The Best Of is the top Revenue, Audience, and First Party Data initiative of the year. Don’t miss out by only focusing on your Best Of for two months out of the year. Your Best Of should be a year-long celebration that continues to drive success all year long!

8 Ways to Celebrate Best Of Winners Year-Round

Utilize the Winner’s Directory

Publish your winners digitally

Think beyond your print special section! Use a Winner’s Directory as a landing page to drive traffic to your winners. Include ‘Thank You’ ads on your digital winner’s directory

Sell digital

When it comes to advertising, there is only so much you can sell within print, so sell digital where have unlimited inventory and opportunity . Use the enhanced listings on your ballot to highlight your winners with a large photo or video, winner icon, description, location, map, website, and social links.

Create video content to celebrate winners

It is instant content for your programming team, with potentially hundreds of categories as content opportunities.

Create a Hall of Fame

Celebrate your milestone winners that win year over year by showcasing them on your directory.

Create Compelling Branding

Establish a Best Of logo

Your Best Of is key to establishing your brand within your market and will be synonymous with ‘the best’ in your community. You want your logo to be on brand and recognizable so that you can use it all year.

Use iterations of your Best Of logo and name

Are you expanding your ballot strategy by running niche ballots later in the year, like an Athlete of the Year or Teacher of the Year? Make sure those ballots are branded similarly to your Best Of so that they are easily recognized by your audience.

Unify your marketing materials

Make sure all of your marketing materials include your logo, vanity URL, QR code, and your hashtag to encourage social sharing.

Create a mission statement that defines your programs and it’s goals

This mission statement should tell people what you’re about and what you hope to accomplish. Publish this mission statement on your ballot site so it is front facing to your audience.

Create unique categories

Set your program apart form others by curating fun and unique categories surrounding regional food, local attractions and events, or categories that have a quirky topic like Best Bar Bathroom, Best Place to Take Your Kids When It’s Raining, etc.

Promote your Program

Hype up your program!

Make sure you’re sending out multiple campaigns while your ballot is running to drive users to your ballot. And don’t be afraid to brag about how successful it is! Use that success to entice and your users and business owners to engage with you.

Communicate with business owners, advertisers, and your audience

Send emails specifically to your local business owners that compete within your Best Of to notify them that they nomination round is coming up and provide links to resources like your media kit, an order for advertising, or an informational video about your ballot. Design more accompanying content for your Best Of like articles, videos, event photos, winner announcements, and promote them in print, on-air, and digitally.

Also, try promoting more fun, and quirky content! For example, determine categories that may not have been in your Best Of, but are engaging for your audience like Best Place to Avoid Your Spouse or Best Cult Following.

Continue the Celebration

Host an event (or multiple events!)

Launch an event celebrating and the winners of your ballot. You can then dive deeper and develop further events like one specific for just the Food & Dining winners that takes place few months after your main event. This allows you to extend the winners phase of your ballot and continue commemorating the winners is popular categories.

Create ‘Pick-Up Ads’

These are ads you can create ahead of time that you can sell during that ‘in-between’ time of the year that your ballot is not running. They would be an exclusive offer for winners only for a special ad package that will run in the months that your ballot is not live. Also remember that this is an area that you can continue promoting the success of your ballot!

Use national days/weeks/months to continue celebrating winners

Think about national days/weeks/months ideas like Donut Day, Pizza Week, Dining Out. Run further content or promotions around these to keep the celebration going. You’ve collected a bunch of this information within your ballot – you have lists of businesses in hundreds of categories that you can use! Want to run a Best Donuts bracket for Donut Day? You have local businesses that were nominated within your ballot that you can use to seed in your bracket!

Use Turnkeys to Showcase Nominees

Take the turnkeys we’ve created and use them! That’s what they’re there for! Use these to run related promotions (like national day promotions!) from the information and businesses you collected in your ballot. Think of:

Create a Ballot Microsite

Create a custom microsite with a custom domain that you can use to promote your ballot and drive traffic all year. Don’t burry your ballot or information about your ballot deep in your organization’s site! Here is what should be included in your ballot microsite:

Previous Years’ Winners

Remember that Winner’s Directory you created? Include it within to your ballot microsite so you can promote your winners all year.

Your Mission Statement

Make sure your audience can easily access your mission statement where you can communication what you’re doing in your community and what you hope to accomplish

FAQs

Include the dates of your ballot, information about how to nominate, the ballot rules. Make it an easy spot where users and businesses can search to find the answers to previously asked questions.

Business inquiries for Advertising

Provide an area where businesses can find information about advertising opportunities within your ballot.

Your Nomination Toolkit

This is a toolkit you can provide businesses within your community that includes tips on how they can drive nominations for their business, downloads of promotional graphics they can use on social media, and more!

Ballot News Section

Have there been complaints about an aspect of your ballot? Address them head-on! This section provides a resource for sellers to overcome objections and adds more legitimacy to your Best Of program.

Category Definitions

Define each category and how businesses can qualify to win within each category.

Have an Inbound Marketing Strategy

First – make sure you are continuously growing a list of local business owners! When creating your social media graphics kit, be sure to put it behind a form so you can collect business leads every year that you can contact the following year to promote your ballot.

Create pre-sales and pre-nomination campaigns

Send these campaigns one month in advance of the nomination round to drive engagement. Include an informational video in the media kit that:

Outlines the program
Defines the value proposition
Showcases the advertising opportunities
Covers what advertisers need to know.

Create pre-order campaigns

Send an email announcing the pre-order of the winner’s magazine and curate a business owner edition and a reader/consumer edition.

Send out informational emails for businesses

Be sure to send communication about Best Of winners that includes things like a link to your Winner’s Directory, information about your winner’s edition magazine, photos from your event, all to drive traffic back to your ballot microsite!

Create a Winner Spotlight

Launch a weekly winner spotlight! Highlight one winner each week on your social media and website. Use a photo or video captured at the Winner’s Event of the business owners holding their certificate. This will drive people back to your Best Of landing page where they can see all of the Best Of info like winners, dates, and the FAQ.

Check out the slides!