Winning Strategies for Search Awards

Great. Okay, folks, let's kick this off. Let's tell you about what we're going to do this afternoon. I'm just going to introduce our session to you. We're going to talk about how to win an award at one of the search awards that are going on, hosted by the lovely Don't Panic crew. We've got about an hour with you, and I'm just going to introduce everyone else to you. Judith, do you want to say hello and tell us a little bit about you? Sure. Hi, I'm Judith Lewis. I'm... The one of the judges for the search awards, I've been judging them since they've they started. So the very first UK search award, I was one of the small panel of people that were gathered in a room for many, many, many hours judging those awards. And I've been a part of it ever since. So I'm judging across most most regions. I actually also actively work in search both well across all digital marketing disciplines as a consultant. but I also do hands-on stuff. So I'm not just like a lead or somebody like that that doesn't do hands-on things. I'm deeply involved and the people who work with me know how deep. That's fantastic. And I'm Dave Edmondson-Bird. I'm a lecturer here at Manchester Metropolitan University and I've been involved with the various search awards on and off for a few years. And I'm also involved in a lot of the other awards that Don't Panic run. And my job is to be... completely objective. So I work with a lot of the judges on making sure that what we're doing is the right thing and that we are able to say that these are some of the best awards, if not the best awards in the world, and certainly the leading search awards on the planet. So with that in mind, we're being hosted by the folks from Don't Panic, who are our silent partners for the day, but they are very much here and keeping an eye on us and making sure that we're on message. So today we're going to look at what people like... Judith and I look for in a search awards entry and we want you to be able to do a really good search awards entry because we want to look at things that are brilliant. We want you to make our lives harder rather than easier so we want to have really good things to look at and hopefully by the end of today you'll start to be able to improve your chances of putting in a great entry that will get shortlisted and if you've done it the right way will be a winner of a search award. Judith, tell us a little bit about what we need to know before we even start that. So one of the things that you will get out today is I'm going to be talking about the scoring. But one of the many things I do want to point out to everybody who's entering is that we all sign a non-disclosure agreement. So that means that any of you who enter, when you disclose things like budgets and your activities to us, we are under obligation to not discuss that outside of the judging session. So while we will discuss it, obviously, in the judging session, we don't discuss it outside of that. So your details are absolutely safe. We also don't accept bribes or money or, you know, chocolate. We all sign up to a code of conduct. And that code of conduct means that we're forbidden from doing that on risk of being barred from any future awards, but also having the awards that we were involved with excluded. So. Obviously, we don't want to do that. Plus, it's ethical. We are ethical judges and we're involved in doing this ethically. So you can't purchase an award through bribing judges. You can't purchase it through buying a table. We don't know who has bought what tickets. We don't know who's sponsoring. When we as judges go into judging this, we're judging it blind in a sense that we don't know who's put what money behind the bar or anything like that. We just look at what the entry has on it. And any judges, because, you know, the industry is quite small. So any of us who have conflicts of interest, we actually declare those. So if we're married to someone or if five years ago we worked with someone or if we quit somewhere, we actually do disclose those conflicts of interest where it's in the past or it's a secondary effect and we are actually excluded from judging. And we won't know if we have those conflicts of interest, how those. sessions went and we wouldn't be involved in those in those groupings you'll see there are what was it 30 categories I think it is and though that varies country to country and we are not judging all 30 at once there's a short list created but we'll go into that so we we all adhere to a really strict code of ethics and morals and we all actually sign up to those with our as they say in the U.S. John Hancock as one of the signers of the um Was this the Declaration of Independence or something? I'm Canadian. I don't know these things. But we all adhere to a strict code of ethics. So when you enter. you're entering a legitimate awards that is judged fairly honestly and ethically fantastic so we've got that out of the way we're dead straight outfit so let's have a look at how we enter different award styles so the first one the biggest one that we see are campaign awards and you might see something on the lines of of categories like this so whether it's a global search awards or uk search awards or european search awards or whatever you'll see these sort of things and What we really want to do is help you understand what these awards are for and how you might go about entering them. So the point of an award like this is that we are looking to reward high achievement for work that's been done in this particular area. And the idea is that you're getting the recognition from your peers for the work you have done and to demonstrate that it is the best possible work in this category. So. Judith, tell us about the points for this particular section here around objectives and budget. So you'll see that I actually mentioned these in four different sections. There are four different sections we're marking out of 10 for these campaign awards. So every campaign award, we have four sections we're marking out of 10, which means that for objectives and budget, and this is very important, objectives and budget, you're getting 10 possible points by the judges. If you keep your objectives in bullet order, so bullet points, you can match them to the... the results at the end. There are some judges like me, who will give you one point or less if you fail to match your objectives to your results. So that's out of a possible 10 points, you're losing nine or 10 points. So it is super important to match your objectives to your results. But also, if you fail to add a budget, some judges will mark you down for this as well. So you're taking on an awful lot of a risk with 10 out of 40 points. So one quarter, you're going to have to do a lot of work to get that number. of your points poll for this section is reliant on this one, well, for this campaign awards, is reliant on the objectives and budget section. So be tight with it. Bullet points, keep your word count for later. And remember to match your objectives to your results. Fantastic. Let me tell you a little bit about budgets and objectives. I get really wound up about this. So I want five minutes to just tell people about... what I think about objectives. Now we ask for these because with proper objectives, we get proper campaign. And what we're suggesting is that this is about best practice. So the first thing I want people to make sure they do is tell us whether these are business objectives, marketing objectives, or communications objectives. We've left it open, but you'll need to tell us what it is. And we think you should follow the practice about them being clear and singular and measurable. Now, I might be teaching a few people to suck eggs here, but let's just make sure we know what the difference between each of those is. So a business objective is what your organization needs to achieve as a result of your activity. So whatever your campaign is designed to achieve, what's the big goal if you're doing it that way? We might be talking about long term things, things that might be about a strategic business unit. But these are the big things. And you need to show us how what you did helps meet this objective. The alternative is it might be a marketing objective. So it might be about entering a new marketplace or about market penetration or something like this. It might be about opening 100 new stores in a country, whatever. But again, make it really clear to us what our marketing objective is and if that's what you're doing. What I found quite a lot of the time is that search awards and campaigns are often about communications objectives. And they're about a specific change of circumstances. And it might well relate to something along the sales funnel. It might be about increasing traffic or increasing the number of conversions. Whatever it is, make it really clear what those are. And that's important because we want to see you connect things like KPIs with objectives to what's going on. So when I'm marking this, and Judy's absolutely the same about this, when we look at measurement of success, we're saying, did you achieve? what you set out to achieve. And if you don't tell us at the start what the goal was, we can't tell whether it's successful. So, you know, shortlists and award winning has been made just on simply putting in the correct information here and making it really clear to judges what was set out to achieve. And ultimately, when we come to evaluation, did we really do it? Now, asking about the budget is really important. Why? do we do this? Well, we're getting entries from lots of different kinds of entrants with big and small budgets. And what we're trying to see is, is there some kind of equity between different amounts of money being invested in these things? So some people, some agencies, some big clients have a lot of money to throw at a problem. And that might compare to a very small organization that has a lot less resource. We want to see whether there is a way of measuring equal performance. So make sure you break your budget down. so that we can see different things. So like, what's the media spend? What's the spend on other things? We want to be able to see where money has been spent. And if you're... using assets from different parts of the organization. So maybe you've spent money on something somewhere else. Make sure that we can see the true cost of these assets. Nothing's ever free. And there's nothing that upsets a judge more than someone saying, oh, all of this was done for nothing. Because no, it takes people's time. So let us know the true value of staff time. Anything that's a sunk cost, any billable costs that you would normally associate with this, make sure it's all there because we want to see. how the money has been spent to achieve the results you're looking for. Tell us a bit about this. Yeah. I think that's both of our bugbears is budgets not being included in people saying, oh yeah, no, we did this totally comp for free. No, you spent people's time. But for target audience and strategy, I think this sometimes can be a really weak section of the entry. And again, it's 10 full points. So you've got to be thinking about what you're doing here. And those 10 points are going to be divided up amongst the content that you include in this section. But you need to be concise and precise. Absolutely. So I think nothing irritates a judge more. Say we're targeting all adults in Europe aged between 18 and 65. I mean, let's not do it that way. So try and make something, you know, it's good practice that we're looking for here. So. try and make your audiences really tight. So think about behavioral targets. Think about things based on geolocation or psychographic qualities or perhaps personas that you've built up around this. Make it really clear who this campaign was targeted at. And if there are multiple targets in there, make it clear if there is a priority in there. So with that in mind, this strategy should be about what it is you did to reach. that audience or those audiences? What was the way that you got there? What was the route to the market, if you like? And what stages did you say you were going to go through? The strategy is a roadmap. And that's what you're saying. This is how we got to hit these people. And I think a lot of people often confuse some of the terminology. And that's why we want people to be really sort of clear about what it is they're saying about who it is they're hitting and what it is they did to hit. them now then creativity implementation yeah this is a tough one i think because last in what we were just saying what we were just talking about was um the the targets but then implementation we're not just talking about tactics here we're talking about what went into what you did so this is also 10 possible points but this is where you I think we expect most of your effort to go because you've been intimate with this. So, you know, you've worked this, you've understood it, you've done everything with this particular project, and you're proud of it, and you're trying to show us how and why you're proud of it. And in this section, this is where you can get more verbose. So we want to understand what it is about this project that makes you so proud. that makes you feel that it's an award-winning entry. You've been closest to this, not us. So we're walking into this. We don't know anything about it. This is the section where you need to show us as judges what it is about this entry that's so inspiring. And also, when you're communicating that to us, try not to be too flowery, because remember, there is a word limit. And some judges, probably me, will deduct points when you go... to 2,000 or 3,000 or in one case I had 4,000 words because there is a word limit for a reason because we're judging hundreds and hundreds of entries. So be creative here and save your word count for this section. And also when you're, when you're screenshotting things, so you're explaining to us what you did, how you did it, what the outcomes were, and you can't give us GA or Adobe Analytics, then use a tool, an external third-party tool like SEMrush or Ahrefs or search metrics or something like that and use screenshots from those tools so that we can see that those are validated. I can make a graph in Excel and I can make it say anything I want. So that doesn't necessarily validate what you're saying in a way that we can trust so that what we do is we