Best of the Best — What does it really mean?

Megan Wedel Advertising Director

Customer appreciation is hard to earn. It starts with abusiness making agreat productorperforming exceptional service. In today’s customer-service-oriented society, timely, friendly, proactive service is crucial. The next step is earning that businessand maintaining what you earned. Customer appreciation then follows. It’s so easy in our society today, with all the various outlets on social media, to vent about how negative an experience was. When a businesshas the opportunity to hear from acustomerwho took the time to express their appreciation and thanks for the product or service received, it is truly priceless. I’m sure many businessowners would agree that those moments don’t come around as often as they wish they did, even if they provide true quality.

Here at the Duluth News Tribune, we wanted to take part in helping our businesses in the Twin Ports be recognized in an engaging way. The Best of the Best contest is not unique to the Twin Ports; many media outlets across the country host similar contests. What awonderful opportunity for our businesses to be honored by being nominated for Best of the Best. Regardless of what media outlet takes on the challenge of hosting this contest, guess who benefits? Our local community businesses.

This is our second year presenting Best of the Best,and we are ecstatic withthe results! Our contest really took off! During the nomination period of June 15 to July 6, we received 30,160 nominations, and 3,539 individuals participated. Our voting period then began July 13, and we received 205,998 votes by 14,410 individuals through Aug. 5. Here at the DuluthNews Tribune, we take pride in the success of our contest. We promoted this contest through newspaper advertising, onlineadvertising, social media and emails. It was an effective marketing strategy —and this proved our readers have alot of appreciation and passion for their favorite businesses.

It was so exciting to see who the top businesses were going to be! The most competitive category was Best Photographer —our amazing photography businesses have many Northland fans. Our second most competitive category was Best Meat Market. Neither category should come as asurprise, consideringhow picturesque our landscape is and how suitable it is for photography. As for Best Meat Market, this is BBQ season —and how lucky are we to have so many delicious choices? We truly have the best meat markets here in the Northland!

Iwanttosay THANK YOU for participating in the Duluth News Tribune Best of the Best contest. What an amazing honor to see all the winners and how incredibly supported they are by their loyal customers.