TL;DR — Quick Takeaways
- Readers-choice awards like Best of SCV are won in the final push, not the nomination round. Most campaigns are decided in the last five to seven days of voting.
- Your existing customers are your entire strategy. A modest email list of 300 to 500 people, activated well, will usually outperform any paid promotion.
- The in-store ask (a sign, a QR code, a two-line request from staff) converts better than almost anything posted online.
- A paid, verified-vote services market exists and markets directly to contest entrants. Knowing it exists helps you read a competitor’s numbers correctly.
- Two or three well-timed emails beat one big blast; space your asks across two or three weeks instead of sending everything at once.
- Clients who didn’t win their category have still picked up new regulars from the outreach alone.
Why Best of SCV Actually Matters for a Local Business
I’ve had business owners tell me, half-joking, that a readers-choice award is “just a popularity contest.” Fair enough. It is a popularity contest. But in a valley where spending decisions still come down to a neighbor’s recommendation, popularity is close to the whole game.
Here’s what winning, or even placing, actually does for a Santa Clarita business. It gives you a badge for your window and your website that a chain competitor simply cannot buy. Anyone can run a Google ad. Not everyone can put “Best of SCV — Winner” on their door, backed by a newspaper that’s been part of this valley’s civic life since 1919. That badge is a trust shortcut. Someone who just took a job at Six Flags Magic Mountain and rented an apartment in Valencia doesn’t know your business yet. The badge tells them their neighbors already vetted you.
It also drives real foot traffic, particularly in categories like restaurants, salons, auto repair, and family services. The Signal’s Best of SCV issue gets read and shared across the community for weeks after it publishes, and local Facebook groups light up with “have you tried the winner?” posts. That kind of word-of-mouth is exactly what a Facebook ad budget can’t buy.
There’s a quieter benefit, too. The campaign itself is good marketing, separate from the outcome. Asking customers to vote for you is a reason to reach out to your whole list, remind regulars you exist, and get your name in front of people who haven’t been in for a while. I’ve had clients who didn’t win their category but picked up repeat business for months afterward, just from the outreach.
What Is a Readers-Choice Award?
A readers-choice award is a community-voted recognition, typically run by a local newspaper or media outlet, where the general public, not a panel of judges, nominates and then votes for favorite local businesses across dozens of categories, from “Best Pizza” to “Best Auto Repair” to “Best Place to Work.” Best of SCV, run by The Signal, is a classic example. Winners are decided by open public voting rather than editorial selection, which makes them both more democratic and more susceptible to organized campaigning than a judged award.
How to Win Best of SCV: Where Readers-Choice Campaigns Are Actually Won
Most readers-choice contests, Best of SCV included, run in two distinct phases, and businesses who understand the difference have a real advantage.
The Nomination Round
This is the opening phase, usually a few weeks long, where the public writes in nominees for each category. You need enough nominations to land on the final ballot, and this part rewards any kind of existing customer relationship, even a small one. Forty regulars willing to spend thirty seconds typing your name in is often enough to get through.
The Voting Round
This is the real contest, typically running two to three weeks, where the public votes among the finalists in each category. This is where campaigns are won or lost, and it behaves very differently from the nomination round. Voting tends to be slow and steady in the first half, then spikes hard in the final week as the deadline approaches and businesses (and their competitors) push harder.
That final-week spike is the single most important pattern to understand. I tell clients not to peak too early. Send your one big “please vote” email in week one, and most of that goodwill has evaporated by the time voting closes. Save your strongest push, the one with the actual deadline in the subject line, for the last three to five days. The Signal usually publicizes final results within a few weeks of the round closing, so there’s a real, visible finish line your customers can rally around.
The Local-Business Playbook: Mobilizing Your Actual Customers
This is the highest-leverage section of the whole playbook, and it’s the one most businesses skip. You don’t need a marketing budget. You need a plan for the people who already like you.
Start with the counter ask. The single highest-converting tactic I’ve seen in twelve years of this: a staff member, at the point of sale, saying “hey, we’re nominated for Best of SCV, would you mind voting for us? There’s a QR code right there.” It takes ten seconds and works because it’s a real person asking a real person, not a post competing with a hundred other things in someone’s feed.
Put up simple signage. A printed sign near the register or front door with a QR code and one line of instructions. Keep the ask specific: “Vote for us in the [Category] category” is better than a vague “please support us.”
Use your email list, even a small one. A few hundred addresses from a loyalty program, past orders, or a signup jar by the register will likely outperform anything you spend money boosting online. Send two or three emails across the voting window, not one: an opening announcement, a midpoint reminder, and a final “voting closes Friday” push.