then go off to those third party tools anyway. And we look at what's done. So we want to be we want to see things that we can validate. And also, if you embed them and they're too small, then use the extra large image in a PDF that you upload as supplementary information. Do not rely on extra words in your supplementary information. So don't rely on that presentation or video or whatever to get a round word count. We're only going to look at that in the case where we've been specifically pointed to it because there's an image or something in there that specifically enhances the entry. So a visual aid that we just can't see in the Word doc or the PDF that you've supplied us for. So we can see it in a much larger format in the files that you've uploaded. But the files that are being uploaded should not be used to get around word count, especially in the section. We need to see it here in the entry. So use your words here. Use your proof here. And really put all of your effort into this. Even though you might think, oh, it's 10, it's only one quarter. It's the most important one quarter of all the points. Absolutely. And I think people need to make it really clear how they executed the strategy. So what? What tactics did you use? What did you put into place to make what you said was going to happen, happen? And from my perspective as a judge, creativity is really that. What did you do that was unusual? And it might be unusual for your organization or unusual for your client or unusual for your sector. But we don't want, you know, there's nothing creative about doing the thing you do for every client and that everyone does. So did you break any rules? Did you avoid the normal solution to do something? Did you do something that no one else has ever done? Or it's the first time that you ever did it in your own organization? Or it's the first time in the world? So for creativity, it is about those things which really set you apart from your competitors. And that's an absolute must. Because if we see 100 entries where absolutely everyone did the same thing, how hard is it for us to determine who is the best here? So this is that chance to point out that... difference, the thing that differentiates you from everyone else in the pack. Absolutely. Yeah. And of course, it's probably the results that are the reason you're entering. So a lot of people can tend to get overexcited in this section. And this is where we find that the results don't match the objectives. Again, it's out of 10 points. So we're going to be scoring whether your results matched your objectives. Remember, there's 10 points to sacrifice here as well. So you're looking at 50% of your points are going into your objectives and your results. And if you're not matching them, you're just frittering away your opportunity to win an award. And I would say that as it's 50% of all campaign awards, that's the one area everybody can improve. So match your results to your objectives and also ensure that you embed those images here in the results section if you're specifically wanting to call out results and you don't have something specific for the inspiration that. was behind the actual execution of your campaign, but you have the results that look solid, this is where you should put them. Absolutely. So you really must show us how you achieve those objectives. If you said that's what you were going to do, then prove it. Prove it to us. Did you meet all those KPIs on the way? Did you exceed any of them? Did you... Come up with something that was like really surprising. Oh my gosh, this was our goal, but we actually achieved this because we want to see superlative performance because that's what sets you apart. And do you evaluate things that are a bit harder to measure, any sort of softer sort of measures, things like customer satisfaction? Did you anticipate that you would improve something like that? And if you were to do this again, what would you do differently? Or what did you achieve that you could not have anticipated? anticipated that that may be excited and delighted those for whom you were doing this work so you know show us the surprises as well because sometimes they're they're the things that can make the difference between simply being shortlisted and actually winning an award so i mean judith we we see hundreds of entries and in in many cases they're all they're all great but they often are working around particularly around the same sectors they're working often with the same measures and we're thinking what's the one thing that can really set us apart so this why should you win can sometimes for us be the deciding factor. You may have a brilliant entry, but send it to 10 other people. So how do we determine what's different? So I want to be surprised and delighted when I read an entry. I want to think, wow, this is really different. These people have done something really special. And make us want to award this. Don't make us try and think this through. Don't cover it in. in language that might be very difficult to understand. There's nothing worse than marketing speak, but make it easy for us to say, yeah, these are the ones when we're all sat in that room together, we want to know that this is the one, this is the one that really sets itself apart. Yeah. I should say under the results and evaluation, the point that you made about something that you couldn't anticipate, I realized that that means something in your results won't match your objectives because you couldn't have anticipated it. And this is the section where you can reiterate that and say, our unanticipated outcome was this. And this is what really made it stand out above and beyond the other entries for, for, you know, whatever reason because not only did we measure all the things we could measure, we were measuring other things and found this unexpected outcome that was extremely. positive for the client. So this is where you can sell that in and make us understand why a little bit more about why your objectives didn't match your results, because you're, of course, promoting your results, something that was unanticipated. Fantastic. So just a little reminder, we're very keen on evidence. But as Judith, you said, it's not a place to hide more words. So if you're putting any supporting material in, make sure you refer from the entry. to that thing so that we can look and go, oh, yes, I see that. If you're putting any URLs in, we are going to click on them and check. We don't look at anything which you don't refer to. So just filling up an appendix with tons and tons of things. If it just looks like a mass of content, I probably won't look at it. And, you know, design collateral very rarely makes a difference in a tiebreak. It's always about a compelling argument. And... I'm not a graphic designer. This is a search awards. Most of us are not graphic designers. So something being very pretty is probably not going to be the thing that makes it for us. It's going to be probably about something else. And I think you'd probably agree, Judith. Yes, we have had entries that don't follow the form. We accept them, but it makes it very difficult for us to assess your entry. And if you think about how we're awarding points, those are fixed. And that's how we enter it into the system. We enter a number of points from zero to 10 into four sections in our results chart. And if we can't match the results charts to what you've given us, it makes it hard for us to score. So as you've said continually, keep it simple for the judges, make it easy for us to want to award your campaign. We have had a question. in the chat about entering campaigns. Shall I read it before we move on to the software awards? So for campaigns, someone asked, would you rather people entered campaigns individually, or is it better to enter a series of campaigns for one client over a period of time? Do you want to start or shall I? I think you'd go for that, Judith. Okay, so the way that campaigns work is you're given a period of time that the work can have happened within. Now, as long as it's a discrete campaign for the client, it has a beginning, a middle and an end. There are clear objectives for it. And there are clear outcomes, clear results for each stage. And you have a break, and there's a clear break and different work or additional work or changes to the work have been done at that point. feel free to enter them in chunked up individually. If there is no natural stopping and starting point where you cannot see the results clearly and how the results have improved and why therefore you should be an award-winning entry, I would hesitate to break it up because if you're not giving yourself the best chance to demonstrate to judges, all of whom are at the top of their fields, a chance to show... what you've done that's different or best in class, then you're sort of hindering yourself, you're hamstringing yourself, so to speak, to use a North American colloquialism. You're not giving yourself the best possibility to win. So I would recommend that you not break it up unless there are clear points where you stopped work. assessed and said wow this is amazing and then started and changed something so that there's something unique otherwise you're competing against yourself as well yes don't don't do that because that's definitely going to dilute the power of an entry um by half certainly okay so want to move on now to the entries around innovation and software awards and the sort of categories we're looking at as best software innovation ppc management software suite and so on And this is a really hard thing for us judges because it's trying to compare apples with pears. It's very, very difficult to compare these things. So, again, very similar sort of set of categories that we sort of look at. But let's have a look at this first of all. So why would we ask about the money question? And what we want to do, again, is some people might have had an enormous budget to develop a piece of software or an innovation. And other people might have had very little. And we want to see what the relative power of that is. So there have been winners who have spent $1,000 on development and won against somebody who might have spent $1 million. So throwing money at it isn't what wins here. It's what we get back for it. So again, we want to see the breakdown of the individual elements of spend so that we can see which things are having their attention focused on. And if you've stolen bits from elsewhere, you know, they're not free. They cost money as well. So make sure that we can see the total cost of everything so that we can make a fair judgment about this. Now, Judith, about the overview, why is this important? So the overview, again, don't overuse your words in any section, but the overview is really important because. When we're going into a session as judges and we're going in and we're going to use your product, so please don't think that we're not going to use your product. Either we are customers, our clients are customers, or we're going to go in and we're going to have a hammer that we're going to take to it and take all of our data and just like assault the tool and see what it does for us. So it's really important for us to have an overview because we need to focus our time and attention in one area. We don't have... 17 hours or 24 hours or whatever to spend getting to grips with your tool, understanding it, and then going in and using it. We need to have a clear, concise plan of here's what the things are that you've innovated. This is what we're going to test. And that's 10 out of possible 40 points right there. Fantastic. And the way I like to get people to swear is don't just describe the product. Think of it from a perspective. You're trying to sell this to us and to an audience. So what are the core benefits of the product? You know, what value does a user seek from it? And what are the basic product features that we would expect to be there? But are there any features there that are unexpected and highly valued by the users? What problems does it solve? Why is this the only thing that solves this problem? What gains does it create that absolutely no competitor product creates? So... think about it from a way of differentiating it from anything else nearby. And it's a little bit like the question we brought. If it's an evolution from a previous version, explain to us what the new things are between perhaps the last time you tried to enter an awards with it and this time. What makes it interesting and more different? And why would we think that this is now something to consider when we're doing this? Okay, so... Okay. Again, we've pointed out that it gets 10 possible points, but really one of the hardest things for us to think about is why should it win? And they are all so very different, and they all do unique things, but we might have an absolute raft of entries for very different kinds of software tool. So why should we pick you? You've got to try and persuade. these judges who use lots of different tools in different uh sort of contexts but why is this one the best of all of those tools why why do we find it more useful and you really need to sell that to us uh make it really really really clear otherwise we're going to think this is just another tool that that people can can can use um this is about being the best and that's why this question is is quite important. And I think same again as last time, if you're going to support, you know, make sure that we can see why we're looking at something. We do need some kind of guest access. We do want to go in and have a little delve around. And there will inevitably be someone on this judging panel who it's their hobby is to go and have a look at things. And they will be checking to see whether claims you make are indeed possible from this. So make sure we can have guest access. If we don't get it, we're going to find it very difficult to shortlist it. Not only that, I should say there's 20 points in that section. Absolutely. Using the tool. Absolutely. You've got to make sure that it does what it says on the tin. And, you know, again, we're not developers for most part. So we're not looking at programming or development quality or assets like that. It is about the end product and really what it does for the people you say it works for. So that brings us to our kind of third sort of award. And these are the sort of agency team awards. And we've got things like. Best in-house