How to Win Your City’s Best Of Award

Our clients have long known they’re working with the best — who else brings this level of personality, creativity, and expertise? But still, we were beyond thrilled when we found out we’d won Best Woman-Owned Business in the PNW!

Aside from being hardworking, fabulous, and always our authentic selves, we wanted to share how we won this “Best Of” title. We live to help other small businesses thrive, and that includes helping others win well-deserved recognition for their amazing products or services. Because being the best at what you do is one thing. Making sure people know about it? That’s where marketing comes in.

Besides our own Best Of Award, we’ve supported our clients with social media and website updates to promote voting and show off their Best Of awards online. And now we’re sharing our secrets for how we earned the title ourselves. Whether you’re campaigning for a future Best in the PNW, or an award in a city anywhere else, follow these guidelines (while doing what you do best) to help bring home the win!

Best Of Awards Are the Marketing Cycle that Keeps Giving

Some may say winning Best Of awards is a reflection of your amazing work; others might say it’s simply a popularity contest. We’d agree it’s a mix of both. Being superior in your industry is a prerequisite, but you’ll likely still need to put in work to get the word out about voting to earn the title.

As marketers, our job every day is essentially making noise and getting the word out. Campaigning for a Best Of award, or really any public voting award, requires an excellent marketing strategy. (Holding the title in itself is also marketing — social proof that you’re the best is timelessly effective at promoting your business.)

In that way, Best Of awards present small businesses with an opportunity to jump into a marketing cycle, where brand awareness earns you votes, and votes earn you increased brand awareness. Every year, you have the opportunity to continue to level up, win the award, and grow your brand!

So before you can show everyone the unquestionable, visual proof that you’re the best, you need a strong strategy to get the votes. And the best part is — this “award-winning” strategy can also be replicated for other goals, such as increasing brand awareness, expanding to a new market, or launching a new product.

What is the Seattle Times’ Best in the PNW?

Before we delve into our step-by-step approach for winning a Best Of award, we wanted to share more about the one we’ve recently been so incredibly honored to have won!

The Best in the PNW is a people’s choice contest hosted by the Seattle Times where local businesses receive public votes to be awarded the best in their category. Thousands of Best Of contests like this exist in cities throughout the country, but the Best in the PNW program began only three years ago, in 2023.

The annual regional contest includes hundreds of categories, with nearly 10,000 businesses competing for community votes to earn the Best Of title in their subcategory. Three brands are announced as winners in each category, earning either the Gold, Silver, or Bronze award.

Hummingbird Marketing Services won Bronze in the Best Woman-Owned Business in the PNW, a subcategory included for the first time in 2025, making us among the first to hold the title! The newness of the category didn’t stop nominations from flowing in, and more than 150 businesses campaigned to be the best. We are incredibly honored to be voted in the top 3 of 152 nominated woman-owned businesses in the area, and loved seeing the long list of amazing, thriving, female-led brands in the area!

Why It Matters for Your Business

Wherever you operate your business, holding a Best Of title in your city shows social proof, increases brand awareness, and connects you with other business owners in your area. Of course, holding the title (and showing it off both online and in your place of business) can be huge for brands with a storefront or operating in a local market.

But even if your work is remote, holding a Best Of award stands out on your website and socials, boosting your credibility and authenticity to clients across the nation while also connecting you with potential clients who’d love to work with someone local.

Earning the title amplifies your brand name, is a great SEO opportunity, and will drive more organic traffic to your site, socials, and, if applicable, storefront. Internally, winning the award is great for team morale and shows future hires what an awesome business you run!

Be Ahead of the Game

It’s always easiest to win a race you prepared for. And if we’re being totally honest, we were a bit last-minute campaigning for the Best Woman-Owned Business in the PNW.

Luckily, our team performs well under pressure, and the fact that we still came out on top shows how effective the following strategy is. Still, we recommend being ahead of the contest start dates for optimal results and to avoid frantic late-night video editing.

Research Programs and Plan Early

If you’re in the Pacific Northwest (hi, neighbor!), we’ll make this step easy: the Best in the PNW typically takes nominations in or around May, with voting open for three weeks in June, and winners announced at the end of September.

If you are in another city, we recommend researching contests in your area and determining your timeline.

Once you know the dates for voting and nominations, mark your calendars. We also recommend following along with the program on socials or via email alerts to stay in the loop and be aware of next year’s exact dates as they’re announced.

