There’s a saying in the business world that goes, “you’re only as good as people think you are.” And in a time where the digital realm heavily influences opinions, this statement rings more true than ever. This is where the role of awards PR and publicity comes into play. By leveraging awards and honours your company has earned, you can powerfully position your brand in a saturated marketplace, gaining attention and credibility. As an illustrative example, let’s take a look at the Business Awards UK model.
Business Awards UK is an innovative platform that not only recognises business accomplishments but also amplifies them through a comprehensive PR and publicity package. The benefits are two-fold: First, your company garners well-deserved acknowledgement within the industry. Second, and crucially, your brand experiences enhanced visibility through strategic PR and publicity initiatives.
When you are named a winner or finalist by Business Awards UK, your company is featured in a press release on high-authority platforms like Yahoo! News or Finance, and Business Insider. This is a critical first step in SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) strategy, but not for the reasons many may think. As Search Engine Journal explains, the backlinks press releases provide are not valued as high as they once were by Google, because companies tend to purchase press releases themselves. However, the content that resides on such as high authority website is extremely valuable. Your company name is mentioned alongside relevant keywords in your industry, and the overall SEO value is certainly measurable.
With the press release linking back to a blog post on the Business Awards UK Hub, from a high DA (Domain Authority) website, there is some “link juice” to coin a term, but the overall value is from the content itself. The backlinks to your website (from the blog post) are invaluable for SEO as they improve your website’s authority, which is a ranking factor used by Google. This can lead to improved organic search ranking, driving more traffic to your website.
But the opportunity doesn’t stop at backlinks. Business Awards UK also extends a wide range of PR activities, such as in-person video interviews, industry roundtables, podcast bookings, newspaper or magazine interviews, webinars and seminars. These appearances provide numerous opportunities to increase your brand visibility, highlight your expertise, and further improve your SEO through diverse link-building tactics.
Digital PR
All these activities are part and parcel of what is known as digital PR. The written content from these PR efforts are always disseminated to over 400 UK journalists, offering even more avenues for your brand to be discovered and linked to.
With experienced marketing experts at the helm of Business Awards UK, however, this powerful SEO methodology is expanded even further. For instance, sharing industry data or statistics within extra written content can be valuable for journalists to use in their own stories, with a potential link back to the Business Awards UK article. Similarly, providing quotes or comments from these articles in the journalist pitch not only cements your position as an industry leader but also serves as a catalyst for more brand exposure.
This strategy not only places winners and finalists in the limelight, but also generates a snowball effect for brand visibility and SEO. The outreach to journalists ensures consistent brand mentions across various platforms, enhancing your digital footprint and SEO.
The digital PR strategy adopted by Business Awards UK is based on the methodologies taught by Fery Kaszoni, a pioneer in the field of digital PR. We recommend reading more on Fery’s SEO experiments and teachings, as he provides a significant amount of value in his content regarding digital PR.
Social Media Marketing (SMM)
Essentially, without giving all this wonderful content any initial “push” with a relevant audience, Google does not know (in the very early stages of distribution) just how relevant and applicable it is. Social activity gives Google a very good indication of bounce rates (how quickly people leave the content or continue reading it), and how they engage with it. All of this data is sent back to Google through their analytics feeds that reside on almost every website. Furthermore, a popular LinkedIn post, for example, may get shared by readers if it is helpful or interesting, and Google will see this engagement through its many algorithms.
Needless to say, all of these PR activities are shared on Business Awards UK’s social platforms. It is important to note that sharing these links on your own website and social media not only creates a holistic digital presence but also promotes user engagement – a significant factor in Google’s ranking algorithm. It also provides more pathways for potential customers to find you, leading to increased website traffic, lead generation, and ultimately, conversions.
Sharing content is – by far – one of the best ways to allow your customers and peers to engage with your brand. As an aside, we are constantly seeing entrants getting amazing results on social, and the excellent social engagement that can be garnered from simply posting your award win on social media:
In the long term, these activities can result in increased brand awareness, industry authority, customer trust and loyalty, and an overall stronger online presence. Consistently participating in these PR activities will help your company remain relevant and top-of-mind for your target audience. It provides you the platform to tell your brand story, showcasing your achievements, company culture, and unique selling proposition.
The PR and publicity offered by Business Awards UK offer an excellent case study of how awards can significantly impact your business, both in the short term and long term. They demonstrate the potential of such recognition, but also show the many differences between Business Awards UK and other awards programmes. Our platform does not provide a traditional awards ceremony, which is an extremely novel approach in the industry. Instead, all winners and finalists are offered meaningful and often transformative PR and publicity that is – at its core – built on strong search engine optimisation factors. Our goal is to gain exposure and relevant visibility for our entrants, and augment the digital marketing strategies they already have in place.
Whilst Business Awards UK may not be a “traditional” awards programme in many ways, the differences offer incredible value and are essentially designed to benefit winners and finalists. The result is that Business Awards UK has become the fastest growing awards platform in the UK, thanks to the ever-present support of the winners and finalists that we are honoured to serve.
