Award Categories

Get your copywriters hat on and write your entries with style!

Most award entries instructions are written with stilted institutional language, prompting dull, flat responses from entrants. That type of plodding communication might work for a scientific, compliance-obsessed industry like health care or chemical engineering, but it’s a loser in niches like we serve with our TecHome Builder Summits.

Our panel of top builder judges are people too and they are just as susceptible to good copy and pics as your normal targets! They will be pouring over dozens of entries so make yours stand out with style. Got a video? Use it! If a picture is worth a thousand words, a good video is worth a million!

Enter early for BONUS social media shoutouts of your nomination.

We love getting people excited about the tech that will be featured at our events! That is why ahead of the Summit we randomly pick TecHome Award Nominees to feature on our Social Media pages. The earlier you send in your entry, the better shot you have of seeing it featured in our newsfeed for builders to see.

Your efforts paid off and you won. What do you do next? Promote the living daylights out of it!

Finally, your efforts paid off and you’re the owner of a fancy new trophy! Congratulations, but realize that winning the award is the beginning not the end of your news-making effort. Dedicated PR will create a ripple effect among the media and prospect lists most important to your company.

Some tactics to consider:

• Develop a full-blown story. Interview your star product developers and early adopter customers. If the awards were made at an event, get feedback from VIP attendees on what they found exciting and beneficial in the product. Interview a representative of the award program and get her take on why your product merited the distinction. Get photos of everyone you interview or, better, do video capture. Call out the key features and benefits of your winning product and show lots of pictures if you’ve got ‘em. When Miss America wins the pageant, she doesn’t strike just one pose. Show and tell big time! These are ingredients of a rich, compelling story.
• Slice and serve. Once you have story assets assembled you can deploy them across a broad range of media. Long-form stories work well in news releases, newsletters and maybe even blog posts. Slices of the story and images can be used in social media and website posts.
• Share your assets with media. Editors are busy and if you make it easy for them to feature your win, they are way more likely to do it. When you provide visual and quote assets, they’ve got the building blocks for a feature story. It saves them time and energy and lifts chances you’ll get lots of coverage.

Showcase your win at events (all of them)!

Whether it’s a TecHome Builder Summit or another event, awards are a conversation starter that gives your sellers and product representatives permission to dive into features, benefits and advantages (once they know a bit about goals and challenges of the attendee!).

Help your award stand out by creating signage or a graphic call out of the accolade. Also, a one-sheet, trifold or buck-slip take-away alongside the award could be helpful, both in stimulating follow-up inquiries and helping salespeople walk through key features.

Other event promotion ideas, subject to time and availability include:

• Emails or text promotions to attendees on the award-winning product and your booth location
• Advertising in the print onsite guide
• Ad walls, floor graphics, banners and digital signage

Digital and print advertising beyond the event realm can also be effective. We’re in America, and Americans are obsessed with winning. We want to know who won, why they won, and we want to hang with winners and go with award-winning products.

Best of luck!