Cha ching! The Idaho’s Best Awards of 2021 are underway, kicking off with nominations on October 16th. Thousands and thousands of nominations were made by Idaho residents showing their support for their favorite businesses.
Those of you that nominated 10 or more businesses were automatically entered into a drawing for a chance to win one of five $100 Amazon gift cards.
GIVEAWAY DETAILS: By entering this giveaway, entrants agree to these terms. Companies nominated by entrants are subject to approval by Inbound Systems to ensure the category is relevant to the company. Limited to one entry and one winner’s prize per person. To be eligible to win, entrants must live within Idaho and be at least 18 years old. Acceptance of a prize for this giveaway constitutes your approval to use your name, photo, and city for promoting Idaho’s Best™ and announcing the winners on our website. A minimum of five unique and valid entrants are required, otherwise, the giveaway will be cancelled with no prizes awarded. Employees and family members of employees of Inbound Systems and RevenueJump are not eligible to win. No purchase necessary. Void where prohibited.
After complying with the fine print, we’d like to present these lucky winners:
With nominations for the Idaho’s BestTM of 2021 verified and counted, many inquiring minds want to know what it takes to become a nominee.
In fact, immediately after writing the first sentence of this article, I received a phone call from a gentleman who believed there must be a mistake, as the tutoring center he nominated didn’t make the list. They helped his son prepare for the SATs (a much more challenging feat this year) and do great things for the community, so why aren’t they in?
We love the passion with which you support your favorite businesses and organizations in Idaho. We love the pride that business owners have in their accomplishments and the loyal engagement of their employees and customers. And while we would love to reward all of those deserving organizations with a nomination, the numbers won’t let that work very well.
By the Numbers
Idaho is big on small business, as demonstrated with over 150,000 small businesses registered in the state. Around 36,000 of those companies have employees, providing jobs for 55 percent of Idaho’s workforce. That’s a lot of businesses to consider!
So how do we choose nominees? We don’t — you do! Through your online reviews over the last year and our nomination period held Oct. 19-30, Idahoans nominated 3,242 unique businesses for Idaho’s BestTM. Following the nomination period, our team worked day and night to review and verify each one so that we could finalize our categories and determine which nominees made it to the voting round.
3 Reasons Why a Nominee Won’t Make the Cut
They Don’t Meet the Criteria for Idaho’s BestTM
While minimal, there are some requirements for the Idaho’s Best AwardsTM. With few exceptions, the business or place needs to have a physical address within the state (i.e. radio stations).
And because online reviews are an important part of determining winners, nominees must have a Google My Business profile to be accepted (again, with very few exceptions).
Their Category has Changed or was Dissolved
Every year we aim to improve Idaho’s BestTM, and that includes annual tweaks to our categories. Our goal is to hit the competitive “sweet spot” between broad and narrow so that we can compare apples to apples.
There must be enough competition to merit a category, while if it’s too competitive, we may need to break it up. We will always try to help a nominee find the right home if things have shifted, but they still need to qualify and compete for any category they are in.
The Competition Was Just Too Tough
This year there are 189 categories in Idaho’s BestTM. Generally, we are looking for only 3-5 nominees representing each of the 4 regions in Idaho. If it’s a popular category, that’s not a lot of room! Unfortunately there will be some businesses left out.
How to Prepare for Next Year
There’s nothing stopping you from guaranteeing a spot on the roster next year if you didn’t make it in this time. As all of our nominations, votes, and reviews are tallied within a 12-month period, it’s open season for our 2022 awards.
That means that all you need to do is keep being great all year long. Subscribe to our notifications so we can let you know when nominations and voting begins. And when the time comes, ask your customers, family, and friends for their support.
The nomination period for the Idaho’s Best Awards of 2021 is over, and the response was incredible!
I’ll admit, we were a little concerned with how it might go considering the year we’ve all had, but you folks knocked it out of the park with a tsunami of nominations…We were blown away as they came in by the thousands!
But it’s not over yet!
How do I know if my company was nominated?
Our team is moving quickly to verify each nominee and ensure they are in the appropriate categories. If your business received enough support, we’ll be notifying you shortly about your nomination. This will include instructions for claiming your nomination, details about the contest, and resources to help you pick up more votes. Nominees will be posted publicly before voting begins on November 30th. Voting is done online on this website through December 18th.
IMPORTANT: Once your company has been nominated, be sure to claim it by December 18th!
$500 Amazon Giveaway
Now that the nominations are in, we’ll find out the five winners of our $100 in Amazon gift cards. Winners will be announced and published on this website by 11/16/2020.
GIVEAWAY DETAILS: By entering this giveaway, entrants agree to these terms. Companies nominated by entrants are subject to Idaho’s Best approval to ensure the category is relevant to the company. Limited to one entry and one winner’s prize per person. To be eligible to win, entrants must live within Idaho and be at least 18 years old. Acceptance of a prize for this giveaway constitutes your approval to use your name, photo, and city for promoting Idaho’s Best and announcing the winners on our website. A minimum of five unique and valid entrants are required, otherwise, the giveaway will be cancelled with no prizes awarded. Employees and family members of employees of Inbound Systems, Idaho’s Best, and RevenueJump are not eligible to win. No purchase necessary. Void where prohibited.
And we’re back! Idaho’s Best solidified its position as the best “Best of” contest in Idaho last year! Great job, everyone! We’re ready to cap off this year with the 2021 awards, and we expect it to be even bestier this time.
Get your mouse-clicking digits warmed up because nominations for the 2021 Idaho’s Best begin today (October 19th) and are open through October 30th, 2020. Participants who nominate 10 or more businesses will be entered in a drawing to win a $100 gift card from Amazon (multiple prizes awarded).
“I literally live under a rock. What’s Idaho’s Best?”
Good question. The Idaho’s Best™ Awards aim to recognize the best businesses in the Gem State. The contest includes nine groups with around 170 total categories. We use a combination of 5-star reviews, online ratings, and community votes to determine the winners of each respective category. You can read more about how the contest works right here.
Nominations take place online from October 19, 2020 through October 30, 2020. The top ten nominations in each category will progress to the voting round.
The voting period is Nov. 30 – Dec. 18, 2020. Anyone with a mobile phone and an Idaho residence can vote.
The Idaho’s Best™ finalists for each category will be announced after the voting round. The winners will then be announced at the Idaho’s Best Awards Banquet in January.
