Why You Shouldn’t Wait to Build Your Cybersecurity Awards Strategy
Your product does not need to be perfect or fully mature to win an award. Your nomination needs to demonstrate your solution’s unique value to your target buyers.
And while awards may seem superficial, winning is more than a vanity metric - it demonstrates your authority and credibility, builds trust with your customers, partners, and employees and creates market validation exactly when startups need it most. The last few months of the year are a great time to build your plan - you may be able to capitalize on some end of year roundups as well.
Your Resources
To prepare, you need to have these proof points ready to support your nomination and elevate your positioning:
Customer evidence: This means customer testimonials and hopefully at least one case study, if there’s nothing yet - check with your company’s sales and support teams. They usually have all the quotes from happy customers.
Foundational content: A company overview, technical credibility piece, and a comparison guide.
Company positioning: The company’s about and mission statements, information about your ICP.
How to Execute an Awards Program
Phase 1: Intelligence Gathering
Start with a basic search about awards programs to identify programs of interest. Refine your target list with competitive research. Visit competitors' websites to see which wins they promote and which ones they are missing. Track deadlines, entry fees, and notification dates in a spreadsheet. Plan to invest about $1K-5K in nomination fees to achieve meaningful results.
Phase 2: Strategic Positioning
For any nomination forms that are available, you'll want to track the questions and answers in a sharable document for collaboration and to refer to previous entries. Don't limit yourself to your primary solution category. Look for feature-specific options, startup tiers, and emerging technology classifications. Some programs create opportunities for earlier-stage companies to compete against peers rather than enterprise giants.
Phase 3: Systematic Execution
Submit early - never wait until the last minute. If you're the marketer, do the hard work yourself and involve SMEs only after you've completed the core application requirements. Track programs you pass on and why. Sometimes the best intelligence comes from understanding which programs aren't worth the effort.
Why Awards Matter
Most founders don’t realize how much of a positive impact awards can have on their brand. Executed consistently, an awards program can impact three critical startup challenges simultaneously:
Partner Amplification: You might be surprised to see that channel partners often promote your wins more enthusiastically than your own team. Awards give them something concrete and credible to share with prospects.
Internal Alignment: External validation creates productive internal momentum. Award feedback and industry recognition help teams understand what's working and what to build on next. Your team will focus on progress instead of flaws.
Sales Velocity: Awards create urgency and interest. Recent wins signal momentum and market acceptance, which matters enormously in cybersecurity where buyers need confidence in their vendor's staying power.
The Promotion Strategy
Promote wins consistently with a distribution formula.
Website placement that reinforces key messaging
Social campaigns that connect wins to specific value propositions
Sales materials that support credibility conversations
Email signatures that provide continuous validation
Companies that plan promotion from the beginning will see compound returns on their awards investment.
The Bottom Line
Awards work best when approached strategically. Founders who figure this out early build more credible brands. In cybersecurity, where trust drives purchase decisions, that credibility translates directly to shorter sales cycles and higher close rates.
Ready to build an awards strategy but need help with the execution? This is exactly the kind of foundational work we do with our clients.
