Best Practices for Winning a Product of the Year Award
- Review the Awards website. Key topics to understand include:
- Eligibility – Make sure your product meets these mandatory requirements
- Categories – Select the category that best fits your product
- Evaluation Criteria – Understand the criteria used to score your entry
- Contest Rules and FAQs – Review the FAQs for helpful tips
- Download the worksheet by clicking “Enter Today” and selecting either PDF or Word format
- The worksheet contains the six questions on the entry form which are scored by the judges
- The questions are directly related to the four evaluation criteria
- To maximize your score, you must answer all six questions
- Of the six questions on the entry form, three are technical and three are marketing related
- Recruit your technical and marketing colleagues to help answer the questions
- Share the worksheet with your colleagues, draft the responses and review as a team
- The judges are business savvy and technical experts
- For each of the six questions, provide a response that you would give to an engineer
- Use clear, concise and quantitative language
- For the technical questions, avoid using text from your marketing collateral
- Stay focused on the product you are submitting and do not refer to other products in your portfolio
- Question 1: Innovation Overview
- Use concise, technical and quantitative language
- Avoid copying content from your marketing website
- Provide clear description of how your product compares to competitive alternatives
- Highlight the features that are UNIQUE from your competition
- Question 2: Innovation Details
- Be sure to address the UNIQUE features of the submitted product
- Technical deep-dive of your UNIQUE product features
- Attach the optional files (e.g. real benchmark results) and video (e.g. product overview)
- Question 3: Differentiation
- Name your primary competitor
- Stay focused on the product you are submitting and do not refer to other products in your portfolio
- Be quantitative. Avoid using generic terms like “high performance”
- Providing actual benchmark results is good
- Question 4: Customer Benefits
- Be sure to address the UNIQUE benefits of your product
- Describe what your product enables your customers to do that they could not do before the availability of your product
- Question 5: Customer Testimonials
- To maximize your score provide testimonials from your customers
- Testimonials can be either attributed or non-attributed
- Note that testimonials are not published by the Alliance and are only used internally by our judges
- Refer to the FAQs to see guidance on writing a non-attributed testimonial
- Question 6: Market Impact
- Where possible, provide multiple links (not just one) to press coverage and articles
- The best articles are those that highlight your key differentiators
- Save money by submitting prior to the expiration of the early-bird price
- Submitting early provides more time for us to review your entry and provide you with feedback
