Tips For Writing Winning Awards Entries

 

My number one piece of advice for writing winning awards entries is to volunteer to be a judge. I’ve judged education product awards and public relations awards and each time, I gain greater insight about what separates ho-hum from great. Seeing a bundle of terrible entries will forever change how you write your own.

To that end, here are my top tips for entering awards, and a way to rethink how awards fit into the public relations mix.

Go beyond the standard marketing language. Pasting in the standard marketing language is the wrong thing to do. Marketing language is vague and usually so aspirational and filled with lingo that only a select few can adequately understand its value. Instead, start from scratch and describe a product using simple language. Create a picture in the reader’s mind or appeal to their emotions.

Describe the problem in human terms.Assume that the judges do not know your space. Judges need context, which means you must explain the problem. See this example of a service that manages substitute teachers. We dramatically simplified the problem and described just one scenario to convey why the service should win. This is just a small part of the overall entry, but it makes my point.

There is a significant shortage of full-time teachers around the country these days. So, to keep classrooms staffed, schools use substitute teachers to fill in for teachers when they are sick or can’t come to school. However, substitute teaching jobs are tough to recruit for, manage, and fill. One complication is that quite often, a teacher absence isn’t discovered until that morning when schools scramble to post an opening. This uncontrollable and unavoidable reality coupled with the dramatic shortage of substitutes who are qualified and ready to go is a significant problem in our nation’s schools.

By the way, this snippet came from a product we submitted to a national innovation award. The company won the number 4 spot and landed a feature story, too.

Describe how a product is used, not what it does. Rather than explain all the features of a product or service, describe how the user engages with it or how they benefit. Explain a true-to-life experience or in the absence of that, walk through how they interact with the tool. Here’s an example:

…. [Product name] can be used by a student to read back to them pages from an LMS, from a textbook or a research paper, or from an exam. [Product name] can also read the content back to the student in the language of their choice, and at the speed of their choice. They can set their own highlighting preferences, text colors, and size, or select from a text-only mode to reduce distractions.

Extend the benefit past the life of the product. Don’t stop with simply describing the product. Write about the benefits to the community, to a group, or to individuals. Think bigger than the moment of use. Anchor the need in ways the judge can get and then describe what might happen well past the product’s lifecycle — the long term benefits. Many awards are about impact, either socially or technologically, so be sure to answer that question whether or not it has been specified by the organizers.

Brevity is acceptable. Conveying everything that is needed with as few words as possible is greatly appreciated by the judges. Imagine being a judge and seeing 20 entries that come to you all in the same form. They look alike. Same font, same layout. Some entries cram every word into the limit. After the 20th entry, I am typically short on patience and entirely done with reading marketing copy and grandiose claims.

Here’s how I tend to work through entries when judging them. I pick the shortest entries first either to cull those of poor quality, or to find the gems I can quickly evaluate and filter to my “best” pile. These set the standard for the rest. This often means that the wordiest entries get pushed to being last on my list and as such, might get the least attention.

Don’t let your entry be the one that the tired judge pushes to the end.

Answer questions the organizers don’t ask. Awards programs can’t anticipate every question that should be asked. It is up to the entrant to frame a compelling problem and solution.

Being fancy doesn’t necessarily mean better quality. Don’t be reluctant to submit if your company is new and hasn’t yet developed videos and sparkling marketing collateral. If the problem and solution can be described in a compelling fashion, then you have as much chance of winning as the company with a large marketing budget.

Don’t assume URLs will make it into the text. This is a practical tip. Include the spelled out URL to any resource or site included in the text entry. Hyperlinks might get stripped, or they might get lost in the several iterations before judging.

I use this same principle in pitches. Emails with too many hyperlinks can get sent to Spam so first, I make every link count. Then just to make sure the vital ones don’t get lost, I include the entire URL (usually in a list after my closing) so that if my message ends up as a txt, then the important links can still be found.

Use images. If attachments are allowed in the entry, use them. Don’t use stock photos but also don’t hesitate to use less than stellar photos. Anything snapped with a phone camera is bound to be decent enough for the judge’s purposes. Likewise, graphics or videos help, too.

When the organizers ask for the company/product logo stating that the image will be used to recognize winners, be sure that those ones are hi-resolution and have great visual appeal. My advice about acceptable lower quality images is for secondary or supporting images only.

Use data, even anecdotal evidence. If you have data or metrics from a specific deployment, use it. Even anecdotal evidence can work but disclose that up front. I wouldn’t hesitate to write that a teacher said she spends 50 percent less time dealing with classroom disruption since she started using Product A. However, I  would give context like this: “a teacher wrote that…” or “in a product survey, one parent described…” Quantitative data is the gold standard, but don’t be reluctant to use qualitative data.

Finally, there are plenty of awards programs that are not specific to an industry. Follow our newsletter for the bi-weekly PR in EdTech Tips where we list all kinds of awards programs for education, technology, training, social good, and general business categories. See the American Business Association’s Stevie Awards, for example. In addition to several verticals, there are over a hundred categories for individuals, teams, processes, products, services, collateral, and more. When looking for awards, always explore programs outside of the specific vertical.

A final thought about writing… I once had a client – a fine person with a charming Texas accent – who used to say, “talk to me like I’m 12.” That has stuck with me for years because he was right. While I’d prefer to be a stellar writer with a distinctive style, in my line of work clarity and simplicity are effective. My aim is that a middle schooler can understand the point of my writing. Doing so forces me to use simple words, varied sentence structure, and descriptive terms. This works as well in emails, media alerts, and other PR writing, as it does for awards entries.

This was originally published in PR in EdTech on LinkedIn on May 22, 2025.