepage. If you’re using social media, chances are that you’ve already seen a lot of advertisements in which business-owners rely on their awards to increase their customer base.

Well, you can do the same thing, and it’s quite efficient because we all know how easily people get “baited” when they see awards and similar things of that nature. We’re pretty confident that your brand will receive more sales after you start racking up those awards.

Helpful with SEO

Search Engine Optimization is everything when it comes to receiving more traffic and increasing the popularity of your website. This is why it’s really important to focus on improving your SEO and perfecting it quickly.

One way business awards help with SEO is by allowing investors, or other business who are looking to collaborate with someone, find yours by searching something in the lines of “businesses that recently won an award”. If you don’t have an award yet, you won’t come up on that list. As you can already figure out, this can be the difference between getting the sale or not. Sometimes, an award scheme will provide a link to your homepage, too from their website.

Attracting top-tier employees

Let’s say that you own an IT company, and you’re looking to recruit high quality employees. Well, if an applicant is good at what they’re doing, and they know their worth, they won’t want to join a company that can’t demonstrate past successes. Thankfully, after winning an award, it’s much easier to attract top quality employees.

Believe it or not, in many cases you’ll find great candidates sending job applications on spec, which makes your recruiting job much easier. You won’t have to spend hours and hours begging for people to come and work for you. A job applicant needs to have a rich portfolio, but it’s also important for the recruiting company to have a rich and successful history behind it.

If you want a low-cost option, you can check out p2p-awards.org. A real chance to win a business award without any nonsense added on the side for show.

Helps you gain trust

It’s a lot easier to increase your customer base after receiving an award because people find these types of businesses more trustworthy than others. Gaining trust is very important for the long-run, and it’s going to help you build a strong community that will support you in your next upcoming projects.

Also, sales will become easier because of awards that customers are going to see on your website or marketing ads, such as “Best Employer”, “Best Customer Service Initiative” and a lot more. Any owner of a successful business will confirm that trust is a very important factor, and you should look to building it as much as you can.

You meet new people

Other business-owners that apply for the awards will become part of your network, and this is sometimes an even better award than winning something at a ceremony. Why? Because you get to engage with so many new people that might be open for collaborating in the future. You could run into someone that’s going to help you transform your business.

Make sure to be as social as possible and be open about your plans and goals. By networking proactively, you have the best chance of finding other companies and businesses to collaborate with. You never know if someone else shares the same aspirations as you, and it’s great to have somebody like that by your side.

New experiences

A lot of business owners feel discouraged after participating in award events like this –especially if they go back home empty-handed. However, they shouldn’t feel that way. Even if you don’t end up winning anything, the entire experience will make you a much better business owner. You’ll be able to benchmark, see what your mistakes are more clearly, and most importantly, how to correct them.

Getting advice from other, more successful business owners can be an added bonus, too. After the ceremony, there are always people who want to talk about their plans or previous experiences. Just listening in on those conversations may inspire you to come up with a lot of new ideas.

It’s a worthy investment overall

Although some awards programs don’t cost much to enter, you normally need to pay a certain cost for participating, as well as the cost of tickets to an awards event. Even then, participating in the awards can be a worthy investment. Not only because you get the chance to win an award for your business, but the entire experience can also bring a lot of value to your business. If you do end up with an award, you can use it in so many different ways to grow your business through careful PR.

Conclusion

The reason why so many people participate in business awards is that receiving one helps you grow your business in many different ways. You will be able to reduce the time it takes to recruit top-tier talent, you’ll be able to advertise your brand a lot easier, and most importantly, you’ll have a richer history and people will remember you for it.

Think of it like the Oscars, when a person hears that a certain actor who won an Oscar in the past is the star of the movie, they’ll most likely watch it solely because of that. The same goes for your brand and sales.