One of the main objectives of companies is to increase their client portfolio in order to obtain more income. One of the best business opportunities is RFPs (request for proposals), a commercial document that companies use to choose a supplier to work with.
RFPs are the start of a bidding process. If your company has the skills to compete for a contract, you need to make a value proposition. However, doing so is not always easy.
Isaac Castejón, Director of Castleberry Media, talks about how content marketing can help your company become a strong candidate to win RFPs.
Q: Why can content marketing help you win RFPs?
Isaac Castejón : RFPs are often impersonal. Proposals are sent by email, but companies do not know the suppliers that are bidding very well. Sometimes, companies are looking for everyone to bid under the same conditions in order to compare apples to apples and reduce everything to numbers. However, this takes away a bit of face from the supplier, which makes it more difficult for them to sell.
Companies that start a tendering process try to choose their supplier by applying logic, but humans are not like that. In reality, we are not as logical as we think and, in the end, I think that we choose more with our emotions. Therefore, we have seen that one solution is to use content, because it allows the supplier to tell its story and what differentiates it from the rest, and not be just another number in an Excel spreadsheet.
This involves using valuable content; that is, it is not about promoting or trying to sell, but about seeing how it adds value to the person who is going to consume it. It can be a video, an article, an infographic; whatever format you choose. But in the end it is not about selling, but about delivering valuable and interesting content.
For example, if you are a transportation company looking chief vp sales marketing officers email lists to win an RFP to transport a material, you can create content about the importance of properly securing the goods in the truck when transporting them. This creates value by educating the reader, while positioning the company as an expert and standing out above its competitors.
If you manage to impact the people on the committee that selects the supplier, you begin to occupy part of their minds. These are ways of persuading that are not so direct but that influence the moment of choosing a supplier.
Position yourself in the mind of the decision-maker
Q: How is content delivered? Is it included in the RFP?
IC : Including content in the RFP is often not possible because there are often technical criteria to be met. Usually, they send out a form of sorts, as companies' goal is to compare 'apples to apples', so they want everyone to fit into a mold.
Therefore, the idea is to have content prepared to impact these people, but to deliver it through other means. It can be through platforms such as LinkedIn, by email, through El Toro - a platform that allows you to impact people in specific areas -, or even through a physical magazine that is delivered to the company. These are ways of persuading, but in a way that adds value to the potential client.
So, there are several distribution channels and the idea is to create content that can be useful, even later in other RFPs, to influence the purchasing decision.
Content distribution channels
Q: Is there a specific type of format that can be created to win those requests? Or is it something that depends on the company's style?
IC : I think there is a preference issue regarding how easy or difficult it is to execute a specific piece of content. There are companies that have a very hard time with video because they don't have a camera or people who know how to do it. Maybe it's easier for them to do an article, because they ask an expert they already have, or an external company like us.
