By Simon Knowles.
This article gets right into the trenches and focuses on, what I call, Bid Based Marketing which helps bid teams create compelling propositions, differentiate the way they engage and produce impactful proposals.
So what is Bid Based Marketing? In short it is a strategic approach to winning a defined piece of new business by differentiating propositions and communicating with impact to a well defined set of stakeholders.
Unfortunately in the B2B world Bid Based Marketing is not widely exploited or deployed, however given the increase in competition and commoditisation in the sector, its time has come.
Marketing and sales alignment is key
It is an approach that needs to be tightly aligned with the sales lead/bid team and goes beyond generic marketing communication initiatives to focus on leveraging client and competitor intelligence to create a distinctive position, together with tailored messages articulating unique value to target decision makers and influencers.
It touches all parts of the bid process and should be woven into the opportunity planning, call planning and opportunity engagement process.
Benefits of Bid Based Marketing
To bring this to life I would like to draw on my experience of setting up a Bid Based Marketing capability for a global tier 1 outsourcing provider and outline the types of activities my team got involved in to help bid teams gain that critical edge:
- Deployed market research capability, competitor analysis and client requirement workshops to help bid teams gain a deep understanding of the client’s formal and informal requirements;
- Deployed strategic marketing and communication techniques to craft a compelling win strategy, unique positioning, set of win themes and value proposition;
- Aligned sales and marketing messages with solution teams;
- Crafted high-impact executive summaries and developed compelling proposal copy and presentations;
- Developed effective call planning and stakeholder communication programmes;
- Delivered ongoing client and competitor intelligence throughout the bid process;
- Ensured compliance through independent bid marking.
The winning providers of the future will be those that have implemented a Bid Based Marketing strategy aligned to an effective Value Based Selling approach that will significantly improve win-rates, differentiate propositions and win more business.