Submitted By: Ted McLaughlan, Co-Owner | KME.digital | www.kme.digital
Selling to the government is tough. The reward, however, includes reliable and fair payments, continued business and intra-government referrals, as well as service to our country and public sector missions.
Showcasing your products and services to the government, whether Federal, state or local, is also difficult, particularly in person or with physical demonstrations. This applies to attracting partners in the effort, including Prime contractors, industry analysts or SMEs, team members and employees.
That’s where B2G (Business-to-Government) digital marketing and communications comes in. Ensuring both the government buyer community and all influencers know your value proposition at the right time in the procurement cycle is critical. How is this done, and how will you know it’s working?
Obviously the big win is an awarded contract. In the period leading up to award however, there are many opportunities to influence the selection process and increase your “PWin” (probability of win). Acquisition-aligned digital marketing (i.e. aligned to the Shipley Government Business Development Lifecycle) can ensure market research activity by the government and Primes (to whom you may want to subcontract) reveals your value – and you end up “getting” more leads and invitations with less work to “find” them.
What does this include? Digital marketing and communications for commercial sales includes email, social media, paid and placed advertising, webinars, SEO and many other types of online digital exposure and outreach. Using written content, online engagement, multi-media, automated PR workflows, websites, apps and syndicated content, for starters.
It’s the same for the government buyer community, but completely different. What’s different? The sales language, the campaign cadence, the audience profiles, the mission value, the community presence, the governance and regulations, the pricing and proposal requirements, payment schedules, industry and professional certifications, and so much more.
To do this well, you must understand and live within the government business development, sales, capture, proposal, acquisition, procurement and contract management world.
KME.digital operates here, in both the commercial and public sector sales and marketing, with continued and direct engagement with government procurement and government contractor (GovCon) growth teams. We’re one of very few like this, focused on small to mid-sized companies in the region, part of the Chamber community.
In fact, we’ve written a book about this, a Playbook for the GovCon community, titled “Finding Government Work, Standing Out Among the GovCon B2G Community”. At this time, we’re directly offering this only to our NOVA region partners – check it out, tell us what you think, and get selling!