Award selection and entry does, however, require some time and effort but the ensuing rewards can be quite considerable.

Why enter?
Winning a prestigious honour, such as an ICT Cluster Excellence Award (our PR agency promotes these), is beneficial on many levels. It’s motivational to all employees, generates interest and awareness and, by providing an independent acknowledgement of the value of a product or service, offers reassurance to potential customers. For start-ups and SMEs this boost to sales and marketing efforts can be priceless. Many award schemes also offer invaluable feedback to entrants.

In terms of supporting a company’s sales activity, a recent survey* indicated that 82% of senior business people are influenced by awards when buying products and services. 76% also agreed with the statement “awards are important for generating business or improving the value of the brand.”

Finally, a lot of marketing mileage can be gained from an award…it should appear on the website, company brochures, recruitment material and become a real marketing asset.

What schemes?

One of the biggest misconceptions about awards is that only big companies will win. In fact there are numerous industry and business schemes encompassing companies of all sizes. Awards are often run by magazines, newspapers, companies, professional institutes, such as the British Computer Society, or government schemes. Some internet research should bring up a raft of opportunities. Alternatively, by subscribing to an awards alerts service, companies can automatically be alerted as relevant schemes are announced. As a guideline there are general IT industry awards (UK IT Industry Awards) – ah shame just closed!, regional IT industry awards (2009 ICT Excellence Awards), specialist sector and vertical market sector awards, such as information security, retail and finance.

In addition to these, there are national and regional business awards plus numerous small business schemes such as British Small Business Champions.

There’s nothing to stop companies entering more than one scheme as successful participants of the ICT Cluster Awards (we promote these) have demonstrated. Rapide Communication, who were Overall Champions in 2008, went on to be National winners of the Chamber Awards 2008 and were finalists in the 2009 National Business Awards. Data Driven Logistics, who achieved Best Innovative Product also won the Sentinel Business Awards Innovation Category and were a Finalist and selected Medallist in the British Computer Society (BCS) Industry Awards.

How to maximise your chances

With more companies vying for award recognition, the competition is getting fierce. Preparation is key. It may sound obvious but ensure you pick the right category to suit your business and check whether you’re eligible for more than one category – since the more relevant categories you enter the more chance of success. Secondly, read the entry criteria carefully as there may be limitations such as the product launch date, location or company size. If you can’t meet the conditions, there’s no point in entering.

You will need to demonstrate why you deserve to win and evidence is crucial. Effective examples of this are: customer endorsements, which illustrate the business benefits of the product; sales figures; industry partnerships; and strong growth. Again, if the proof isn’t there, reconsider whether you want to enter. Take care drafting the award entry and ensure you’ve taken advantage of any scope for submitting supporting materials. It often helps to have an objective person read through your submission to get an unbiased opinion and ensure it reflects your achievements accurately.

When writing the award, remember to keep it factual and punchy, stick to the word count and avoid waffle.

ICT Excellence Awards

We work providing PR services for the West Midlands ICT Cluster, so heres a plug for the annual ICT Excellence awards. This year’s entry deadline is 28 September. The free to enter technology awards are designed to recognise the talents and achievements of the growing ICT (Information Communication Technology) sector. They will be announced and presented during an evening reception following the annual West Midlands ICT Cluster Conference on Tuesday 10th November 2009, at the National Motorcycle Museum in Solihull. This year’s inspirational theme for the awards and conference is ‘Competing in the New World – Innovate your way to success’.

The open entry categories in this year’s awards comprise ICT Excellence Award for Best Innovative Product, Best Innovative Service, Best Added Value Product, Best Added Value Service, Best Added Value Project, Best Knowledge Transfer Project and Most Improved Business, with an overall champion selected from the winners of each of the seven categories receiving £2,000.

For 2009 the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) are rewarding an additional open entry category. The Special Award – High Growth Potential Business 2009 category recognises the most innovative/high growth potential business and will secure the winner the opportunity for advice and expertise from the TSB and partners.