team, best small and large PPC agency, best small and large SEO agency, best small and large integrated search agency. And I would say something really funny here. Make sure you enter the right one because we've had people who claim they are SEO agencies and they're not. They're more than that. They are integrated. So don't enter the wrong awards because people will say, We can't let this through. And if you are large and the rules are very clear, look on the form. It explains what's the difference between a small agency and a large agency. If you are one person over, you count as the other. And if you are a small agency, don't enter the large one because you are competing with the big boys, and it may well be you're putting yourself out of a really good award. I would say there are lots of different kinds of organization and we are, we've got to be really clear. So when we ask you for details about the different people and the numbers and roles, make it clear. It might not be about identifying people's names, but certainly job titles and responsibilities, maybe highlighting any key individuals that are associated with very specific roles. perhaps you go on to discuss them a little bit later when we talk about sort of achievements that you have made. Now, Judith, why do we need to think about team objectives? Why is this such a thing? This is often I think it's really difficult to think about agency objectives rather than individual objectives. So it's probably easier on an individual. basis because you have KPIs you need to achieve. But as an agency, what we're doing is we're evaluating you as an agency and what you've set yourself as a goal to achieve. So we're giving 10 possible marks here and you need to think about what those 10 points are going to count towards. If you just say, oh, our objective was to be good and I have had that come through. Our objective was to be awesome. We are the awesomest, most awesome agency ever. No, I'm sorry. This doesn't tell me what your objectives are. Just be specific. What are you trying to do? Make the world a better place is also not great. But if you say we're aiming to legitimize the new AEO for SEO through improving external relations with clients and promoting AEO as SEO to a wider audience or something like that, that's clearer than just we want to be awesome. And so we're giving beer fridges on Friday. Fantastic. And just to reiterate that, we have a view that in terms of the best practice, the proper organisations have a proper objective. So I think it's very reasonable for an agency to have business objectives, so make it clear that these are the things that your agency or team is set out to do. I know that one of the very fashionable acronyms being the bands you use is AIs rather than... KPIs, so if you've got organization indicators, maybe you should highlight these ROKIs are. And again, make sure it should be measurable because you achieve your organization set up. So have a look back at the advice that we've given on our objectives earlier. Now, work examples. Just a second. I think there's a little bit of feedback on that. on your headset there, David. I'm not sure what changed, but something clicked and it started giving me feedback so I can hear an echo. I do wonder if I've got people nearby shouting. Oh, okay. And then go back on. Sadly, no, I can still hear the echo. What I'll do is if you have a fiddle with your headset, I'm going to talk about the recent work example section. So this is again out of 10. So I believe if I'm remembering correctly, and I haven't looked at my scoring sheet today, which is a naughty thing. Judith, you should have looked at your scoring sheets. This section is marked out of a possible 10. I believe there's 54 agencies. So we want to see your recent work. And I believe it's a requirement that you do actually enter campaign work. But the judge that is judging the agency may not have judged your campaign work. So don't assume that. And I realize this takes away from your word count. But what I would recommend is, and what people who have been successful in the past have done here, is that they actually take the case studies that they're entering, as well as maybe one or two other case studies, and they bullet point their objectives, their inspiration, or their tactics, and their targets, and then their results. So bullet point really tight, really close, really, really concise with images for outcomes. So if you've got five different things that you've entered for the search awards, I would... while I do say avoid using support material to get around the word limit, do actually give us as support material the other entries that you have submitted that support this with your recent work. So you must have entered at least one thing for recent work in order to, I think it's a requirement, but also we want to see it ourselves because maybe we're not judging, maybe you entered best use of gaming. or best use of search in gaming, or best use of search in travel leisure. And we can't, we haven't judged that one, but we are judging agency. Please don't assume that we've seen that. It may not be there in our pack. So we need to see your recent work examples. That's why this is so important. And I realize it's only 10 and it's a super important 10, but it's really important here that you're just really concise and put all of that in there for us. Okay. I think I'm back in the room. Perfect. Fantastic. So Again, see our advice on the objectives. Think about these are like tiny versions of an entry. But I would say ask yourself this. We sometimes see entries for best agency, and you'll include things that sound great. I'm thinking, why haven't you actually entered one of the other awards as well? So have a good think. If you are putting something in here and you think it's great, why isn't it also? being entered for one of the mainstream awards and I think that's a really important thing to think about there may be good reasons for it make those clear but if you are just entering best agency and you're not putting anything in elsewhere we're probably going to have a think about whether that means you are the best agency and also about work how do how does this work really represent you as a business how does it represent your values perhaps they're very strongly held you How does it represent the best of what you do? And I think that this is that moment when those individual roles that you've mentioned, how did they play a very specific role here? What is it about that one person that made this very particular thing really take off? And it might be different individuals in different examples of the work. So we move from work and then we think about achievements of your business. And this is, again, quite an unusual one. Judith, do you want to tell us a bit about what your thinking is on this? I think for recent achievements, we're looking for things like awards, mentions. If you've won some charity award because of your work with a charity, we're looking for stuff not just within your business, but outside of your business as well. So what are you doing outside of core business as usual? Absolutely. So... One of the things I would say is avoid simply listing every other award as your sole achievements, because great, fantastic. Not all awards are great, but point out the ones that really would impress us as judges. And we're probably judges on those as well. So don't be telling any fibs. But look at accolades outside. Like you say, are there things for which you have been judged excellent in other things other than? Search. Is there a unique achievement by your organisation that just stands out, that really no one else in this sector goes for? Do you have any kind of certification which is unusual or unique? I really don't think you need to mention the certification that we would expect as standard. You know, anything from Google really, don't bother. Tell us something that we would be surprised for your organisation to hold. And maybe you have goals that your organisation sets itself, maybe as a result of its values, that shows your contribution to a wider society. We're all about. ethics and sustainability as an industry. So can you show us elements of this in your work that brings you into being a much more whole agency rather than solely focused on the bottom line and the results. So which moves neatly on to the challenges that organizations face, which is I think sometimes my favorite section to look at. Yeah, we had trouble with growing pains. Every single entry could put that on and it would be true. So we really want to see that you've given some thought to this and that you've actually considered your genuine challenges and how you've genuinely overcome them. And they can be things like culture. They can be things like retention. But the more if you're honest with us, we are often agency owners. Some of us are in-house. We know what it's like. And if you're not explaining this to us that you've overcome these challenges. then we're going to assume that you're just either too lazy or you're hiding something. Absolutely. So these have to be unique to you as an organization difficulties. For example, having to deal with an algorithm change is not a challenge that everyone else managed to get away with. Everyone has to deal with it. So what ones are unique to you in your context? As an example, I was looking at an entry where a the organization had been asked to vacate their premises on Christmas Eve which was a really difficult time of the year to do that and as a result that was a massive challenge for them. How do they maintain business continuity over a season where actually they might be doing a lot of work around preparing for sales and discounting in the new year and they had to move tens of people. into another building and be ready to rumble for the new year. That was a massive challenge. And I had never read that before. And I thought, wow. And the key thing was, is what they did to get around that. What innovative approach they use. And I think if you show us that you did unusual things to get past your problems and really emphasise the impact the challenge has on your business. I mean, you know, we all lose clients. But did you lose all of your clients bar one for a reason that was out of your control? And what did you do about it? So tell us about these amazing challenges and then the most amazing response that you had as a business. I know it can be difficult to think of, but this is important for us to try and understand your amazing capabilities as an agency. Which then leads us to this question. why should we pick you as the best agency yeah and i think this this section's marked out of 10 and the only thing the only guidance that i would give and it's very specific is um think about hubris why you think you should win should not be um an exercise in exercising your ego it it should be an explanation out of about what is important for you around why you should win. So what, what specific things about what you've overcome or what you've done is why you should win. Don't, don't fall into the, the, um, hubris trap or it'll be all of us and shouting fraud. Absolutely. So remember, we're going to be looking at a lot of entries because everyone does think they are the best agency. So why you and not the others, that hubris thing is absolutely essential. We want to be able to choose someone because they clearly are the ones that should win. So what thing will surprise and delight us about your agency? What thing have you done that's a groundbreaker, the real first in this sector? Make it easy for us to go, there's no doubt here. It's definitely that one. I love a judging session where that happens when we go, it's definitely them. It's definitely them. We really, really like to look at that. So again. you've got to think about those things that you use to support it. Don't just pile everything into some kind of appendix. Make it clear that you're referring to something from your entry in the supporting material. We will only look at things to which we are referred. And again, most of us aren't graphic designers, so we're going to really struggle to know whether something is good because it looks pretty. So there needs to be something within that supporting material. really support something that you're saying um in there so um judith let's think about some some tricks and tips on the topic of tricks and tips i we have had a couple of questions um one is is there any limit on word count uh on these supported docs um do not use supported documentation to get around word limits keep them concise we're not going to read them if there's too many words Yeah. We have a limited amount of time. We usually spend 16 to 24 hours judging. If we then have to read another 5,000 words in your supporting documentation, that is unkind. And in all likelihood, we won't get to it. We'll put it to the end. Also, we were asked about financials and profits. Do we not want to see financials and agency awards? I think that from the point of view of financials, we have not required that to the best of my knowledge and belief. But we do look at it in that we are all experts in our fields. We know a lot of agencies and we often have access to inside information sometimes. But do feel free to include that if you feel that it makes a compelling argument as to why you should win. And I think if you've thought about them in terms of objectives, then profits and financials may be an appropriate objective to consider. So if you're looking at a financial... goal that you set out to achieve then if you're able to say and look here we are we definitely did it we we really did get there then that's that is an important thing to do but just throwing pictures of numbers and money isn't what we're interested in it is about did you set out to achieve something and and did you do it that's for me is probably more important than impressive and remember if you're a small search agency Your financial goals may well be much more modest compared to a very large organisation. So it isn't about the size of the money. It's about what you set out to achieve and whether you met it or went past that, whether you surpassed it. So I think that's very important. There's another question here around, has a groundbreaking innovative campaign that drove amazing results ever won more than one award? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So it's possible to take the same campaign and enter different categories with it depending on the size of the campaign. What I would say is do not simply cut and paste because we see through that one and go, no, not having that, not playing that game. You need to make sure that each entry is carefully reworded to fit each prompt. It has to be specifically for that campaign, particularly if it's sector specific. If you've got a big integrated campaign, you might be saying, well, here's the pay-per-click elements for that one. Here's the organic stuff for this one. That's absolutely fine. But a simple blanket cut and paste is likely to end not in great satisfaction. It really has to be customized for that specific entry. Word count limits, Judith. The back-end system at the moment does not actually restrict so you can go over. It will be changing. So at the moment, you cannot go over, but I understand that the back-end system will be changing so that it will get much more strict and you won't be able to go over. That's right. So I think if you need to write more than the word limit, I think you're doing it wrong. I think you're overusing. Too many words that don't need to be there. Keep them short sentences, small words, not massive, dense paragraphs of narrative. Keep it absolutely on the money. I've seen entries where people haven't even used their word count and they've been shortlisted because I can see exactly the message that's trying to get across here. Remember, all of these people work in marketing. So don't be marketing-y speak-y. That's it. absolutely what i i would say so shall we yeah should we go to the tips and tricks and then we'll do a last round of questions and then so you'll all have a chance to ask more questions absolutely so uh this sounds obvious put something in every section oh yeah god i've had more than one entry where they've actually forgotten to fill in a section and you lose all 10 points so you get zero and either one quarter or one fifth of your of your points are gone absolutely you and use the official form it is very tempting to send us something glamorous and brochure like with your answers in i haven't got time i could be looking at 100 entries and i'm gonna think no i haven't got time for this you need to just fill in that form save your money save your effort and just put the words in there and don't use jargon just use the real english words proper speaking not full of the marketing fluff that you might like to to use don't we can see through that and make sure that you realize that whoever's looking at your entry could well be the leading person in that field. So if you're a financial entry for search, organic search, bear in mind that the person who is looking at your work might well be head of search for a bank. And you're thinking, be absolutely sure you know what you're saying. Don't try and blag your way to the top because somebody will go, yeah, this isn't possible. It never happens. And that's happened more than a few times. And we've had some very heated discussions in those judging panels about certain claims that have been made on those forms. Yeah. With the experts that you'll have in the room, if you try to pull the wool over our eyes, not only will we have worked in that industry for 10, 12, 15 years, but we'll spot when you're trying to blag it. So and don't tell us that you did keyword research because keyword research is important. Because we're all experts in our fields and that's why we're judging. So trying to teach grandma to suck eggs just wastes your word count. Yeah. And then just some simple pro tips. Use a spell checker, please. Get another human being to read the entry. I usually get my mum to read my stuff and she just goes, this is rubbish, David. What on earth does this mean? And get someone who isn't from your team to sense check it. I'll say one thing that's really important. Don't get your PR company to write your entry unless you are the PR company writing your own entry. So many times the job has been handed on to people who don't really understand what's been going on. And the entries are, they're not great. Particularly don't hand it to anyone who isn't really writing for this awards. They're writing maybe for lots of narrative, for lots of other press releases. Write your own entry. I'd rather a... rough looking piece of writing that literally said exactly what I wanted to say rather than this beautifully honed narrative and make sure you get give yourself lots of time try not to do this half an hour before the closing date and put it in as an objective as team goal put some time in it and some resource in it and make somebody right at the top of the organization responsible for it because if it becomes something you really want to achieve that's when great success happens. So we've got some time for some questions. So we had another one after the word limit, which was what are the most competitive categories? So and how many cases are submitted on average per category? That's a hard one to answer. I think best SEO campaign I can say, and best PPC campaign I can say with a high degree of confidence are the two most competitive categories that are entered are best SEO, best BBC. Outside of that, it can be split across quite fairly across a number of different categories. We've had more some years in one area, fewer some years in the same area, you know, later or before. It really depends. It's not a set thing. I would say that if you wanted to enter and you only wanted to enter one thing, do a category like um i don't know uh best use of search and travel or something like that rather than just best seo campaign make best seo campaign because you're you are super confident because you're up against 85 100 other people whereas in best use of search in travel and leisure it might only be 25 so you're giving yourself a better chance of winning um or both and i think the thing to say is it varies every year And, you know, I've seen categories in the previous year have 60 or 70 entries, and then there might be 10 the next year. It depends on people's cycle of campaign development, people's appetite for entry. It does vary from year to year, and it also varies from geographic region as well. So, you know, different parts of the world have a different sort of take on it. I've seen lots of entry in fast-moving consumer goods. That's where we seem to see a lot of the obvious. The B2B stuff, I've seen less, fewer entries, probably because they are bigger campaigns and tend to be a bit more specialised. That said, some of the best entries have come through in B2B because they are, I don't know, very, very serious long-term things. And so we often see very well articulated things in there. There's one question that's come through that I think is very important. But there's one that has come through that I don't know if you know the answer to this, but I definitely do. So the one about if you don't get shortlisted, do you get feedback? And then it says, and why not? I can say that one of the jobs of the head judges this year is going to be correlating responses. Because we as judges. We make notes and we actually do have notes that we write, especially for ourselves around what about this entry really stood out to us. And, and mind jogs just to remember about the entry. Cause if you're reading 85 to a hundred entries, you're going to make notes. And what we're going to be doing is this head judges will be collating all of these comments and we'll be working on creating a document that we'll be able to feed back on for winning and non-winning entries. So we'll be able to give you that feedback for sure. So I would say that if you don't get shortlisted, you do get feedback or you will be about to get feedback. Yes. And I think it's worth saying that this is an ongoing process of improvement that all the time we want to look at ways of making sure that whenever you enter an awards, whether you're not shortlisted, if you are shortlisted, but you don't win, can you understand what you would need to do to improve? So we're always, we're always in the position to say, Hey, This was really good. However, you would need to do this. That comes with a caveat because as judges, we're working quite quickly through different entries. And so we aren't always necessarily being the most polite of judges. So we might be very curt in our responses. Mine often say, I cannot see all the objectives. I can't see that. It's usually about pointing out things that are missing. But sometimes it's not because you were bad. It's because there were others that were better. So one of the things we're going to try and do over time is saying, the things that really set this apart from others was this. So trying to understand what makes for a superlative entry, we're going to try and make that clearer and clearer without giving too much sort of information away. And that kind of leads us on to a really good question from Ryan. He says, are we willing to thoroughly and 100% anonymise a past? winning entry and publish it i'd love to do that the problem is is that a little bit like the nda we we are we have a we have a problem with revealing winning entries so what we might try and do over time and i don't think we're going to get it in very quickly is speak to previous winners and see if we can work with those winners to get an example entry of what makes one up um And I think that, yeah, should we try and create a fictional example? I'd love to. But as with my work with students, I'll put up a fictional version and everyone will try and copy that. It's all about your own material and your context and what you do is what wins it. But yeah, Judith, we're going to commit to that. We're going to try and see if we can get a winning entry that is anonymised from somebody who's really proud of it. And it doesn't, you know, we try and, you know, cut out and put in blank, black tape, all the bits you can't see. But yeah, we will try and do that if we can, but we can't promise because of the obvious privacy and secrecy issues around that. We have had entries, we have had people who have won awards present. So we have had the award winning entries presented as case studies at conferences. So if you have attended those in the past, you'll have had access. to the award-winning entries vis-a-vis a presentation. But Ryan has also asked if entries that include embedded files and sections are viewed more favorably than ones that reference an attachment. I think as long as the attachment isn't copious word count, then there's no difference. For entries where references include copious word counts, it's not a favorable view. I think really those embeds need to be visual rather than anything else. That would be my advice. But I think each case is very, very different. But it shouldn't be about trying to cheat. If you know you're cheating, it's not going to work. Shane has a very good question here about clients who are sensitive about their business results, and we do appreciate that. Please bear in mind that we have our NDAs. We do not share. These are not discussed outside. of the judging panels. They are very carefully managed. So it's a bit difficult to say that that would be fine. I think... Because we need to be able to validate them. We need to be able to validate these things. So if it becomes difficult to validate because, you know, the data is so anonymized that we can't tell, or if we're only dealing with sort of relative differences rather than actual differences, it could be a problem. So, yeah, we do understand that clients are cautious, but no one. else outside of these judgment judging teams is going to see this material and it could mean the difference between winning and not winning so if it's up against if it's you and one other entry the other entry has actual numbers that have been proven in screenshots that are from recognized tools versus your percentages that may mean the difference between winning and only shortlisting Okay. Oh, what's the funniest award submission you've ever read? It's usually the blank ones where somebody has paid to enter and there is a blank form and there's no material that goes with it. And you're thinking, it's noughts all the way. I see it several times in each awards. So, you know, no white text on a white background. We know the rules. No spamming. The very first year that we ran the UK Search Awards, an entry came in on the back of a postcard. Back in the old analog days. It's only eight years ago. An entry actually came in on the back of the postcard. So that was kind of funny. And we've also had a question, do we also analyze the campaigns? Yes. We don't just use SCM Rush. We also use... All the tools that are available to us, so search metrics, Ahrefs, and a variety of other tools, besides SEMrush or SEMrush, depending on how you say it, are used to check the campaign results. So if you say we had an increase by 700,000 unique visitors, and you don't give us any screenshots, and we go in and SEMrush says, huh. They decreased the number of keywords they were ranking for. We're not necessarily going to believe what you've said. So give us a recognized screenshot of a recognized tool like your analytics and it's fine. But yes, we do also check entries with other tools. Yes. And I've seen that checking going on live in a judging session. And anyone who's tried to pull all over the judge's eyes, it is not pretty. And it will be listed as a comment in things to improve in the future. Please do not lie about performance. This is an open business. We're in an open sector. We can go and check. And you're dealing with some of the world's leading authorities in this area. It's just be straight. Don't, you know, just work with the numbers. It's the evidence we're looking for. Okay, Judith, I think we're just past three o'clock. so I think it's probably time for us to finish. Hopefully people have picked up something. We're looking forward to reading your entries very soon. Make our job easy. Make us want to choose you and we hope that some of you people today will be the winners of awards coming up in the next 12 months. Thanks for listening in and make sure that you follow the right Twitter account and visit the right website. so that we can demonstrate that we have an impact on traffic. Thank you very much, everyone, for sticking with it as well. And good luck. I hope that I read your excellent entries and that you make my job that much harder. Thanks a lot, folks. Take care.

