Want the secret to award-winning content?
It’s simple: Don’t think about the award. Think about the content.
That’s what the judges of the Content Marketing Awards (CMAs) have discovered reviewing thousands of entries over the years. Winning entries follow the formula for any successful content marketing endeavor — they go all in on delivering something that benefits the audience and the business.
When you do that, you win the best prize before ever submitting it as an award entry — your content marketing has its desired impact. Once you’ve done that, you have a great story to tell in your award submissions.
With a month remaining to enter your brand or client endeavors in the 2025 Content Marketing Awards, we brought together three winners for the webinar, Behind the Win: Award-Winning Content Marketing Strategies. The panelists include:
Debbie Friez, associate director of influencer and social media at Top Rank Marketing, who speaks about Across the Socialverse, winner of Best Influencer Marketing in 2024.
Ian Faison, CEO and founder of Caspian Studios, who talks about Murder in HR, winner of Best Podcast/Audio Series in 2024. He was a Content Marketer of the Year finalist last year.
Megan Gilbert, vice president of Fortune Brand Studio, who discusses The Ecopreneurs, a content partnership with Salesforce that won Content Marketing Project of the Year in 2023. She was a 2023 Content Marketer of the Year finalist.
Read on to get five takeaways from their award-winning projects and one more secret to a trophy-worthy CMA application or watch the webinar for the full story.
1. Step into your audience’s shoes
What does your audience want to hear? Do they want to be educated? Do they want to have fun? How will the content stand out in their universe?
Make sure to publish content that they'll want to listen to, watch, and read, Debbie says.
Top Rank Marketing and Sprinklr created Across the Socialverse, a documentary-style master class for marketers, to reach new audiences and generate buzz around a new self-service social media product.
“We know [marketers] are pretty savvy about all of this. You understand if I’m trying to sell you something,” Debbie says. “So, we put ourselves in our own shoes, and said, ‘What would I want to know?’ I would want to be educated. I (would) want to learn things like we’re doing right now.”
Across the Socialverse was designed to provide that value. In fact, that goal was the most important element of the award-winning initiative.
2. Think three-dimensional
You don’t have to get into virtual or augmented reality to deliver three-dimensional content. Tell stories with three-dimensional characters.
Well-developed characters abound in the Murder in HR podcast series produced by Caspian Studios in partnership with its client, Wellhub (formerly Gympass). In the true-crime-style story, the HR leader at a tech company tries to solve a murder when she learns her employer is a front for an assassin business. As she navigates the mystery, she encounters employees who have attributes that may seem familiar to listeners and faces situations where wellness services could help.
Ian says that too many B2B marketers tell stories about the business, not the people. “If we can just tell better stories, more dimensional stories with characters that do bad stuff and good stuff and everything in between that, I think it'll resonate a lot more,” he says.
3. Captivate your audience
Building on Ian’s advice, Megan says marketers should lean into values-based human storytelling where you talk more about impact and less about the corporate promise. “The more storytelling feels real, it can connect authentically with an audience and captivate (them),” she says.
Fortune Brand Studio’s The Ecopreneurs for Salesforce+ streaming service did that. The 11-episode series takes viewers across the globe to see innovative thinkers at work, from regenerating seascapes to experiencing the most remote ecosystems affected by climate change.
Inspire your team to step outside their comfort zone and work in new ways. It’s about thinking big and taking risks. It’s also about recognizing the moment.
“You can prepare as much as possible, but there’s a little magic that happens when you’re creating things. So, take hold of those moments and elevate your storytelling ... to really surprise and delight,” Megan says.
4. Go beyond your silo
All three award-winning projects stepped outside of the brands’ traditional environments.
Top Rank Marketing’s Across the Socialverse featured marketing influencers who have significant followings, such as Mari Smith, Jay Baer, and Ann Handley, and those who have expertise in a must-include topic, such as Paul Roetzer of the Marketing AI Institute. Though it required a bigger investment, Across the Socialverse followed each subject in their native environments rather than bringing them all together to film at the same location.
Fortune Brand Studio traveled from Illinois, California, and Hawaii to Italy, Peru, and Africa to film the ecopreneurs in action.
But going outside your office walls doesn’t always require travel. Caspian Studios and Wellhub enlisted high-profile actors, Kate Mara and Brett Gelman, to voice Murder in HR.
5. Tell the impact story
Across the Socialverse, Murder in HR, and The Ecopreneurs delivered on what’s most important to any award-winning content program — big results for Top Ranking Marketing, Caspian Studios, Fortune Brand Studio, and their clients. And they shared that part of the success story in their Content Marketing Awards submissions.
Murder in HR saw 1.1 million downloads in the first six months and ranked No. 1 for fiction in Apple Podcasts for one week. It also raised awareness of its sponsor, Wellhub, with listeners. The success led to a second season.
The Ecopreneurs remains the No. 1 program on the Salesforce+ streaming channel. It also serves as a case study that’s allowed Fortune Brand Studio to build its business of unique brand storytelling.
Across the Socialverse saw about 5,000 registrations and reached 23 million people, and it brought even better results for Top Rank Marketing’s client. But, Debbie says, she can’t share that publicly. However – and here’s her tip for all marketers entering contests – the proprietary results were included in their awards submission.
Craft the story for judges
Award-winning content always starts with focusing on its purpose for the business and the audience. But once you’ve done that successfully, you have a new audience — the judges of the awards program.
You already have an inkling of what the judges of the Content Marketing Awards want to read. After all, they’re marketers, too. “They are people who I look up to and respect and have made really cool stuff, who have pushed the boundaries of what’s possible in marketing,” Ian says.
Remember, these judges will review a lot of entries in a short time. So don’t inundate them by explaining everything you did. Write a succinct, high-impact story. Show you know what good content marketing looks like, and when the awards are announced, your company’s name is far more likely to appear on the winners’ list.
Is your work award-worthy? You’ll never know unless you enter. Visit the Content Marketing Awards website to review the rules, study past winners, and see the latest categories and deadlines.
