Top tips to fill out the award submission for the CIM Ireland Marketing Awards

Earlier in the summer the CIM ran a workshop to highlight what you should include when completing a submission form for the 2018 awards. While the submission forms are straight forward, there are a few key rules to keep in mind when completing the submission.

Background

Explaining clearly what the goal the organisation was at the beginning so the judges are clear and understand what you were working towards. This section sets the scene so you explain to the judges why you took certain steps and can compare later how well the campaign worked. It is also useful here to include additional information about the organisation to help provide content for the judges.

Strategy
400 words are allocated here for you to explain the objectives for the campaign are and what your KPIs will be. The guidance states you must include ‘Activity over time’ so make sure you explain he strategic decisions about what is happening in the campaign, why it has been chosen at certain times and how this feeds back to help reach your goal. Budget also should be mentioned here. Remember if you don’t want to include the budget you can talk in percentages. For example, 25% of my budget went on paid social advertising.

Tactics and Implementation

This section is really ‘what is says on the tin.’ There is 400 words allocated for this section of the form and you can really go to town and talk about the wonderful things that you put in place during the campaign. Remember to give details and examples of what you did!

Results, outcome and Effectiveness

CIM allow 500 words for this section which is a good indication that you need to shine here and explain the success of your campaign. Remember the goals mentioned earlier? You will need to refer back to this goals here and explain how these were met. You call talk here about things that didn’t go to plan or changes you made too. As long as you are able to relate this back to the goal and explain the overall achievements from the campaign.

While the above provides an outline of how to shape your submission, it’s also important to remember what to avoid…

Lack of evidence

You need to back up what you are talking about! Remember you need to be able to demonstrate how your campaign was successful, otherwise the judges won’t know. That means stats, numbers, figures or qualitative information explaining in detail why it worked and how this is relevant to your organisation. In the workshop the point was raised as to what you should include if the objective of your goal wasn’t financial. In that case you should consider what the goal was and how you could demonstrate this e.g. through interviews or surveys.

Internal jargon

While some abbreviation or language you use in your industry seems like second nature to you, it’s important to be aware that not everyone will be aware of those terms. The judges won’t want to have to try and decipher what you mean so make it as easy as possible for them to understand.

Good luck with your submission!