Bring your employees in. Staff have their own networks, and most people are happy to vote for a place they work at or love, if someone simply asks. A short team meeting where you explain the categories and hand out the voting link goes further than you’d expect.
Every local business also has a group of ten or twenty regulars who show up weekly and would genuinely be glad to help. A personal text or a word at the counter to these folks beats a hundred cold impressions. Lean on them before you lean on anything else.
Santa Clarita also has an unusually active set of community channels: neighborhood Facebook groups, the SCV Chamber of Commerce, Old Town Newhall’s merchant community, local parent groups. A respectful post in the right group, following its rules on business promotion, can reach neighbors who’d never have found your ballot otherwise.
None of this requires a big budget — just organization, and a start date the moment nominations open instead of a scramble in the final week.
Vote Integrity, Rule Risk, and Suspicious Vote Spikes
Here’s something worth understanding even if you never plan to use it: there’s a whole market of paid, third-party “vote-boosting” or verified-vote services built specifically around contests like this one. They advertise directly to contest entrants, promising a set number of votes, sometimes with claims about IP verification or “real” voter authenticity. Buyvotescontest is one such provider, marketed across local and national voting contests generally, not aimed at Best of SCV specifically.
I’m not recommending this route — quite the opposite — but pretending the market doesn’t exist doesn’t help a local business owner read their own leaderboard correctly. If a competitor’s vote count spikes overnight in a way that doesn’t match anything happening in their store or on their social channels, that’s one possible explanation, alongside more ordinary ones like a well-timed email blast, a staff push, or a paid social boost.
It also helps you set your own line. Most readers-choice contests, Best of SCV included, have rules against automated or purchased voting, and getting caught can mean disqualification, a bad outcome for a business that otherwise earned real community support. My advice to every client is the same: win it with real customers, even if the count is smaller than a business that’s gaming the system. I’d rather a client win with 400 real votes than 4,000 they’d have to explain to a Signal reporter.
Five Mistakes Local Businesses Make in Readers-Choice Campaigns
1. Waiting until the final week to start. By the time you realize voting is closing, you’ve lost most of the runway to build momentum. Start the day nominations open.
2. One giant ask instead of several small ones. A single email or post gets seen once, by part of your list, one time. Three smaller, well-timed asks reach more people and remind the ones who forgot.
3. Forgetting to make the category clear. If a customer has to hunt for your name in a long list of finalists, some of them will give up. Tell them exactly which category and, ideally, link straight to your ballot page.
4. Treating employees as an afterthought. Staff who don’t know the business is nominated can’t spread the word. A two-minute team huddle fixes this.
5. Going quiet after the ask. A single reminder before voting closes, with the deadline stated, recovers a meaningful chunk of people who meant to vote and simply forgot.
FAQ
How long does the Best of SCV voting round typically last?
It has typically run about two to three weeks in recent years, following a shorter nomination period. The Signal posts exact dates on signalscv.com when the contest opens, so build your calendar around that, not a guess.
Can my employees vote for the business they work for?
Generally yes. Employees are part of the community and are typically allowed to vote like any other reader, though most contests limit voting to one per person, so ballot-stuffing from the same device is against the rules.
Is it against the rules to buy votes?
Most readers-choice contests, including those run by local newspapers, prohibit automated, purchased, or fraudulent voting in their official rules, and violations can result in disqualification. Understanding how these vote services actually work is useful context if you’re trying to make sense of a competitor’s numbers, but it’s worth reading your specific contest’s rules before assuming anything is fair game.
What happens if a business is caught manipulating the vote count?
Outcomes vary by publication, but disqualification from the category or the contest entirely is common. Beyond the formal penalty, there’s a reputational cost in a community as connected as Santa Clarita once word gets around.
Do I need to win every year to keep the “Best of SCV” badge?
No, but most contests expect you to use the badge only for the year you won it. Check the usage rules provided when you’re announced as a winner.
How much should a small business spend on a readers-choice campaign?
Not much. Signage, a couple of emails, and staff conversations cost close to nothing. The real investment is organization and follow-through, not ad spend.
About the Author
Dana Whitfield is the founder of Valley Forward Marketing, a Santa Clarita-based marketing consultancy that has spent the last 12 years helping businesses across Newhall, Valencia, Saugus, and Canyon Country run community marketing campaigns, including numerous Best of SCV drives. Dana is a member of the SCV Chamber of Commerce and works directly with local owners on customer outreach, local event marketing, and campaigns that don’t need a big-brand budget to work.