Everybody appreciates recognition for their efforts whether it’s from customers, peers or the industry at large. Awards are a relatively low-cost, and sometimes free, means of putting your company on the map. Demonstrate your pride in your company and employees’ achievements; the potential rewards are significant.

* Awards: vanity or sanity? – Survey conducted by Shape-the-future and Boost Marketing in October 2008.

Now that is easier said than done. A lot of journalists and bloggers don’t have the time or expertise to link beyond the homepage or a specific offer or download page of the company they are writing about. Some online publications will even have specific anchor texts that are paid for by other companies.

So what did we do? We wrote an optimised press release, we selected a newswire which ensured that we had anchor texts online and through this wire, we spread the news to other online sites (mainly news aggregators) that kept our anchor texts in tact. Importantly, we used anchor texts to link to optimised pages which related to the anchor link.

But the anchor texts are not the only way to improve SEO rankings through PR. We took an approach that would provide us with independent write ups of our client’s technology to help with credibility and variety of sources that covered it. We pre-pitched our story to media and bloggers to secure individual write ups, including reviews, comparisons with other technologies and connection with other relevant breaking news stories. Through this we encouraged the use of our key words by including them in our pitches – both verbal and via email.

The results were great. The highest daily visitor number and highest number of sign ups on one day that our client has ever had. The impact of the news is still ongoing with a lot of buzz still ‘buzzing’ around Twitter and media/blogger write ups still coming in 2 weeks after the news broke…..and still further sign ups. We also secured reach into a new vertical sector of VOIP, awareness generation in Germany (the second largest language market for the service) and the seeding of future stories.

We’ve been working on the West Midlands ICT Cluster newsletter, generating interest in the new Yuuguu for Skype integration, promoting Rapide Communication’s enhanced text booking confirmation service and working on telling more of our contacts about Magic Software’s application platform.

We’ve also set up a new Twitter account for one of our clients and have generated a lot of followers in two days. Our tweets started today and we’re also setting up a Linked in account for the same client. We realise that the traditional print media that has been a great method to reach businesses, but the internet is a lot more powerful if targeted at the right groups of people.

Anyway, we have a newsletter to finish, so more later……

Here’s the article:

Early on, companies tend to cut marketing communications staff, often a little too deeply. Then they realize that there’s still a lot of work that needs to get done to maintain or establish a market presence. Public relations and other marketing services are essential to creating awareness, connecting with customers, building brands and driving sales.

One key point of a recent survey from Aberdeen, mentions that in previous downturns, the firms that learned to market smarter have fared better than those that decreased their marketing budgets. Plus, after the economy bounced back, those firms that marketed during the downturn did better profitably. So, keep on generating the buzz!

If you are a start-up business or small to medium-sized company that is growing and running with a tight budget, oftentimes, it is best to outsource your PR to a boutique PR firm who eliminates the traditional, large agency inefficiencies by running lean, fast, and smart! No more retaining a “brand name” PR agency with a posh downtown address. No more paying for the name of a CEO who doesn’t work directly on your account, and who typically hasn’t contacted a reporter about a client in years.

Here are some tips to finding the perfect PR team:

* Make sure that your agency has a conceptual understanding of your company, the technology and your marketplace—but don’t look for a clone of yourself. Can they communicate with your target audiences? Their business acumen and industry experience should compliment your goals.

* Choose an agency that has experience in your industry, such as supply chain or healthcare. You hardly have the time to teach the agency about your products, let alone the industry and the issues/challenges facing that industry.

* Location, location, location is out: You want to pay for results, not the view from your agency’s office.

* Agencies love to drop names of contacts, but these may not be the right reporters, editors and analysts for your company. With downsizing and media mergers, journalists change jobs and beats frequently. Experienced pros develop new relationships as needed.