Get Nominated

Rules for nominations and voting differ by contest. Be sure to look up the rules for nominations for whichever program you plan to compete in. Most make nominating easy; some only require one nomination to be entered in the running, while others are more competitive to even run.

If the program only requires one nomination, kindly ask a client or friend to nominate you. And just to be sure, nominate yourself! If the program requires several nominations, your campaign begins sooner, with both an email or text and a social post asking your community to take a moment to nominate your business. Be gracious, emphasize what their nomination means to you, and make it as easy as possible for them by sharing exactly how to nominate, including the link.

Waiting around with your fingers crossed that someone will nominate you is not effective. Other business owners probably have these awards on their radar, but your biggest fans — clients, friends, and colleagues — may have no idea when nominations open, much less think to nominate you. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, and well-reputed businesses who ask nicely for nominations get them!

Understand the Investment

Winners of competitive Best Of awards are never the people who sit back and hope their hard work earns the votes. No matter how top-dog you are in your industry, you will be outvoted every time by those who truly try.

You cannot simply buy the award in a people’s choice contest, and you are likely to be defeated by other businesses who invest time, energy, and yes, money, into winning. How much money you invest is personal to your business, but what you don’t invest financially, you’ll want to make up for in effort and strategy.

This was our approach. While we invested some in the Best in the PNW campaign, we were smart with our dollars and let our biggest strengths — creativity, charisma, and grit — do the heavy lifting. (More on that later!)

Whether you invest $100 or $10,000, know that your strategy will still require time and effort on your and your team’s part. From writing, content creation, and graphic design to actually voting and spreading the word, it’s a group effort. Don’t worry if writing and social media aren’t your strong suit — if you want to invest in winning, we are happy to deliver all the creative collateral to propel your campaign, with the results to back it up!

How to Get Votes

The obvious first step is to be great at what you do. Customer service founded in compassion, connections that are as synergistic as they are genuine, and truly outstanding deliverables — these are the stuff of the best. But to actually win the award, you’ll need to go above and beyond being the best.

There’s nothing more frustrating about having an amazing product or service that people don’t know about. And that’s always where marketing comes into play. Being the best and being voted the best is the difference between hard work alone and hard work with creative strategy.

Good Old-Fashioned Word of Mouth

Social media is the new word of mouth. But relying on your closest people to get the word out shouldn’t be underestimated. Ask your friends, family, acquaintances, and friends of friends you chat up at a party to vote. Emphasize that it’s quick and easy. Especially emphasize if no login is required. (No one wants to give their info in exchange for another string of promotional emails.)

Most of all, lean on your inner circle; however small, you can’t downplay the difference a few loyal voters can make in a people’s choice competition. Harass (with kindness) your closest people to vote, and vote every day if daily voting is allowed.

Make Voting Easy

We cannot stress enough how key this is. If you take nothing else from this blog, leave with this: you must make voting undeniably quick and easy. In the era of AI overviews, endless scrolling, and emails and texts flooding in by the minute, asking people to vote on their phone or laptop is a battle against infinite distractions. So, voting must be easy, and you must convince people just how easy it is — before they close out or swipe away!

Provide Easy Directions for Voting

Show, and also tell, how easy it is. A quick video showing the voting process through a few quick clicks is great for socials. Explain the steps to voting in matter-of-fact language and in every caption, post, email, and text that is asking for votes.

Ways to Make Voting Easier

You’ll also want to actually make voting easy if at all possible. Share the link wherever you can when asking for votes, and put the link in your bio for social posts that don’t allow a link in the caption.

Custom Links

Many people’s choice awards offer opportunities for nominated businesses to purchase packages that make voting easier to increase their chances of winning. A common option is to purchase a quick link that allows people to vote for you with just a couple of clicks. It removes extra steps of navigating the voting website and finding the business’ name amidst the sea of others. Purchasing a link to make voting simpler is one of the best ways to ensure voters follow through on submitting their ballot. But this option is typically a larger investment.

Our Investment Strategy

We opted for a more cost-effective, yet strategic, investment. For $149, we purchased a small ad space to run adjacent to our name on the ballot where we were listed with 151 other businesses. That tiny ad made a huge difference: it helped Hummingbird stand out in a very crowded field — especially with another woman-owned business on the list with “hummingbird” in its name. See for yourself!

Because we already have distinct, vibrant branding that our clients, friends, followers, and fans associate with us, voters could very easily scroll through the list of names and, in a matter of seconds, recognize our hummingbird and cast their vote. The request for votes moved from “please visit this site, navigate to this subcategory, and scroll through a list of 150 businesses until you see us” to “visit this site, click services > woman-owned business, and scroll until you see our hummingbird!” And this made all the difference!

