What Winning HubSpot Impact Awards Has Taught Me About Telling Our Own Story

Why is it important to submit for awards? For quite a long time, I would have said that it’s not. Getting awards was a frivolous waste of time in my mind, designed to make people feel important.

Why Awards Matter in the Agency World 

My opinion has changed. Since we started submitting for HubSpot Impact Awards, we’ve noticed something interesting happen. We’ve begun to tell stories about our company. Compelling, interesting stories. The kind of stories you can be proud to share.

Many businesses would probably agree that they focus on their clients over themselves. Which is why a cabinet company might not have beautiful cabinetry in their office. They’re busy serving their clients. They don’t have time to serve themselves.

In a similar way, all of us at Leighton Interactive are busy creating valuable work for our clients and have often neglected ourselves. We haven’t taken the time to create the valuable work and tell the compelling stories about ourselves.

Until HubSpot’s Impact Awards, that is.

We believe in HubSpot. They are our partner, our mentor, and the industry leader we look to for marketing initiatives. This is what first convinced us to take the time to submit for an award. If HubSpot was invested in creating this award system, we thought that it must be a valuable asset.

After submitting for our first Impact Award, we started to see something unexpected happen. Not only were we winning the awards, but the content was gaining some serious traction. Our audience was finding value in these in-depth case studies. Our internal team was using the content as a sales tool! Never before had we collected a cohesive story about the success we bring to our clients in an easy-to-consume format.

Historical Race for HubSpot Impact Awards

In the last three years, we’ve won first place for Client Growth Story of the Year, we’ve placed as a finalist for Client eBook of the Year, and we’ve won first place twice for Website Design – one of those resulting in a Grand Prize winner.

I recently wrote a blog we submitted about our client, Separators. This website process was, by far, one of my favorites over the last four years. But not once had I ever archived that website process or pinpointed the things that made it so successful. Not until I sat down and began to compile information for the Impact Award submission. This process forced me to work on the business, rather than in the business.

And this blog was a beast. Clocking in at a hefty 2,000+ words, 17 images, and 4 videos, this was the most detailed outline of our website design process ever created. It took hours to compile. From digging into the process of uncovering data, it forced me to take a deep dive into the project.

After being submitted, this website project was subjected to a rigorous judging process. The judges looked not only at the design, but the results. How did the new website succeed, post-launch? I could go into details about all the amazing things that happened post-launch, but you can check it all out for yourself here.

Value + a Detailed Process 

Not only did we win a 2018 Impact Award for this project but we gained a valuable resource. We now have a detailed record of our website process. Something we can show to prospects to explain how we achieve results, and what to expect from us during the website design and development process. We have content that will live forever and continue to gain traction.

My opinion towards awards has totally shifted through this process. It’s revealed the importance of talking about your own work, giving yourself a little love, and giving the rest of the world a peek under the hood. We’re proud of the HubSpot Impact Awards that we’ve won, and we plan to continue winning them!

You can check out our winning work here:

2015 Ebook Award Finalist

2015 Inbound Growth Story

2017 Website Design + 2017 Grand Winner

2018 Website Design