Good marketing can:
- Get you into a meeting with government customers:Â Every time you write something send it to potential customers who care about that topic, and if they like what youâve said, they might invite you in for a longer discussion.
- Engage partners:Â Same idea as customers but with partners.
- Make you seem bigger/more credible than you actually are: Typically small businesses donât write or publish. So you might be a one-person company, but if you are writing every week customers and partners will assume youâre bigger than you really are.
- Build your credibility:Â If you have interesting and insightful things to say about your product or service itâs strong evidence that you know what youâre talking about and that youâre credible.
- Gives you a âmegaphoneâ that you can use to engage partners and test ideas:Â As a new vendor you need to tell people what you are looking for (e.g. you want to join a team thatâs going after a certain contract, or that you need to hire someone, or you need an introduction at a certain government agency). The chances of you getting an answer are a function of the number of people you can reach and if you have 5,000 followers on LinkedIn you’re more likely to get a response than if you have 50.
- Act as a substitute for past performance:Â Writing about a topic is not the same as having done the work, but we have listed our writing and other thought leadership as examples of past performance and the government has accepted it.Â
Core elements of government marketing
- Collateral: Your card, capability statement, website, and other content you will use when you go to events and meet people
- Content: Articles, podcasts, analyses and other (typically written) things that you create and share
- Distribution: How you publish your content to get the largest engagement among the audience you care about
- Managing production: How to track product and ensure you are getting the results you want
