Best Of Marketing Materials: How Voting Works & How to Win

Who votes in Best Of Marketing Materials and why it matters

Best Of Marketing Materials is the ballot What's Up? Media runs for the businesses and marketers of its Eastern Shore Maryland market. The publisher, whose masthead sits at whatsupmag.com, covers the region with a mix of local news, culture, sports and service journalism, and its Best of family of ballots is one of the ways local businesses compete for visibility in front of that audience. This particular ballot is aimed at marketing materials, which puts agencies, designers, printers and other business-to-business providers in front of the voters rather than restaurants or retailers.

That shapes who actually votes. In a restaurant or dentist ballot, the supporter base is the general public. Here the people with an opinion are the businesses that bought or produced marketing work and the peers who recognize good work when they see it. A win therefore reads as a professional endorsement inside the regional business community, not just a popularity badge with consumers.

The mechanics are simple and familiar. The program is a public vote, the ballot sits on whatsupmag.com itself, and anyone the publisher reaches can participate. Because the host is the publisher rather than an outside contest company, the ballot sits beside the publisher's own editorial content, which is where its voters already spend their time.

The dated record for the Best of 2026 cycle

Confirmed runs of Best Of Marketing Materials cover 2025 and 2026. The current ballot is the Best of 2026 edition, and its window runs from December 1, 2026 through May 31, 2027. That is a long stretch by readers' choice standards, giving supporters and entrants most of half a year to campaign, and it means the ballot is live across the winter and spring publishing season rather than compressed into a few weeks.

Because the program has run in consecutive cycles, the reasonable expectation is another edition in 2027. What the publisher has not printed, in the published material, is the list of ballot categories, any per-supporter vote cap, an eligibility rule, or the dates of any platform rounds around the main window; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

The December-to-May shape also matters for planning. A business that wants to mobilize customers has a long runway, but it also competes for attention across holidays and the new year, when inboxes are crowded. The publisher promotes its Best of family across its own channels, and the marketing-materials ballot rides that same promotional calendar.

One caution about dates: the window above is what the current cycle's page carries. Whether the 2027 edition keeps the same December start, or shifts the way some publishers' ballots do between cycles, is not printed anywhere yet. Once a new edition opens, the dates shown on whatsupmag.com are the only ones worth planning around, so ignore the previous cycle's shape until the publisher prints fresh ones.

How a supporter votes on the live ballot

Voting in Best Of Marketing Materials is a direct action on the publisher's own site. A voter opens the Best of 2026 Marketing Materials page on whatsupmag.com, finds the business they want to back, and submits a vote through the ballot's own prompts. There is no external contest platform between the supporter and the ballot, which keeps the process short: open the page, choose, submit.

The fine print regular voters care about is missing from the published text. Whether the ballot permits a daily return vote, whether it asks for an email address, and whether it requires any sign-in are all details the publisher has chosen not to print in advance. The ballot itself governs, so a supporter should read the instructions on the live page before assuming a rhythm.

For a business rallying its customers, the practical advice follows from that. Send people straight to the ballot address rather than through a chain of links, tell them exactly which entry to select, and time the ask for when your customers are naturally thinking about your work, such as right after a delivery or a project wrap. Clear instructions beat clever ones in every public-vote program, and this ballot's long window rewards steady, repeated asks over a single blast.

If a supporter hits an error or a category that seems closed, the fix is on the publisher's side, not the voter's. The whatsupmag.com team runs the ballot and is the only party that can resolve ballot-side problems.

How this ballot sits beside its Maryland neighbours

The best-of field across Maryland is crowded, and Best Of Marketing Materials occupies a specific niche inside it. What's Up? Media also runs Best of Annapolis, its city-facing readers' choice program, so the publisher operates at least two distinct ballots with different audiences. Beyond that publisher, the state's ballot landscape includes Best of Baltimore from Baltimore Magazine, Baltimore Style Readers' Choice, Baltimore Sun's Best, Baltimore's Child Readers' Choice Awards, and Best of Frederick from the Frederick News-Post.

Its subject is what sets the marketing-materials ballot apart from every one of them. The Baltimore programs and the Frederick program compete over consumer favourites, where a restaurant or a plumber wins the public's affection. This ballot asks who produced the best marketing work, which makes the voting pool narrower and the win more professionally meaningful. An agency that wins here can show it to prospective clients as peer validation.

It also matters that voting stays inside whatsupmag.com. Several Maryland ballots run on outside contest platforms with their own logins and round structures. This one keeps the supporter on the publisher's domain from start to finish, which shortens the path from a business's ask to a counted vote and keeps the ballot inside the publisher's own promotional reach.

Strengthening support in this program

Because this ballot rewards professional reputation, the strongest campaigns start with the businesses that already know your work. Clients who received a campaign, a rebrand or a set of materials from you are the voters most likely to follow through, so ask them directly and give them the ballot address plus the exact entry to select. The window from December through May means an early ask can be repeated without pressure as the months pass.

The organizer's stance on outside help is the boundary to respect. What's Up? Media has not printed a specific anti-manipulation policy for this ballot in the published material, which is not the same as permission; it means the live page's rules are the only authority. Any support that involves automated voting or fake identities would sit badly with any publisher's intent, and a win built on it would not survive scrutiny.

For a grounded look at what purchased support does and does not do in programs like this one, read buying award votes, which covers the mechanics without promising outcomes. The durable play in a niche business-to-business ballot is almost always the honest one: make the work good, tell the clients who benefited, and let them carry the ballot.