* Ask what they’ve accomplished for clients that are about your size and budget. The people showing you these results should be the same people who will do the actual work on your account.

* Chemistry counts—you’ll have regular contact with your agency. Nobody will ever provide a bad reference, so trust your gut instinct. Marketing communications is an investment. Selecting a source that matches your company’s culture and personality is likely to give you the best return.

* Make sure they’re not just a recent victim of downsizing. Beware of someone taking on project work until a job offer comes along, or you risk work stopping in the middle of your project.

Here’s a short version of the article, grab a copy of PR Week (24 April 2009) for the full text.

1. Awards and league tables. Carolan Davidge, director of PR and brand at Cancer Research UK said: “We would be looking for an agency that has led award winning campaigns….We would be unlikely to work with an agency without any heritage.” There’s also talk of league tables, however, that applies to large agencies usually, but if founding teams of smaller agencies have worked for large agencies, then I guess their experience there would be taken into consideration.

2. Chemistry. Makes sense as spending time getting to know one another is essential. I disagree about meeting at an agency’s offices as many small agencies don’t even have one main office and some very good freelancer will work from a client office or from home.

3. Cost. Price is important but not at the cost of quality. Having a cheap PR campaign that doesn’t bring in the desired results or goes wrong may cost more in the long run to repair.

4. Creativity. Agencies should be brimming with ideas, which are original. Ideas should be well researched.

5. Reputation. Clients will look at previous successes and failures when choosing a PR agency.

6. People. Clients will want the team that pitched to be the one handling the account.

7. Get on the list. Event clients that do not choose from a shortlist, may have a vetting procedure.

8. The no-nos…..An agency with a templated one size fits all approach is not going to win business. Don’t oversell the ability to deliver and meet deadlines.

So why do I care? Well I have spoken to two companies over the last few weeks and both have been disappointed by their first foray into PR. This unfortunately makes it harder for other PR agencies to convince them that PR can benefit a company.

Company one launched a new consumer focused software last year and his PR agency wrote two articles for him relating to the issues that the product was solving – ie protecting kids online. The PR agency went on to send these articles to parenting magazines.

Mmmmmhhh, sounds like the right place to go doesn’t it? Wrong. If you flick through a parenting magazine, you’ll find they are full of case studies, product reviews (prams, cots etc) and lots of baby stuff. The children of the readers are probably not old enough to go on the internet. So I guess there was no actual reading of the publications, no talking to the journalists. Actually, there wasn’t much understanding of the client. The agency placed a couple of local articles but nothing in the consumer tech press where the readers (dads) were more likely to read and buy.

The other company (a Web 2.0 enteprise) employed an agency that knew all about web 2.0 supposedly. The agency got the company into The Liverpool Post only – nothing online……anywhere…….not even a post on their own agency blog, not even a tiny weeny Tweet. So that first journey has soured the company’s perception of agencies.

Can’t blame it all on the agencies of course, the client companies should have spent more time on finding out what the agencies could do and understand how the publications they were targeting would make a difference to their businesses.

I guess a company needs to write a clear brief before meeting with any agency to avoid disappointment and an agency needs to really think about whether they can deliver what the client wants…..maybe the clients expectations are false…..so then isn’t it better to bring them down to earth gently and say that not every start up can be on the cover of the FT (don’t ever remember seeing one there actually!), or that one article in their trade press will need to be backed up by another and again until their brand name is well known…and that PR is about reputation building and that doesn’t usually happen overnight.

Back to the original question….there are lots of reasons why a PR agency will take on a client that they shouldn’t and just as many why a client takes on a PR agency that they shouldn’t.

Check out our press release:

Midlands PR agency Vitis PR announced today that it is sponsoring the PR prize for The Remote Worker Awards.

Award winning Vitis PR consultancy specializes in providing senior level PR services to its clients. While offering technology public relations, the team has also worked across many other vertical sectors including retail, logistics, healthcare, publishing, financial services, education, recruitment and marketing.

