You’ve just completed a few top-tier projects in your digital marketing department, from ads that brought in highly qualified leads to content that brought all-time highs for your organic traffic. Besides the praise and adoration you might receive from your organization and fellow employees, you want to be recognized on a larger scale from industry leaders, whether you want a new piece of hardware for your office or you’re looking to win an award for your organization for the first time.
While a quick Google search will pull up many pages of digital marketing awards, why not make it a little easier? Here are the top 8 (in no particular order) best digital marketing awards you can pursue in 2019–2020.
1. Content Marketing Institute Awards
The Content Marketing Awards was created and developed by the Content Marketing Institute, a well-known educational website that focuses on the practice of content marketing through online education, print, and events. These awards are put on to recognize and reward the best content marketing projects, agencies, and marketers in the industry each year.
In 2019, the Content Marketing Awards had over 80 categories covering all aspects of content marketing, from strategy to distribution, from design to editorial. According to their website, the Content Marketing Awards program is the leading international awards program for corporate content creation and distribution.
As the number one ranking website for all things content marketing, it’s a no brainer for you to apply to one of their 85 categories. If you’re interested in entering, last year their pricing was $199 per entry for early bird entrants, and $299 for regular entrants. Entries are open beginning in February 2020.
2. Digital Advertising Awards—The Drum
The Drum is Europe’s largest media and marketing website. According to their website, they attract over 1.4 million unique users and have over 200,000 social followers.
In this awards show they want to recognize the most effective digital advertising campaigns specifically in the United States. Their ultimate goal is to get you noticed by potential partners.
For the Digital Advertising Awards, The Drum focuses specifically on the paid advertising side of digital marketing. From the best Paid Social Campaign to the Best Ad Ops team, they have 20 categories to enter. You may enter as many categories as you like. The early bird entry fee is $355.50, and the standard entry is $395. For more information, check out their page here. The Drum also offers Content Awards and Marketing Awards if you don’t see a category you qualify for.
3. The Killer Content Awards
The Killer Content Awards recognize companies that are expanding the rules of engagement and using them in creative campaigns that maximize channels to distribute your message and the stories you tell.
Every year, the B2B Marketing Exchange receives hundreds of nominations regardless of industry size. From Sigstr to Oracle, any nomination has a chance to win!
There are 19 categories to win and for regular entrants, it costs $249 per submission. Check out their “About” section to learn more about the current awards season.
4. Digiday Content Marketing Awards
The Digiday Content Marketing Awards is put on by Digiday, a content creation organization that is based around the modernization of media and marketing. They post consistent digital marketing content on technology, marketing news, best practices, and more.
The Digiday Content Marketing Awards honor companies and campaigns that use content to modernize media and marketing. With 25 categories, there are plenty of areas for you to submit your content to qualify for a win. Some notable awards are: Best New Product or Launch Campaign, Best Agency/Client Collaboration, Most Innovative Use of Content, and much more.
The early bird deadline is December 13, 2019, at $449 per entry. The regular deadline is January 31, 2020, at $549 per entry. For more information on how to enter, follow their registration page here.
5. AVA Awards
AVA Digital Awards is an international awards competition that recognizes digital communications with work that ranges from digital campaigns to website development to social media engagement and more. Since they cover a lot of areas of digital marketing, they have over 227 categories to submit to.
I know what you are thinking: “Wow, that’s a lot of categories.” Yes, it is. That’s even more incentive for you to submit your successful work—there’s plenty of opportunities to win.
The fee for an individual entry is $110, or $175 for campaigns. From Appalachian State University to the Make a Wish Foundation, there’s a wide variety of competitors that submit entries, so no matter your business, you’ll be able to fit in somewhere.
6. MarCom Awards
Since its inception in 2004, the MarCom Awards has grown to become one of the largest international creative competitions. Every year over 5,000 print and digital entries are submitted from all around the world. MarCom is recognized by the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals (AMCP). While the MarCom Awards are more of creative-based awards, they still recognize paid campaigns and organic content (blogs, websites, landing pages, etc.).
The entry fee is $95 per single entry, or $175 per campaign or plan. With over 300 categories, there are plenty of options for you to submit entries.
7. Stackies Awards
Want to brag about your martech setup? The Stackies are a great place to visually demonstrate your company’s unique marketing stack. Marketers send in a single slide that illustrates their “stack”—the collection of marketing tools they use and how they work together in one big system.
To participate in The Stackies, you create a single 16:9 slide that illustrates your marketing stack and how it’s used with a company or client (whether that’s internal or external). For every entry submitted to The Stackies, the MarTech conference will donate $100 to Girls Who Code, up to a grand total of $10,000. Not only do you get to show off your marketing stack, you have the opportunity to give back to the marketing community. The best part? There’s no entry fee.
If you need help getting started, check out our 2019 Stackie winning submission for Airstream.
8. HubSpot Impact Awards
Last but certainly not least is the HubSpot Impact Awards. HubSpot offers rewards for helping your clients to grow. There are two types of awards for any HubSpot Agency Partner: Category & Performance.
To qualify as a competition participant, a partner must have joined the HubSpot Agency Partner Program on or after April 1, 2018 and before January 1, 2020 and still be active.
For Quarterly Category Awards there are five categories: Sales Enablement, Marketing Enablement, Service Enablement, Integrations Innovation, and Website Design. These categories represent all of the capabilities that HubSpot offers for users.
The Yearly Performance Awards is the second type available. All active agency partners automatically qualify for the yearly performance Impact Awards. No submission is required. These categories are: Global Partner of the Year, Partner of the Year, Rookie of the Year, and Customer First.
To see the full details for all of these awards, check out HubSpot’s Impact Awards info page.
The road to awards night victory
Well, there you have it, a short list of digital marketing awards to start you and your company on your journey to victory. And there are plenty more awards in the digital marketing space—use this list as a guide as you look to get some swag for all the awesome stuff your digital marketing department has done.
