It’s Award Season!!
Oh yes, it’s that time of year when cosmetic and aesthetic practitioners of all shapes and sizes crack their knuckles and get down to some serious writing… But is it worth the effort? Absolutely. Award entries may be time-consuming to put together, but the PR value and ROI for you, your clinic and your brand is HUGE.
Being able to position your clinic, team or services as ‘award-winning’ will help you stand above the competition and build valuable trust and prestige among your current and prospective patients. It can give a much needed kick-start to your clinic marketing campaigns to shout from the rooftops about your fantastic achievement – profiling through your social media, local press engagement and your most important ambassadors – your patients.
Laser vs. Shotgun Approach
The first thing you should do is take a really critical look at the award categories and create a shortlist of those which you feel you have the best chance of winning. Competition is fierce, so a shotgun approach of entering everything with low-quality and poorly tailored entries will just be a huge waste of your precious time. Read the criteria carefully and match this against what you can provide by way of compelling results – THEN start working on your shortlist entries!
#JudgeJulia & Award Entry Tips
I am honoured to have been selected as one of the judges at this year’s prestigious Aesthetic Awards 2016 – so here are my top 3 tips for what makes a winning entry:
- RTFQ (Read the Flipping Question) – Don’t mean this to sound rude, but you would be amazed how many waffly award entries simply do NOT provide the information requested in each category section. This is a massive bugbear for judges and one which could quickly move you to the bottom of the pile. Always make sure your responses are specific, tangible and succinct versus the questions
- Show me the EVIDENCE – The more you can provide in terms of real evidence, the more convinced I will be of your credibility. Key metrics are the backbone of any winning entry – I want to know how many calls, what boost in sales (numbers or %), how many people used it, how many new patients, how much media coverage did you get (and where) – the more the better. Without the evidence, entries will be considered mostly hot air – so if you haven’t already, start crunching those numbers!
- Get Others to Sing Your Praises – the key principle of PR is the power of third party endorsements, so use these within your entries. Get written or video testimonials from your patients, partners or media to do the talking for you on the impact of your business. Not only can you include these in your entries, you can repurpose them as great testimonials for your PR and marketing!
There are lots of other tips, such as using good quality before and after images and concise, powerful language – but this should be enough to get you started.
Entry forms are available here and I wish you the very best of luck!
By Julia Kendrick