This week, we recount the insights gained from an AC Community event hosted by Andrea Sexton, Founder of Admire PR, an ethical PR agency.
In this post, Andrea went through the surprising business benefits of regularly entering business awards, including how to pick the right awards for you and your agency.
Andrea has years of experience helping her clients navigate the awards landscape.
She has even helped fellow AC members achieve successful awards entries.
Sometimes, it seems like almost every other email is about some sort of award that you are, or could be, nominated for.
So just how helpful are awards? Are they white elephants? Are they simply vanity projects? Or can they be a useful tool to gain credibility and publicity for your business?
Well, Andrea Sexton of Admire PR says that it could be any one of these, you just have to do the work to make sure it’s the latter.
“So, it’s all about relevance: Is it relevant to you and your company?
Is it a good quality regional or industry award?
At the end of the day, if it’s not relevant to your target market, is it really worth you putting the effort into entering the award in the first place?
Where are you trying to get to with your agency? And is this going to help us on the way?”
By looking at who attends the awards, who is nominated and who has previously won, we can see whether the wards are relevant and whether those nominations or wins make a material difference to publicity or to growth.
And of course, the awards are not just about the founders and the CEOs:
“It’s amazing how important it is for the people who work for you – how going in for awards really helps and it helps with recruiting as well.
And it isn’t all about winning – even a nomination can give you a huge amount of leverage:
“Connect with the organisers’ PR people, see what you can get off the back of it.
Ask the organisers for introductions, if there are people there, companies there, or companies that are advertisers with them.
Say it’s some magazine that’s put it on. Then you can ask them for introductions to those people. So just think a little bit wider than the actual people there on the night.
Use that opportunity to get those introductions and get some new leads.”

Andrea Sexton, Founder of Admire PR
Andrea is the Founder of Admire PR, an ethical PR agency, invigorating public relations – enabling clients to shine through traditional media, social media, and in-person engagements. Andrea works with sports, health and fitness, charity / third sector, B2C and B2B.