6 reasons why entering the ABIA Wedding Industry Awards is a must for established wedding vendors.
1. Marketing
Awards are an often-overlooked tool when it comes to marketing and branding. The ABIA Wedding Industry Awards have been around since 1996 and are widely recognised as the Industry’s Premier and most Prestigious Awards Event. Just being shortlisted as a finalist can improve brand awareness and promote your business to new customers. Awards celebrate hard work and success and are great PR opportunities. It’s fantastic to be recognised so it’s important to make sure that people know what your business has achieved. Winning an ABIA Award can open doors to not just new couples but also to breaking into new markets and collaborating with likeminded industry professionals.
2. Increased Credibility
An ABIA Wedding Industry Award win, shortlisting as a finalist or nomination can act as a 3rd party endorsement for your business. A win can give a seal of approval to your products and services. A sign of quality for potential customers, it can form part of your sales pitch and be used as an incredibly powerful tool to convert sales leads. It can also help with relationships with other wedding vendors and Industry Stakeholders. Overall, it’s a great way of differentiating your business from competitors as it will send out positive signals to future wedding couples.
3. Benchmarking
The application process for entering the ABIA Wedding Industry Awards can often force you to look at your business from a different perspective and compare yourself to your competitors. You’ll need to make sure that you stand out from the competition and weather that’s through your quality of product, customer service, value for money and attitude of staff (ABIA’s four pillars of perfection). This will help you think about ways you could be doing things better and identify areas for improvement. It’s not just the winning that counts, by simply participating in the Awards and focusing on having a growth mindset may well be the biggest prize.
4. Employee Motivation
Awards recognise the hard work, sacrifice and achievements of your broader team (even close family who may not be directly associated with the day-to-day running’s of the business) so winning or being shortlisted can really boost morale and improve motivation. Employees focus on what’s great about the company they work for and feel proud to be a part of it. Staff who attend the glitzy ABIA Wedding Industry Awards often describe these Awards as being the highlight of their events calendar. The Gala Awards Dinner also represents a wonderful opportunity to network with industry professionals as well as simply having a great night out. (See all the fun of previous Awards Gala Events here)
5. Attract Talent
By positioning your business as an award recipient or finalist, you are pitching yourself as the best of the best. Being a high calibre business will in turn allow you to attract the type of staff you need to push your business forward. Increased employee morale and motivation will also help attract and retain new recruits.
6. Raise Industry Standards
Most awards around the world, across various industries choose not to reveal how their awards are determined in addition to not revealing the final scores associated to the rankings. At ABIA Weddings, we value transparency and credibility, therefore are confident in explaining how our awards are determined, as well as releasing the results out of 100%. In 1996, the ABIA Industry Award Algorithm was custom developed to help set standards for the free-for-all wedding marketplace. ABIA’s Industry Awards are far more than hiring a judging panel or creating a popularity contest. In 2019, we introduced an updated Award Algorithm where the finalists and winners of the ABIA’s are rated on their quality as determined by real wedding couples in addition to the level of competition for the award in each relevant wedding vendor category. (To learn more about how ABIA’s Industry Awards are determined, click here)