Great. Okay, folks, let's kick this off. Let's tell you about what we're going to do this afternoon.

I'm just going to introduce our session to you. We're going to talk about how to win an award at one of the search awards that are going on, hosted by the lovely Don't Panic crew. We've got about an hour with you, and I'm just going to introduce everyone else to you.

Judith, do you want to say hello and tell us a little bit about you? Sure. Hi, I'm Judith Lewis. I'm...

The one of the judges for the search awards, I've been judging them since they've they started. So the very first UK search award, I was one of the small panel of people that were gathered in a room for many, many, many hours judging those awards. And I've been a part of it ever since.

So I'm judging across most most regions. I actually also actively work in search both well across all digital marketing disciplines as a consultant. but I also do hands-on stuff. So I'm not just like a lead or somebody like that that doesn't do hands-on things.

I'm deeply involved and the people who work with me know how deep. That's fantastic. And I'm Dave Edmondson-Bird.

I'm a lecturer here at Manchester Metropolitan University and I've been involved with the various search awards on and off for a few years. And I'm also involved in a lot of the other awards that Don't Panic run. And my job is to be... completely objective. So I work with a lot of the judges on making sure that what we're doing is the right thing and that we are able to say that these are some of the best awards, if not the best awards in the world, and certainly the leading search awards on the planet.

So with that in mind, we're being hosted by the folks from Don't Panic, who are our silent partners for the day, but they are very much here and keeping an eye on us and making sure that we're on message. So today we're going to look at what people like... Judith and I look for in a search awards entry and we want you to be able to do a really good search awards entry because we want to look at things that are brilliant.

We want you to make our lives harder rather than easier so we want to have really good things to look at and hopefully by the end of today you'll start to be able to improve your chances of putting in a great entry that will get shortlisted and if you've done it the right way will be a winner of a search award. Judith, tell us a little bit about what we need to know before we even start that. So one of the things that you will get out today is I'm going to be talking about the scoring. But one of the many things I do want to point out to everybody who's entering is that we all sign a non-disclosure agreement. So that means that any of you who enter, when you disclose things like budgets and your activities to us, we are under obligation to not discuss that outside of the judging session.

So while we will discuss it, obviously, in the judging session, we don't discuss it outside of that. So your details are absolutely safe. We also don't accept bribes or money or, you know, chocolate.

We all sign up to a code of conduct. And that code of conduct means that we're forbidden from doing that on risk of being barred from any future awards, but also having the awards that we were involved with excluded. So. Obviously, we don't want to do that. Plus, it's ethical.

We are ethical judges and we're involved in doing this ethically. So you can't purchase an award through bribing judges. You can't purchase it through buying a table.

We don't know who has bought what tickets. We don't know who's sponsoring. When we as judges go into judging this, we're judging it blind in a sense that we don't know who's put what money behind the bar or anything like that.

We just look at what the entry has on it. And any judges, because, you know, the industry is quite small. So any of us who have conflicts of interest, we actually declare those.

So if we're married to someone or if five years ago we worked with someone or if we quit somewhere, we actually do disclose those conflicts of interest where it's in the past or it's a secondary effect and we are actually excluded from judging. And we won't know if we have those conflicts of interest, how those. sessions went and we wouldn't be involved in those in those groupings you'll see there are what was it 30 categories I think it is and though that varies country to country and we are not judging all 30 at once there's a short list created but we'll go into that so we we all adhere to a really strict code of ethics and morals and we all actually sign up to those with our as they say in the U.S.

John Hancock as one of the signers of the um Was this the Declaration of Independence or something? I'm Canadian. I don't know these things. But we all adhere to a strict code of ethics.

So when you enter. you're entering a legitimate awards that is judged fairly honestly and ethically fantastic so we've got that out of the way we're dead straight outfit so let's have a look at how we enter different award styles so the first one the biggest one that we see are campaign awards and you might see something on the lines of of categories like this so whether it's a global search awards or uk search awards or european search awards or whatever you'll see these sort of things and What we really want to do is help you understand what these awards are for and how you might go about entering them. So the point of an award like this is that we are looking to reward high achievement for work that's been done in this particular area.

And the idea is that you're getting the recognition from your peers for the work you have done and to demonstrate that it is the best possible work in this category. So. Judith, tell us about the points for this particular section here around objectives and budget. So you'll see that I actually mentioned these in four different sections.

There are four different sections we're marking out of 10 for these campaign awards. So every campaign award, we have four sections we're marking out of 10, which means that for objectives and budget, and this is very important, objectives and budget, you're getting 10 possible points by the judges. If you keep your objectives in bullet order, so bullet points, you can match them to the...

the results at the end. There are some judges like me, who will give you one point or less if you fail to match your objectives to your results. So that's out of a possible 10 points, you're losing nine or 10 points.

So it is super important to match your objectives to your results. But also, if you fail to add a budget, some judges will mark you down for this as well. So you're taking on an awful lot of a risk with 10 out of 40 points. So one quarter, you're going to have to do a lot of work to get that number.

of your points poll for this section is reliant on this one, well, for this campaign awards, is reliant on the objectives and budget section. So be tight with it. Bullet points, keep your word count for later.

And remember to match your objectives to your results. Fantastic. Let me tell you a little bit about budgets and objectives.

I get really wound up about this. So I want five minutes to just tell people about... what I think about objectives. Now we ask for these because with proper objectives, we get proper campaign. And what we're suggesting is that this is about best practice.

So the first thing I want people to make sure they do is tell us whether these are business objectives, marketing objectives, or communications objectives. We've left it open, but you'll need to tell us what it is. And we think you should follow the practice about them being clear and singular and measurable. Now, I might be teaching a few people to suck eggs here, but let's just make sure we know what the difference between each of those is.

So a business objective is what your organization needs to achieve as a result of your activity. So whatever your campaign is designed to achieve, what's the big goal if you're doing it that way? We might be talking about long term things, things that might be about a strategic business unit.

But these are the big things. And you need to show us how what you did helps meet this objective. The alternative is it might be a marketing objective. So it might be about entering a new marketplace or about market penetration or something like this.

It might be about opening 100 new stores in a country, whatever. But again, make it really clear to us what our marketing objective is and if that's what you're doing. What I found quite a lot of the time is that search awards and campaigns are often about communications objectives. And they're about a specific change of circumstances. And it might well relate to something along the sales funnel.

It might be about increasing traffic or increasing the number of conversions. Whatever it is, make it really clear what those are. And that's important because we want to see you connect things like KPIs with objectives to what's going on.

So when I'm marking this, and Judy's absolutely the same about this, when we look at measurement of success, we're saying, did you achieve? what you set out to achieve. And if you don't tell us at the start what the goal was, we can't tell whether it's successful.

So, you know, shortlists and award winning has been made just on simply putting in the correct information here and making it really clear to judges what was set out to achieve. And ultimately, when we come to evaluation, did we really do it? Now, asking about the budget is really important. Why?

do we do this? Well, we're getting entries from lots of different kinds of entrants with big and small budgets. And what we're trying to see is, is there some kind of equity between different amounts of money being invested in these things?

So some people, some agencies, some big clients have a lot of money to throw at a problem. And that might compare to a very small organization that has a lot less resource. We want to see whether there is a way of measuring equal performance.

So make sure you break your budget down. so that we can see different things. So like, what's the media spend?

What's the spend on other things? We want to be able to see where money has been spent. And if you're... using assets from different parts of the organization.

So maybe you've spent money on something somewhere else. Make sure that we can see the true cost of these assets. Nothing's ever free. And there's nothing that upsets a judge more than someone saying, oh, all of this was done for nothing.

Because no, it takes people's time. So let us know the true value of staff time. Anything that's a sunk cost, any billable costs that you would normally associate with this, make sure it's all there because we want to see.

how the money has been spent to achieve the results you're looking for. Tell us a bit about this. Yeah. I think that's both of our bugbears is budgets not being included in people saying, oh yeah, no, we did this totally comp for free.

No, you spent people's time. But for target audience and strategy, I think this sometimes can be a really weak section of the entry. And again, it's 10 full points. So you've got to be thinking about what you're doing here. And those 10 points are going to be divided up amongst the content that you include in this section.

But you need to be concise and precise. Absolutely. So I think nothing irritates a judge more.

Say we're targeting all adults in Europe aged between 18 and 65. I mean, let's not do it that way. So try and make something, you know, it's good practice that we're looking for here. So.

try and make your audiences really tight. So think about behavioral targets. Think about things based on geolocation or psychographic qualities or perhaps personas that you've built up around this.

Make it really clear who this campaign was targeted at. And if there are multiple targets in there, make it clear if there is a priority in there. So with that in mind, this strategy should be about what it is you did to reach.

that audience or those audiences? What was the way that you got there? What was the route to the market, if you like? And what stages did you say you were going to go through?

The strategy is a roadmap. And that's what you're saying. This is how we got to hit these people.

And I think a lot of people often confuse some of the terminology. And that's why we want people to be really sort of clear about what it is they're saying about who it is they're hitting and what it is they did to hit. them now then creativity implementation yeah this is a tough one i think because last in what we were just saying what we were just talking about was um the the targets but then implementation we're not just talking about tactics here we're talking about what went into what you did so this is also 10 possible points but this is where you I think we expect most of your effort to go because you've been intimate with this.

So, you know, you've worked this, you've understood it, you've done everything with this particular project, and you're proud of it, and you're trying to show us how and why you're proud of it. And in this section, this is where you can get more verbose. So we want to understand what it is about this project that makes you so proud. that makes you feel that it's an award-winning entry. You've been closest to this, not us.

So we're walking into this. We don't know anything about it. This is the section where you need to show us as judges what it is about this entry that's so inspiring.

And also, when you're communicating that to us, try not to be too flowery, because remember, there is a word limit. And some judges, probably me, will deduct points when you go... to 2,000 or 3,000 or in one case I had 4,000 words because there is a word limit for a reason because we're judging hundreds and hundreds of entries.

So be creative here and save your word count for this section. And also when you're, when you're screenshotting things, so you're explaining to us what you did, how you did it, what the outcomes were, and you can't give us GA or Adobe Analytics, then use a tool, an external third-party tool like SEMrush or Ahrefs or search metrics or something like that and use screenshots from those tools so that we can see that those are validated. I can make a graph in Excel and I can make it say anything I want.

So that doesn't necessarily validate what you're saying in a way that we can trust so that what we do is we then go off to those third party tools anyway. And we look at what's done. So we want to be we want to see things that we can validate.