As a PR team whose consultants work from their own home offices, Vitis PR company is proud to support Remote Worker Awards. “There are a growing number of PR agencies and other businesses that are fully home based. We believe that our virtual PR agency model brings benefits to our clients and staff: our clients get senior level PR support from PR executives who have worked in PR agencies for 10 years or more and our team has the opportunity to enjoy a great work life balance.”

The awards are organised by Remote Employment, an online UK job site for remote workers and employers. With nine categories including The Home Business Award and Employer of Choice Award, winners will enjoy thousands of Pounds worth of prizes from a garden office, employment advertising, computer hardware, and business software to essential consultancy advice from PR and marketing experts.

Vitis PR will be offering two winners in the Home Based Business and The Remote Employer categories PR consultancy which includes: assessment of existing PR activity, working with the company to identify PR opportunities and the most relevant target media as well as developing top line PR ideas. If the winning company has a specific PR requirement such as online PR, then Vitis PR will advise on a PR strategy which could include creating a business blog and improving website visibility.

Vitis PR works with partners to provide full service marketing communications, including social media, SEO, telemarketing and design.

We’ve turned out some great work for companies from the US, Manchester, London, Bracknell, Germany and Israel…and many other agencies here have national accounts where they gain great coverage and raise brand awareness without having to sit in London.

With Manchester touting itself as the second city in terms of PR (and other things), Birmingham has got a double fight on its hands – London on one side and Manchester on another. I love Manchester BTW since I lived there for six years and worked in the fabulous agency – BDB – and still have a stack of friends up there.

In and around Birmingham, we have the advantage of being close to London so near enough to the national and trade journalists that are based there, yet far enough away to provide a more cost effective service. Manchester and Leeds based agencies have much further to travel to meet the influencers that are all important.

I get the feeling that we don’t shout about our achievements enough. A regular read of PR Week will highlight news from London agencies, with a smattering of Manchester news and if you’re lucky a couple of nibs on any other parts of the country.

We have an incredible creative industry – did you know that Birmingham is in fact home to a thriving community and is recognised as the second largest media centre in the country, employing over 17,000 people and supporting in excess of 1,000 businesses? I didn’t!

The Birmingham and wider Midlands PR community has had to reinvent itself over the last few years as the manufacturing and property bases are in decline or suffering from the recession. The RDA Advantage West Midlands has made some great strides in encouraging the growth of businesses in fields such as software and technology. With this encouragement, PR agencies are starting to appear that are just as diverse as their London based counterparts.

While larger regional agencies will charge prices on a par with their London based HQs, smaller regional agencies won’t so if they can convince companies to try them, then their clients stand to save a considerable amount.

And the choice of agency is pretty huge too in the Midlands. Cheaper rents mean that there are a plethora of small and medium-sized PR agencies right in city and town centres, so easily accessible by train or motorway….and there are also a generous helping of one and two-person owner-managed
consultancies too.

There’s a mixed bag of people who have been made redundant and those who want to move to an agency, either from in-house or from another agency.

A major problem I have with a lot of CVs is that the writers haven’t even bothered to read our website. We are a technology PR agency, so even a passing reference to technology would show that the CV or letter isn’t just a copy and paste job.

It’s tough out there at the moment for everyone, so if anyone wants to move over to the tech PR sector (can apply to others too), then here are a few simple tips:

1. Know about technology, you don’t have to be an expert, but show a desire to work with gadgets, software, shiny things and not so shiny but very important technologies
2. Read the website of the company that you are pitching to
3. Read their clients’ website’s news sections to see what coverage they have generated
4. Read their blogs, twitter feeds, facebook groups etc and follow them if you are serious about working there
5. Find out about their culture – we are a virtual PR agency, so would probably not suit young graduates
6. Why not give them a call before sending in the CV. Get some tips on how they want to hear from you.

There will be more and I’ll add some later, but feel free to add your own.