Top Ten Tips to Write a Successful Award Entry!

23 Jun 2025

Published in: Black Country Chamber of Commerce News

Explore Be Bold’s specialist advice on writing a strong and impactful award entry that can boost your chances of getting through to finals and even winning.

Our award entries are now open, and if you’re reading this, you’ve arrived at just the right time. We’ve pulled together ten top tips to help you craft an award submission that stands out. These have been developed in collaboration with Be Bold, a leading PR agency with expert experience supporting businesses through successful award entries

After reading this blog, you’ll understand:

What judges are really looking for in award winning entries.
The structured process for gathering compelling evidence.
How to develop narratives that directly address the judging criteria.
How to build a sustainable system for consistent award success.

Be Bold has supported entries for prestigious awards including The King’s Award for Enterprise, The Manufacturer Top 100, and the International Property Awards. By entering our awards, you have the opportunity to boost team motivation, gain media coverage and set clear benchmarks for ongoing business growth.

Choose the right award

With a wide variety of award categories, it’s important that you can choose the best award that aligns with your business’ strengths and values. Once you have decided the award that’s relevant to your company, you need to nominate someone who can authentically tell your business story from start to finish.

Key points to consider:

Judges have limited time; your submission needs to reflect enthusiasm and knowledge.
The award entry should articulate your business purpose, unique approach and results.
If your internal resources are stretched, confide in expert help.

Master the criteria

At the Chamber, we detail our judging criteria to give all businesses a fair chance. Successful entries have a clear structure and address every point with evidence. Be Bold recommends mapping each point and providing an example to support it.

Building your evidence can start a good foundation, to add depth you need to demonstrate how you specifically meet or exceed the standard. Feel free to utilise the language from the criteria to strengthen your response. You can access our judging criteria for every category here. Take a look at an example of our criteria for Business in the Community.

Could you structure your response to address each requirement equally? Identifying gaps early can help ensure your submission feels complete and compelling.

Set a timeline and gather evidence

Your entry should tell a compelling story, we recommend working backwards from the submission deadline and identify clear milestones to keep you on track. An effective strategy for writing your entry is time management, allocate time blocks for data collection, writing your entry and reviewing. Structure your preparation around these three evidence types:

Input data: This could be financial investments, staff resources, project time frames.
Output measures: Identify your activity levels, engagement metrics and reach.
Outcome evidence: Gather your overall results, testimonials and comparisons to the industry standards.

Once you have your three types of evidence, you can begin to paint a clear picture to prevent gaps in your evidence. Start to ask yourself:

For input data: What resources did we invest?
For output measures: What activities did we complete?
For outcomes: What results did we achieve?

This process will help you build a detailed and evidence-based narrative.

Build your narrative with facts

As mentioned before, we’ve established that your writing should tell a story, have a timeline and include clear evidence. You can make a captivating narrative by combining every claim with specific evidence and mixing quantitative data with qualitative insights.

You may wonder, what is the difference between quantitative and qualitative data? Well, quantitative data is categorised in numerical data and statistics while qualitative data is categorised as descriptive words and images. Qualitative data answers the why and how questions while quantitative data provides the evidence to support each point.

To understand this, let’s look at an example of a weak and strong claim:

Weak claim: “We provide excellent customer service” - This targets the point but lacks substance!

Strong claim: “Our customer service excellence is demonstrated by our 98% satisfaction rating, which exceeds the industry average of 85%. This is supported by client testimonials and our average response time of under 2 hours, compared to the sector benchmark of 24 hours”

Make sure you’re clearly identifying and using both data types throughout your submission.

Use clear, concise language

Write your entry for a non-specialist judge, determine what industry words are needed and define them to ensure the judge has a clear idea on what you are presenting. As you review your entry, ask yourself this question: Could someone outside your industry understand this? If not, you may need to rewrite the points to be clearer.

Structure your word count

Balance is key, you can use our judging criteria to establish an ideal word count for your entry. You can break down each point into sections to create a timeline and hit every requirement.

Top Tip: Highlight keywords from the judging criteria and use them as headings or section markers. This will ensure your entry is easy to follow and ticks all the right boxes.

Enhance with supporting evidence

To stay within your word count, there are ways to integrate strong supporting evidence that has a consistent flow.

Key points to consider:

What testimonials or quotes could you include?
What visual elements would strengthen your case at the interview stage?
How can you present your data visually within text limitations?

Supporting evidence helps add authenticity and reinforces the story you're telling.

Review, refine and proofread

Once your entry is written, take time to refine and proofread. You could have an amazing entry, but a single typo, lack of description could undermine your entry. To prevent mistakes, we recommend:

Allowing time for multiple reviews by different people.
Checking against the criteria once more to ensure it aligns with requirements.
Check for spelling, grammar and factual errors.
Having someone outside your team to take a look to provide a fresh perspective.

A fresh pair of eyes can make all the difference in catching errors you might have overlooked.

Preparing for the judges

Judges will review many entries, you can make yours one to remember. Here are three ways to prepare for the judging process:

What three key messages do you want the judges to remember?

Keep in mind what you want to be remembered by. In the criteria, they will align each requirement to your points. What factors or explanations do you want them to take away? While they have your business in their minds, use your values, industry and evidence to find the answer to this question.

What evidence could you show during a visit that couldn’t be included in your written submission?

Due to the word count, it’s likely that all your evidence won’t fit into your entry, make the most of this. Could you showcase a gallery of certificates and achievements? You could present your work and products and utilise all your resources to show the judges you have what it takes to be a successful candidate in your chosen award category.

Who should be involved in meeting the judges and why?

To present your company, you need the right representatives meeting the judges. For instance, if you are entering our Black Country Future Star category, you need to choose a team member who has met the criteria and is confident in articulating why they have been nominated for this award. The judges need to see confidence and personalities shining through to help them make their decision.

Develop a winning habit

We understand that applying for awards can be daunting, but they’re a powerful learning opportunity. Whether you win or not, each application builds your skills and confidence.

You begin to take away new ways to improve, don’t be afraid to ask for feedback if you were unsuccessful! Each year, be sure to document your results for future entries, this way you understand how you can apply your feedback.

By doing this, you’ll develop a streamlined and repeatable process for success. Here is an example of a cycle to use each year as you prepare for award applications:

Conclusion

We want every business to be confident in entering for our awards, these ten tips are designed to guide you through the process and help you submit an entry you can be proud of. We aim to champion more Black Country businesses with our prestigious awards ceremony and hope your business can celebrate their achievements with the support of the Chamber.

If you’ve got questions about how to approach award entries, you can always join the next online award writing workshop on Wednesday 16th July from 9:30 – 10:30, led by Be Bold’s Managing Director, Amy Bould.

She shares: “We bring real-world experience both in writing winning entries and sitting on judging panels. This unique dual perspective means we understand exactly what makes an entry stand out.”

Please note bookings for this event will close at 3pm on 15th July and a Teams link will be sent out the week before the event.

BOOK YOUR PLACE

We wish the best of luck to our members entering our awards and are excited to see your entries coming through!