Judith Lewis | Founder, deCabbit
Number your objectives, then match your results by copy and pasting them into the results section, that way you won’t miss any details.
Everyone is not a target audience, make sure you show who yours is. Even Coca Cola don’t have everyone as their target audience.
Tactics are interesting, but inspiration and creativity is where you tell the judges your story. If your entry is for an Integrated Marketing Campaign, tell the integration story, if it is for an eCommerce Campaign show how you were creative and unique in your approach, to differentiate yourself from the competition.
Your entry needs to tell the judges how and why you are an award winner, you need to stand out from the crowd to make the shortlist.
Zbigniew Nowicki | Co-Managing Director/Partner, Bluerank.pl
The 2021 US Search Awards will be interesting. I will be looking for Search campaigns that have challenged a pandemic. As always, I will be paying attention to 3 important elements:
- A challenge supported by market insights
- A solution with an emphasis on automated processes
- Results with absolute numbers
Doc Sheldon | Chief Operations Officer, KISS Web Solutions
Read and Heed! Requirements and criteria for entry are there for a reason – to level the playing field across all entries in a category. With a maximum of 1,000 words allowed in a section, attaching a supporting document with 2,500 words is not the right approach, you may be disqualified and it will aggravate the judges (me at least!). Don’t make our jobs tougher than they are already.
Describe strategy or methodology clearly. Pretend you are writing a game plan to be applied later to ensure the judges understand your situation.
As always, editing is important. Credibility can suffer when a document has spelling or grammar issues. Have someone else check your submission and ask questions or make suggestions. Remember, it is never advisable that you edit your own writing for context – get someone else’s point of view.
Just as in a job interview, passion and personality play important roles. Show yours!
Roger Montti | Author, Search Engine Journal
Show discovery, novelty and freshness of approach, even if it is rewriting the rules of an older approach.
Point to point rankings, traffic or links should never be goals. Your story does not end with rankings and traffic, it ends with increases in sales and earnings. Traffic, ranking and links are the journey to the endo goal of increased earnings and without that at the end, your entry will hollow and misleading.
Write well. A well-planned description of a campaign, like a story with a clear beginning (planning and collaboration), a second act (the execution of plan including unexpected events and how they were overcome) and finale (the account of how much the campaign benefitted the client).
Gustavo Pelogia | SEO Lead, Teamwork
Use a story to explain your entry. Results are essential, by your journey and learnings to get results are important and make your entry exciting.
After you write your entry, leave it aside and revisit. Reading an entry a few days later can give fresh perspective. The second or third version is usually better!
Use supporting documentation wisely, it should back up your initial story with images to reaffirm your points.