And also, if you embed them and they're too small, then use the extra large image in a PDF that you upload as supplementary information. Do not rely on extra words in your supplementary information. So don't rely on that presentation or video or whatever to get a round word count. We're only going to look at that in the case where we've been specifically pointed to it because there's an image or something in there that specifically enhances the entry.

So a visual aid that we just can't see in the Word doc or the PDF that you've supplied us for. So we can see it in a much larger format in the files that you've uploaded. But the files that are being uploaded should not be used to get around word count, especially in the section.

We need to see it here in the entry. So use your words here. Use your proof here. And really put all of your effort into this.

Even though you might think, oh, it's 10, it's only one quarter. It's the most important one quarter of all the points. Absolutely.

And I think people need to make it really clear how they executed the strategy. So what? What tactics did you use? What did you put into place to make what you said was going to happen, happen?

And from my perspective as a judge, creativity is really that. What did you do that was unusual? And it might be unusual for your organization or unusual for your client or unusual for your sector.

But we don't want, you know, there's nothing creative about doing the thing you do for every client and that everyone does. So did you break any rules? Did you avoid the normal solution to do something?

Did you do something that no one else has ever done? Or it's the first time that you ever did it in your own organization? Or it's the first time in the world?

So for creativity, it is about those things which really set you apart from your competitors. And that's an absolute must. Because if we see 100 entries where absolutely everyone did the same thing, how hard is it for us to determine who is the best here? So this is that chance to point out that... difference, the thing that differentiates you from everyone else in the pack.

Absolutely. Yeah. And of course, it's probably the results that are the reason you're entering.

So a lot of people can tend to get overexcited in this section. And this is where we find that the results don't match the objectives. Again, it's out of 10 points. So we're going to be scoring whether your results matched your objectives.

Remember, there's 10 points to sacrifice here as well. So you're looking at 50% of your points are going into your objectives and your results. And if you're not matching them, you're just frittering away your opportunity to win an award. And I would say that as it's 50% of all campaign awards, that's the one area everybody can improve.

So match your results to your objectives and also ensure that you embed those images here in the results section if you're specifically wanting to call out results and you don't have something specific for the inspiration that. was behind the actual execution of your campaign, but you have the results that look solid, this is where you should put them. Absolutely.

So you really must show us how you achieve those objectives. If you said that's what you were going to do, then prove it. Prove it to us. Did you meet all those KPIs on the way?

Did you exceed any of them? Did you... Come up with something that was like really surprising. Oh my gosh, this was our goal, but we actually achieved this because we want to see superlative performance because that's what sets you apart.

And do you evaluate things that are a bit harder to measure, any sort of softer sort of measures, things like customer satisfaction? Did you anticipate that you would improve something like that? And if you were to do this again, what would you do differently?

Or what did you achieve that you could not have anticipated? anticipated that that may be excited and delighted those for whom you were doing this work so you know show us the surprises as well because sometimes they're they're the things that can make the difference between simply being shortlisted and actually winning an award so i mean judith we we see hundreds of entries and in in many cases they're all they're all great but they often are working around particularly around the same sectors they're working often with the same measures and we're thinking what's the one thing that can really set us apart so this why should you win can sometimes for us be the deciding factor. You may have a brilliant entry, but send it to 10 other people. So how do we determine what's different? So I want to be surprised and delighted when I read an entry.

I want to think, wow, this is really different. These people have done something really special. And make us want to award this. Don't make us try and think this through.

Don't cover it in. in language that might be very difficult to understand. There's nothing worse than marketing speak, but make it easy for us to say, yeah, these are the ones when we're all sat in that room together, we want to know that this is the one, this is the one that really sets itself apart. Yeah.

I should say under the results and evaluation, the point that you made about something that you couldn't anticipate, I realized that that means something in your results won't match your objectives because you couldn't have anticipated it. And this is the section where you can reiterate that and say, our unanticipated outcome was this. And this is what really made it stand out above and beyond the other entries for, for, you know, whatever reason because not only did we measure all the things we could measure, we were measuring other things and found this unexpected outcome that was extremely. positive for the client. So this is where you can sell that in and make us understand why a little bit more about why your objectives didn't match your results, because you're, of course, promoting your results, something that was unanticipated.

Fantastic. So just a little reminder, we're very keen on evidence. But as Judith, you said, it's not a place to hide more words. So if you're putting any supporting material in, make sure you refer from the entry. to that thing so that we can look and go, oh, yes, I see that.

If you're putting any URLs in, we are going to click on them and check. We don't look at anything which you don't refer to. So just filling up an appendix with tons and tons of things.

If it just looks like a mass of content, I probably won't look at it. And, you know, design collateral very rarely makes a difference in a tiebreak. It's always about a compelling argument.

And... I'm not a graphic designer. This is a search awards.

Most of us are not graphic designers. So something being very pretty is probably not going to be the thing that makes it for us. It's going to be probably about something else. And I think you'd probably agree, Judith. Yes, we have had entries that don't follow the form.

We accept them, but it makes it very difficult for us to assess your entry. And if you think about how we're awarding points, those are fixed. And that's how we enter it into the system.

We enter a number of points from zero to 10 into four sections in our results chart. And if we can't match the results charts to what you've given us, it makes it hard for us to score. So as you've said continually, keep it simple for the judges, make it easy for us to want to award your campaign. We have had a question. in the chat about entering campaigns.

Shall I read it before we move on to the software awards? So for campaigns, someone asked, would you rather people entered campaigns individually, or is it better to enter a series of campaigns for one client over a period of time? Do you want to start or shall I?

I think you'd go for that, Judith. Okay, so the way that campaigns work is you're given a period of time that the work can have happened within. Now, as long as it's a discrete campaign for the client, it has a beginning, a middle and an end. There are clear objectives for it.

And there are clear outcomes, clear results for each stage. And you have a break, and there's a clear break and different work or additional work or changes to the work have been done at that point. feel free to enter them in chunked up individually.

If there is no natural stopping and starting point where you cannot see the results clearly and how the results have improved and why therefore you should be an award-winning entry, I would hesitate to break it up because if you're not giving yourself the best chance to demonstrate to judges, all of whom are at the top of their fields, a chance to show... what you've done that's different or best in class, then you're sort of hindering yourself, you're hamstringing yourself, so to speak, to use a North American colloquialism. You're not giving yourself the best possibility to win.

So I would recommend that you not break it up unless there are clear points where you stopped work. assessed and said wow this is amazing and then started and changed something so that there's something unique otherwise you're competing against yourself as well yes don't don't do that because that's definitely going to dilute the power of an entry um by half certainly okay so want to move on now to the entries around innovation and software awards and the sort of categories we're looking at as best software innovation ppc management software suite and so on And this is a really hard thing for us judges because it's trying to compare apples with pears. It's very, very difficult to compare these things. So, again, very similar sort of set of categories that we sort of look at.

But let's have a look at this first of all. So why would we ask about the money question? And what we want to do, again, is some people might have had an enormous budget to develop a piece of software or an innovation. And other people might have had very little. And we want to see what the relative power of that is.

So there have been winners who have spent $1,000 on development and won against somebody who might have spent $1 million. So throwing money at it isn't what wins here. It's what we get back for it. So again, we want to see the breakdown of the individual elements of spend so that we can see which things are having their attention focused on. And if you've stolen bits from elsewhere, you know, they're not free.

They cost money as well. So make sure that we can see the total cost of everything so that we can make a fair judgment about this. Now, Judith, about the overview, why is this important? So the overview, again, don't overuse your words in any section, but the overview is really important because.

When we're going into a session as judges and we're going in and we're going to use your product, so please don't think that we're not going to use your product. Either we are customers, our clients are customers, or we're going to go in and we're going to have a hammer that we're going to take to it and take all of our data and just like assault the tool and see what it does for us. So it's really important for us to have an overview because we need to focus our time and attention in one area.

We don't have... 17 hours or 24 hours or whatever to spend getting to grips with your tool, understanding it, and then going in and using it. We need to have a clear, concise plan of here's what the things are that you've innovated. This is what we're going to test. And that's 10 out of possible 40 points right there.

Fantastic. And the way I like to get people to swear is don't just describe the product. Think of it from a perspective.

You're trying to sell this to us and to an audience. So what are the core benefits of the product? You know, what value does a user seek from it? And what are the basic product features that we would expect to be there? But are there any features there that are unexpected and highly valued by the users?

What problems does it solve? Why is this the only thing that solves this problem? What gains does it create that absolutely no competitor product creates?

So... think about it from a way of differentiating it from anything else nearby. And it's a little bit like the question we brought.

If it's an evolution from a previous version, explain to us what the new things are between perhaps the last time you tried to enter an awards with it and this time. What makes it interesting and more different? And why would we think that this is now something to consider when we're doing this?

Okay, so... Okay. Again, we've pointed out that it gets 10 possible points, but really one of the hardest things for us to think about is why should it win?

And they are all so very different, and they all do unique things, but we might have an absolute raft of entries for very different kinds of software tool. So why should we pick you? You've got to try and persuade. these judges who use lots of different tools in different uh sort of contexts but why is this one the best of all of those tools why why do we find it more useful and you really need to sell that to us uh make it really really really clear otherwise we're going to think this is just another tool that that people can can can use um this is about being the best and that's why this question is is quite important. And I think same again as last time, if you're going to support, you know, make sure that we can see why we're looking at something.

We do need some kind of guest access. We do want to go in and have a little delve around. And there will inevitably be someone on this judging panel who it's their hobby is to go and have a look at things. And they will be checking to see whether claims you make are indeed possible from this. So make sure we can have guest access.

If we don't get it, we're going to find it very difficult to shortlist it. Not only that, I should say there's 20 points in that section. Absolutely.

Using the tool. Absolutely. You've got to make sure that it does what it says on the tin.

And, you know, again, we're not developers for most part. So we're not looking at programming or development quality or assets like that. It is about the end product and really what it does for the people you say it works for. So that brings us to our kind of third sort of award.

And these are the sort of agency team awards. And we've got things like. Best in-house team, best small and large PPC agency, best small and large SEO agency, best small and large integrated search agency.

And I would say something really funny here. Make sure you enter the right one because we've had people who claim they are SEO agencies and they're not. They're more than that.

They are integrated. So don't enter the wrong awards because people will say, We can't let this through. And if you are large and the rules are very clear, look on the form. It explains what's the difference between a small agency and a large agency.