Campaigning Inherently Increases Brand Awareness

The Best in the PNW, and many other similar programs, offers several options in addition to the custom link and the tiny ad, including a range of different-sized ads in different locations. The ads don’t just help with winning, though. Whether you take home the title or not, you’ve garnered thousands of eyes on your ad, and a big jump in brand awareness could be the only thing better than winning!

Ad Design Matters!

We’d never recommend purchasing an ad space and then just throwing up something quick or made by AI. Make the most of your investment with an ad that’s on brand and working how you want it to. If you don’t have distinct branding, or you’re not in love with your current branding, we’re happy to help! By staying ahead of the campaign season, you have plenty of time to develop on-point branding that truly captures your vision. If and when the time comes for purchasing an ad, designing it yourself or reaching out to our team for help will be a seamless process!

Social Media

As we said, social media is the new word of mouth. Typically, we advise against spammy messaging on socials, but voting requests once a year are an exception. And creative content can make voting request posts authentic, fun, and not annoying to your followers. With several ways to post, a robust social strategy for a campaign (as well as in general) includes variety.

Captions

Across all posts and platforms, captions should be simple and easy to read, while still including the following:

• A grateful and genuine request for votes. Don’t forget to say please and thank you!
• Clear, detailed instructions for voting that make it easy.
• Information on when voting starts and ends.

Static Posts and Carousels

A quick graphic announcing that you’ve been nominated, with a caption sharing how to vote, should be your first post after learning of your nomination. You can also opt for a carousel-style graphic that shows how to vote and how easy the process is. Share this on every social platform you have. Don’t forget LinkedIn or Facebook, even if you don’t use those as often!

Aside from announcing that you’re in the running, we recommend, at minimum, creating a second post asking for votes and a final post pushing for votes before the voting period closes. These three posts can be all graphics, or include some videos.

You can certainly create more posts beyond these three, but we recommend doing no more than 2–3 hard posts a week asking for votes, and including at least one non–campaign-related post in that mix, to avoid being overly spammy.

Videos

Videos are a very compelling way to garner support. As a business owner, showing your face, voice, and personality across socials will always be the most compelling way to request votes.

Time and time again, posts that show genuine, human moments outperform the rest. So, the best thing you can do is set up that tripod and film yourself sharing about the campaign, asking for votes, and explaining how to quickly vote for your business!

You can have fun with video posts too, finding ways to jump on current trends while relating the video to the campaign or making funny reels that include the whole team.

Adding screenshots or video records over a talking-head or voice-over is a great way to easily walk people through the steps of voting.

Stories

Stories do not always need to be a part of your social media strategy, depending on your business and goals. But when campaigning for a Best-Of award, Stories are essential. They come and go every 24 hours, with recent Story uploads pushing your account to the front of the line on your followers’ home page. Posting daily on Stories works as a helpful reminder to vote, without spamming timelines.

Include the link to vote on your Story and short, simple instructions on how to vote. Story posts should be a mix between sharing the hard posts you already created and sharing a random photo or video with the link and voting instructions.

Include Regularly Scheduled Content

To avoid completely bombarding your followers with voting requests, stick to your regular content schedule too. Break up some of your campaign-related posts with your typical content, so your feed isn’t back-to-back voting requests.

Sharing on Other Accounts

If you or your team have other social accounts, we recommend sharing content across platforms. This could be collaborating across videos or static posts, or simply sharing to your personal Story, asking friends and family to vote with the link.

Newsletter

An email newsletter is a place where you’ve likely already grown a loyal community. Send out a newsletter with a compelling subject line to share your excitement about the nomination, gratitude, and instructions on how to vote. Depending on the length of the contest’s voting period, and how often you typically send newsletters, consider sending out a second email newsletter as a final push for votes.

If you don’t already nurture a regular newsletter, we don’t recommend launching one just to ask for votes, then vanishing again until next year. Now is a great time to start getting in a rhythm with an email newsletter and growing your recipient list. We’re happy to help if you don’t know where to start or don’t have the bandwidth!

Don’t Forget to Vote Yourself

This seems like common sense, but between gathering social content, sending out a newsletter, and all the regular day-to-day tasks of running your business, you might forget to vote! Setting a reminder on your phone or laptop is a smart way to ensure you vote every day. Encourage your team to do the same. Every vote counts!