How to Promote an Awards Ceremony
If you’re an event planner, it’s wise to know how to promote an awards ceremony in Asia and stay on top of the industry. So if you’re eager to find out how to do this and succeed with your awards marketing, stick with us!
About awards ceremonies
Under the category of an awards ceremony, every event demands something different depending on the event format, audience lifestyle, group of attendees, sphere of interests, professional activity, etc. We will consider the following definition for an awards ceremony: a large-scale public event with the participation of the media and the awarding of state-level awards to the winners.
Why you should promote your awards ceremony
As with any other event, award ceremonies are a good investment and a great chance to increase your brand awareness, elevate company prestige, engage new partners and sponsors, boost sales, or even raise some funds.
“Promoting your industry awards raises company visibility, sets you apart from the competition, and increases employee morale. Put a spotlight on your achievements through the awards ceremony, and watch how it positively affects your business.”
A website comes first
What’s the most important thing for awards? A great website of course! With the aid of a good website builder, you’ll create a seamless awards management experience for both the participants and the team. You can create professional-looking event pages and deliver the online presence that your awards deserve without any design or coding skills thanks to a user-friendly app and plenty of website templates. Create an event landing page with just a few clicks. In the end, you’ll win even more customers with Judgify awards management.
How to promote your awards ceremony
When preparing for an awards ceremony on your own, assemble a team of employees to whom you can delegate tasks. It is important that these are people from different fields of activity related to the preparation of the event. Otherwise, you may end up having to hire a professional social media promoter to handle your awards ceremony marketing.
Social media
Social media remains one of the cheapest and most highly effective ways to market an awards ceremony, make it go viral, and boost sales.
How to promote
Name your awards ceremony, brainstorm keywords that relate to your awards ceremony brand, set the budget or desired revenue, choose your social media platforms, and creatively market your ceremony.
Pros & Cons
By getting back to storytelling, social media plays a key role for many businesses. However, this is not suitable for governmental and other high-status or closed awards ceremonies for a range of offline businesses.
Tips
When planning your awards marketing on social media, consider your audience, their interests, and the factors that will motivate them. Make sure you set a dedicated hashtag for your event and include it on all your social media promotion.
Media
Promote an award nomination via media, and create media coverage for it by contacting and inviting media professionals. Promote awards via social media platforms.
How to promote
Add your award to your website and/or blog, and issue a press release using our branding and promotion feature. Share the news with all your fans, friends, and followers. Do not forget to use a paid content in lifestyle media, ask for collaboration with influencers, top bloggers, opinion leaders, who are relevant to the industry. Share with all your fans, friends, and followers. Add your award into your email signature. Reach out to fellow winners on social media, etc.
You can add your award into your email signature or reach out to fellow winners on social media, etc.
Media partnerships
Add your award to brochures or other print materials so that partners and media representatives can find you easily. Contact them and invite them directly!
Creating a press release
Issue a press release to share with all your fans, friends, followers, and media outlets.
Pros & Cons
Some marketers ignore media entirely and rely solely on other ways of promoting their awards because they are cheaper and faster. Nevertheless, media is a proven way to promote events for B2B.
Tips
Demonstrate a product or service to the media. Answer questions and, more importantly, refute any objections or complaints. Network effectively and exchange business cards to showcase your latest achievements. For B2B social advertising, the objective must be buyer focused.
SEO
If you’re not investing in search engine optimization (SEO) for your event pages, you’re losing a lot of sales. Showing up in Google searches is vital for event websites to be seen and engaged with.
How to promote
To promote through SEO, you need to analyse your competitors, choose tactical keywords, localise your SEO efforts, choose a clear domain name, create great content, and forge relationships to attract strong links. On your personal website, using a blog to advertise your business is a very inexpensive way to boost sales.
Pros & Cons
The great pros of SEO are that traffic comes organically and is completely free, whereas traffic from PPC has a cost for each click. Nevertheless, SEO may not be enough for enterprise event promotion and should be used as a complement to paid promotion.
Tips
If your business hosts events, whether B2B or B2C, it’s important to ensure that you encourage the right people to sign up and attend your events. Therefore, use keyword tools to build your SEO promotion strategy.
Offline promotion
Offline promotion includes pop-ups, printed media, white papers, etc. Sometimes event posters and branded walls are used in public places along with other forms of outdoor advertising.
How to promote
Use your business cards! This isn’t just a great offline marketing idea; it’s more or less essential for any business. Create pamphlets, print white papers, present case studies, send seasonal cards, publish press releases, leave branded items at key locations, send out paper mail and invitations, speak at events, and utilise cross-promotions.
Pros & Cons
Offline methods may seem pretty old school by comparison to social media. They also may be quite expensive, but they reach critical audience segments that are not available online.
Tips
Add different graphics to your traditional event poster. Create swag bags and other merchandise. Vary your approach at every new event.
Email marketing
Email marketing drives event awareness and increases event engagement, drives sales, and provides organisers with useful feedback.
How to promote
Use the top email marketing personalisation methods. Using email signatures in your email marketing strategy is a great way to promote various campaigns and events.
Pros & Cons
Emails are sometimes left unread or ignored. Nevertheless, they remain the most responsive means and high open rate in comparison with other advertising.
Tips
You should prioritise personalisation in email and event marketing. Discover how to launch successful event email promotion campaigns with Judgify.
Video marketing
If you promote your videos correctly, you’ll have a giant throng of attendees at your booth as soon as the doors open. The events industry presents a great opportunity to promote your videos and attract media attention from opinion leaders and potential sponsors.
How to promote
To promote your event through video, create online video content for your next event. Write a solid script, invite speakers, shoot real-life events, and design it tastefully so it can be used for promotional purposes. Don’t forget to brand your content!
Pros & Cons
It’s hard to keep the buzz going based on your video scenario and still keep it short and sweet. No wonder, as there is so much to say! Creating a video can be a troublesome process and may be quite expensive if you don’t have a camera operator among your team. However, a video causes a powerful emotional reaction and should be considered, if at all possible.
Tips
To create a good video, it’s important to be authentic. Social media is all about being transparent and real. To tell a story, use a storytelling approach, interview attendees, capture event highlights, and include a compelling call to action.
When to start promotion?
Your content strategy has three options: create, curate, and promote. As soon as you are finished designing your plan, start your event promotion, taking into account that some promotion actions like, emails, invitations, or direct calls, should precede the organisation phase of any event. You are always promoting when you talk to your customers, partners, sponsors, etc.
Creating a promotional strategy
There are many ways to promote an awards ceremony. These events can be the start of a prosperous relationship with new customers, so they’re very important. Before starting a promotional campaign, you’ll want to gain some experience in the area. To develop a strong promotional plan:
- Identify your target buyer.
- Warm them up.
- Create a strategy and make it clear.
- Create a concise and memorable message that impacts your target buyers and contains your brand values.
- Consider your budget.
- Draw up your business plan based on S.M.A.R.T. objectives.
Target audience portrait
Not sure who your event audience is? Read our blog on how to find the target audience for an event so you can better focus on your awards ceremony planning.
Conclusion
With the help of our tips, effectively organising events like awards ceremonies will be much easier. You will understand the best ideas on how to prepare your ceremony from beginning to end and how to promote an awards ceremony in different ways.
Stay with us for even more useful tips for professional awards planning. Feel free to leave your comments below!