If you are one person over, you count as the other. And if you are a small agency, don't enter the large one because you are competing with the big boys, and it may well be you're putting yourself out of a really good award. I would say there are lots of different kinds of organization and we are, we've got to be really clear. So when we ask you for details about the different people and the numbers and roles, make it clear. It might not be about identifying people's names, but certainly job titles and responsibilities, maybe highlighting any key individuals that are associated with very specific roles.

perhaps you go on to discuss them a little bit later when we talk about sort of achievements that you have made. Now, Judith, why do we need to think about team objectives? Why is this such a thing? This is often I think it's really difficult to think about agency objectives rather than individual objectives. So it's probably easier on an individual.

basis because you have KPIs you need to achieve. But as an agency, what we're doing is we're evaluating you as an agency and what you've set yourself as a goal to achieve. So we're giving 10 possible marks here and you need to think about what those 10 points are going to count towards. If you just say, oh, our objective was to be good and I have had that come through. Our objective was to be awesome.

We are the awesomest, most awesome agency ever. No, I'm sorry. This doesn't tell me what your objectives are.

Just be specific. What are you trying to do? Make the world a better place is also not great.

But if you say we're aiming to legitimize the new AEO for SEO through improving external relations with clients and promoting AEO as SEO to a wider audience or something like that, that's clearer than just we want to be awesome. And so we're giving beer fridges on Friday. Fantastic. And just to reiterate that, we have a view that in terms of the best practice, the proper organisations have a proper objective.

So I think it's very reasonable for an agency to have business objectives, so make it clear that these are the things that your agency or team is set out to do. I know that one of the very fashionable acronyms being the bands you use is AIs rather than... KPIs, so if you've got organization indicators, maybe you should highlight these ROKIs are.

And again, make sure it should be measurable because you achieve your organization set up. So have a look back at the advice that we've given on our objectives earlier. Now, work examples.

Just a second. I think there's a little bit of feedback on that. on your headset there, David. I'm not sure what changed, but something clicked and it started giving me feedback so I can hear an echo. I do wonder if I've got people nearby shouting.

Oh, okay. And then go back on. Sadly, no, I can still hear the echo.

What I'll do is if you have a fiddle with your headset, I'm going to talk about the recent work example section. So this is again out of 10. So I believe if I'm remembering correctly, and I haven't looked at my scoring sheet today, which is a naughty thing. Judith, you should have looked at your scoring sheets. This section is marked out of a possible 10. I believe there's 54 agencies. So we want to see your recent work.

And I believe it's a requirement that you do actually enter campaign work. But the judge that is judging the agency may not have judged your campaign work. So don't assume that. And I realize this takes away from your word count. But what I would recommend is, and what people who have been successful in the past have done here, is that they actually take the case studies that they're entering, as well as maybe one or two other case studies, and they bullet point their objectives, their inspiration, or their tactics, and their targets, and then their results.

So bullet point really tight, really close, really, really concise with images for outcomes. So if you've got five different things that you've entered for the search awards, I would... while I do say avoid using support material to get around the word limit, do actually give us as support material the other entries that you have submitted that support this with your recent work. So you must have entered at least one thing for recent work in order to, I think it's a requirement, but also we want to see it ourselves because maybe we're not judging, maybe you entered best use of gaming.

or best use of search in gaming, or best use of search in travel leisure. And we can't, we haven't judged that one, but we are judging agency. Please don't assume that we've seen that.

It may not be there in our pack. So we need to see your recent work examples. That's why this is so important. And I realize it's only 10 and it's a super important 10, but it's really important here that you're just really concise and put all of that in there for us.

Okay. I think I'm back in the room. Perfect.

Fantastic. So Again, see our advice on the objectives. Think about these are like tiny versions of an entry. But I would say ask yourself this. We sometimes see entries for best agency, and you'll include things that sound great.

I'm thinking, why haven't you actually entered one of the other awards as well? So have a good think. If you are putting something in here and you think it's great, why isn't it also?

being entered for one of the mainstream awards and I think that's a really important thing to think about there may be good reasons for it make those clear but if you are just entering best agency and you're not putting anything in elsewhere we're probably going to have a think about whether that means you are the best agency and also about work how do how does this work really represent you as a business how does it represent your values perhaps they're very strongly held you How does it represent the best of what you do? And I think that this is that moment when those individual roles that you've mentioned, how did they play a very specific role here? What is it about that one person that made this very particular thing really take off? And it might be different individuals in different examples of the work.

So we move from work and then we think about achievements of your business. And this is, again, quite an unusual one. Judith, do you want to tell us a bit about what your thinking is on this? I think for recent achievements, we're looking for things like awards, mentions.

If you've won some charity award because of your work with a charity, we're looking for stuff not just within your business, but outside of your business as well. So what are you doing outside of core business as usual? Absolutely. So...

One of the things I would say is avoid simply listing every other award as your sole achievements, because great, fantastic. Not all awards are great, but point out the ones that really would impress us as judges. And we're probably judges on those as well. So don't be telling any fibs.

But look at accolades outside. Like you say, are there things for which you have been judged excellent in other things other than? Search. Is there a unique achievement by your organisation that just stands out, that really no one else in this sector goes for? Do you have any kind of certification which is unusual or unique?

I really don't think you need to mention the certification that we would expect as standard. You know, anything from Google really, don't bother. Tell us something that we would be surprised for your organisation to hold.

And maybe you have goals that your organisation sets itself, maybe as a result of its values, that shows your contribution to a wider society. We're all about. ethics and sustainability as an industry. So can you show us elements of this in your work that brings you into being a much more whole agency rather than solely focused on the bottom line and the results.

So which moves neatly on to the challenges that organizations face, which is I think sometimes my favorite section to look at. Yeah, we had trouble with growing pains. Every single entry could put that on and it would be true.

So we really want to see that you've given some thought to this and that you've actually considered your genuine challenges and how you've genuinely overcome them. And they can be things like culture. They can be things like retention.

But the more if you're honest with us, we are often agency owners. Some of us are in-house. We know what it's like. And if you're not explaining this to us that you've overcome these challenges. then we're going to assume that you're just either too lazy or you're hiding something.

Absolutely. So these have to be unique to you as an organization difficulties. For example, having to deal with an algorithm change is not a challenge that everyone else managed to get away with. Everyone has to deal with it.

So what ones are unique to you in your context? As an example, I was looking at an entry where a the organization had been asked to vacate their premises on Christmas Eve which was a really difficult time of the year to do that and as a result that was a massive challenge for them. How do they maintain business continuity over a season where actually they might be doing a lot of work around preparing for sales and discounting in the new year and they had to move tens of people.

into another building and be ready to rumble for the new year. That was a massive challenge. And I had never read that before. And I thought, wow.

And the key thing was, is what they did to get around that. What innovative approach they use. And I think if you show us that you did unusual things to get past your problems and really emphasise the impact the challenge has on your business.

I mean, you know, we all lose clients. But did you lose all of your clients bar one for a reason that was out of your control? And what did you do about it?

So tell us about these amazing challenges and then the most amazing response that you had as a business. I know it can be difficult to think of, but this is important for us to try and understand your amazing capabilities as an agency. Which then leads us to this question. why should we pick you as the best agency yeah and i think this this section's marked out of 10 and the only thing the only guidance that i would give and it's very specific is um think about hubris why you think you should win should not be um an exercise in exercising your ego it it should be an explanation out of about what is important for you around why you should win.

So what, what specific things about what you've overcome or what you've done is why you should win. Don't, don't fall into the, the, um, hubris trap or it'll be all of us and shouting fraud. Absolutely.

So remember, we're going to be looking at a lot of entries because everyone does think they are the best agency. So why you and not the others, that hubris thing is absolutely essential. We want to be able to choose someone because they clearly are the ones that should win. So what thing will surprise and delight us about your agency?

What thing have you done that's a groundbreaker, the real first in this sector? Make it easy for us to go, there's no doubt here. It's definitely that one.

I love a judging session where that happens when we go, it's definitely them. It's definitely them. We really, really like to look at that.

So again. you've got to think about those things that you use to support it. Don't just pile everything into some kind of appendix. Make it clear that you're referring to something from your entry in the supporting material.

We will only look at things to which we are referred. And again, most of us aren't graphic designers, so we're going to really struggle to know whether something is good because it looks pretty. So there needs to be something within that supporting material. really support something that you're saying um in there so um judith let's think about some some tricks and tips on the topic of tricks and tips i we have had a couple of questions um one is is there any limit on word count uh on these supported docs um do not use supported documentation to get around word limits keep them concise we're not going to read them if there's too many words Yeah. We have a limited amount of time.

We usually spend 16 to 24 hours judging. If we then have to read another 5,000 words in your supporting documentation, that is unkind. And in all likelihood, we won't get to it.

We'll put it to the end. Also, we were asked about financials and profits. Do we not want to see financials and agency awards?

I think that from the point of view of financials, we have not required that to the best of my knowledge and belief. But we do look at it in that we are all experts in our fields. We know a lot of agencies and we often have access to inside information sometimes. But do feel free to include that if you feel that it makes a compelling argument as to why you should win. And I think if you've thought about them in terms of objectives, then profits and financials may be an appropriate objective to consider.

So if you're looking at a financial... goal that you set out to achieve then if you're able to say and look here we are we definitely did it we we really did get there then that's that is an important thing to do but just throwing pictures of numbers and money isn't what we're interested in it is about did you set out to achieve something and and did you do it that's for me is probably more important than impressive and remember if you're a small search agency Your financial goals may well be much more modest compared to a very large organisation. So it isn't about the size of the money. It's about what you set out to achieve and whether you met it or went past that, whether you surpassed it. So I think that's very important.

There's another question here around, has a groundbreaking innovative campaign that drove amazing results ever won more than one award? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

So it's possible to take the same campaign and enter different categories with it depending on the size of the campaign. What I would say is do not simply cut and paste because we see through that one and go, no, not having that, not playing that game. You need to make sure that each entry is carefully reworded to fit each prompt. It has to be specifically for that campaign, particularly if it's sector specific. If you've got a big integrated campaign, you might be saying, well, here's the pay-per-click elements for that one.

Here's the organic stuff for this one. That's absolutely fine. But a simple blanket cut and paste is likely to end not in great satisfaction.

It really has to be customized for that specific entry. Word count limits, Judith. The back-end system at the moment does not actually restrict so you can go over.

It will be changing. So at the moment, you cannot go over, but I understand that the back-end system will be changing so that it will get much more strict and you won't be able to go over. That's right.

So I think if you need to write more than the word limit, I think you're doing it wrong. I think you're overusing. Too many words that don't need to be there.

Keep them short sentences, small words, not massive, dense paragraphs of narrative. Keep it absolutely on the money. I've seen entries where people haven't even used their word count and they've been shortlisted because I can see exactly the message that's trying to get across here. Remember, all of these people work in marketing. So don't be marketing-y speak-y.

That's it. absolutely what i i would say so shall we yeah should we go to the tips and tricks and then we'll do a last round of questions and then so you'll all have a chance to ask more questions absolutely so uh this sounds obvious put something in every section oh yeah god i've had more than one entry where they've actually forgotten to fill in a section and you lose all 10 points so you get zero and either one quarter or one fifth of your of your points are gone absolutely you and use the official form it is very tempting to send us something glamorous and brochure like with your answers in i haven't got time i could be looking at 100 entries and i'm gonna think no i haven't got time for this you need to just fill in that form save your money save your effort and just put the words in there and don't use jargon just use the real english words proper speaking not full of the marketing fluff that you might like to to use don't we can see through that and make sure that you realize that whoever's looking at your entry could well be the leading person in that field. So if you're a financial entry for search, organic search, bear in mind that the person who is looking at your work might well be head of search for a bank. And you're thinking, be absolutely sure you know what you're saying.

Don't try and blag your way to the top because somebody will go, yeah, this isn't possible. It never happens. And that's happened more than a few times. And we've had some very heated discussions in those judging panels about certain claims that have been made on those forms.

Yeah. With the experts that you'll have in the room, if you try to pull the wool over our eyes, not only will we have worked in that industry for 10, 12, 15 years, but we'll spot when you're trying to blag it. So and don't tell us that you did keyword research because keyword research is important.

Because we're all experts in our fields and that's why we're judging. So trying to teach grandma to suck eggs just wastes your word count. Yeah. And then just some simple pro tips. Use a spell checker, please.

Get another human being to read the entry. I usually get my mum to read my stuff and she just goes, this is rubbish, David. What on earth does this mean? And get someone who isn't from your team to sense check it. I'll say one thing that's really important.

Don't get your PR company to write your entry unless you are the PR company writing your own entry. So many times the job has been handed on to people who don't really understand what's been going on. And the entries are, they're not great. Particularly don't hand it to anyone who isn't really writing for this awards. They're writing maybe for lots of narrative, for lots of other press releases.

Write your own entry. I'd rather a... rough looking piece of writing that literally said exactly what I wanted to say rather than this beautifully honed narrative and make sure you get give yourself lots of time try not to do this half an hour before the closing date and put it in as an objective as team goal put some time in it and some resource in it and make somebody right at the top of the organization responsible for it because if it becomes something you really want to achieve that's when great success happens.

So we've got some time for some questions. So we had another one after the word limit, which was what are the most competitive categories? So and how many cases are submitted on average per category? That's a hard one to answer. I think best SEO campaign I can say, and best PPC campaign I can say with a high degree of confidence are the two most competitive categories that are entered are best SEO, best BBC.

Outside of that, it can be split across quite fairly across a number of different categories. We've had more some years in one area, fewer some years in the same area, you know, later or before. It really depends. It's not a set thing. I would say that if you wanted to enter and you only wanted to enter one thing, do a category like um i don't know uh best use of search and travel or something like that rather than just best seo campaign make best seo campaign because you're you are super confident because you're up against 85 100 other people whereas in best use of search in travel and leisure it might only be 25 so you're giving yourself a better chance of winning um or both and i think the thing to say is it varies every year And, you know, I've seen categories in the previous year have 60 or 70 entries, and then there might be 10 the next year.

It depends on people's cycle of campaign development, people's appetite for entry. It does vary from year to year, and it also varies from geographic region as well. So, you know, different parts of the world have a different sort of take on it. I've seen lots of entry in fast-moving consumer goods. That's where we seem to see a lot of the obvious.

The B2B stuff, I've seen less, fewer entries, probably because they are bigger campaigns and tend to be a bit more specialised. That said, some of the best entries have come through in B2B because they are, I don't know, very, very serious long-term things. And so we often see very well articulated things in there. There's one question that's come through that I think is very important. But there's one that has come through that I don't know if you know the answer to this, but I definitely do.

So the one about if you don't get shortlisted, do you get feedback? And then it says, and why not? I can say that one of the jobs of the head judges this year is going to be correlating responses.

Because we as judges. We make notes and we actually do have notes that we write, especially for ourselves around what about this entry really stood out to us. And, and mind jogs just to remember about the entry.

Cause if you're reading 85 to a hundred entries, you're going to make notes. And what we're going to be doing is this head judges will be collating all of these comments and we'll be working on creating a document that we'll be able to feed back on for winning and non-winning entries. So we'll be able to give you that feedback for sure. So I would say that if you don't get shortlisted, you do get feedback or you will be about to get feedback.

Yes. And I think it's worth saying that this is an ongoing process of improvement that all the time we want to look at ways of making sure that whenever you enter an awards, whether you're not shortlisted, if you are shortlisted, but you don't win, can you understand what you would need to do to improve? So we're always, we're always in the position to say, Hey, This was really good.

However, you would need to do this. That comes with a caveat because as judges, we're working quite quickly through different entries. And so we aren't always necessarily being the most polite of judges. So we might be very curt in our responses. Mine often say, I cannot see all the objectives.

I can't see that. It's usually about pointing out things that are missing. But sometimes it's not because you were bad.

It's because there were others that were better. So one of the things we're going to try and do over time is saying, the things that really set this apart from others was this. So trying to understand what makes for a superlative entry, we're going to try and make that clearer and clearer without giving too much sort of information away.

And that kind of leads us on to a really good question from Ryan. He says, are we willing to thoroughly and 100% anonymise a past? winning entry and publish it i'd love to do that the problem is is that a little bit like the nda we we are we have a we have a problem with revealing winning entries so what we might try and do over time and i don't think we're going to get it in very quickly is speak to previous winners and see if we can work with those winners to get an example entry of what makes one up um And I think that, yeah, should we try and create a fictional example? I'd love to.

But as with my work with students, I'll put up a fictional version and everyone will try and copy that. It's all about your own material and your context and what you do is what wins it. But yeah, Judith, we're going to commit to that. We're going to try and see if we can get a winning entry that is anonymised from somebody who's really proud of it.

And it doesn't, you know, we try and, you know, cut out and put in blank, black tape, all the bits you can't see. But yeah, we will try and do that if we can, but we can't promise because of the obvious privacy and secrecy issues around that. We have had entries, we have had people who have won awards present.

So we have had the award winning entries presented as case studies at conferences. So if you have attended those in the past, you'll have had access. to the award-winning entries vis-a-vis a presentation. But Ryan has also asked if entries that include embedded files and sections are viewed more favorably than ones that reference an attachment. I think as long as the attachment isn't copious word count, then there's no difference.

For entries where references include copious word counts, it's not a favorable view. I think really those embeds need to be visual rather than anything else. That would be my advice.

But I think each case is very, very different. But it shouldn't be about trying to cheat. If you know you're cheating, it's not going to work.

Shane has a very good question here about clients who are sensitive about their business results, and we do appreciate that. Please bear in mind that we have our NDAs. We do not share. These are not discussed outside. of the judging panels.

They are very carefully managed. So it's a bit difficult to say that that would be fine. I think... Because we need to be able to validate them.

We need to be able to validate these things. So if it becomes difficult to validate because, you know, the data is so anonymized that we can't tell, or if we're only dealing with sort of relative differences rather than actual differences, it could be a problem. So, yeah, we do understand that clients are cautious, but no one.

else outside of these judgment judging teams is going to see this material and it could mean the difference between winning and not winning so if it's up against if it's you and one other entry the other entry has actual numbers that have been proven in screenshots that are from recognized tools versus your percentages that may mean the difference between winning and only shortlisting Okay. Oh, what's the funniest award submission you've ever read? It's usually the blank ones where somebody has paid to enter and there is a blank form and there's no material that goes with it. And you're thinking, it's noughts all the way.

I see it several times in each awards. So, you know, no white text on a white background. We know the rules.

No spamming. The very first year that we ran the UK Search Awards, an entry came in on the back of a postcard. Back in the old analog days. It's only eight years ago. An entry actually came in on the back of the postcard.

So that was kind of funny. And we've also had a question, do we also analyze the campaigns? Yes. We don't just use SCM Rush. We also use...

All the tools that are available to us, so search metrics, Ahrefs, and a variety of other tools, besides SEMrush or SEMrush, depending on how you say it, are used to check the campaign results. So if you say we had an increase by 700,000 unique visitors, and you don't give us any screenshots, and we go in and SEMrush says, huh. They decreased the number of keywords they were ranking for.

We're not necessarily going to believe what you've said. So give us a recognized screenshot of a recognized tool like your analytics and it's fine. But yes, we do also check entries with other tools.

Yes. And I've seen that checking going on live in a judging session. And anyone who's tried to pull all over the judge's eyes, it is not pretty. And it will be listed as a comment in things to improve in the future. Please do not lie about performance.

This is an open business. We're in an open sector. We can go and check. And you're dealing with some of the world's leading authorities in this area.

It's just be straight. Don't, you know, just work with the numbers. It's the evidence we're looking for.

Okay, Judith, I think we're just past three o'clock. so I think it's probably time for us to finish. Hopefully people have picked up something.

We're looking forward to reading your entries very soon. Make our job easy. Make us want to choose you and we hope that some of you people today will be the winners of awards coming up in the next 12 months. Thanks for listening in and make sure that you follow the right Twitter account and visit the right website. so that we can demonstrate that we have an impact on traffic.

Thank you very much, everyone, for sticking with it as well. And good luck. I hope that I read your excellent entries and that you make my job that much harder. Thanks a lot, folks.

Take care.

Transcript for:Winning Strategies for Search Awards

Transcript for:
Winning Strategies for Search Awards