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Tag: creative tenders

Creative Tenders on tour | Tender Support | Events Management Tenders

Posted on by John Hudson

Creative Tenders on tour | Event Management Tenders

We are very excited to be launching our product in May. The time has flown since we first came up with the idea of Creative Tenders. The development team has steam coming off their fingertips and the sales team has been in, intensive training ready for its launch.

We are simply dying to showcase the product, so we thought what better way to do it, than to attend a couple of national conferences and exhibitions. The shortlist was hard, but our Marketing Director Jill and Development Director Andrew will be heading to London next week to attend 5 exhibitions, the B2B Marketing Expo at the Excel Centre in London, the Sales Innovation Expo, The Business Show, Business Start Up, Accountex, and Legal Ex on 11th and 12th May.

Upcoming Events

http://b2bmarketingexpo.co.uk

http://www.salesinnovationexpo.co.uk

http://www.accountex.co.uk

http://www.bstartup.com

http://www.legalex.co.uk

If that doesn’t make us busy enough spreading the word to both those interested in being a part of Creative Tenders and Creative Finder. Our MD John, is attending Thinking Digital in Newcastle to find out more about what new stuff we should be doing to make our system even more fantastic than it already is (http://www.tdcncl.com).

So that’s us covering two major cities, so we believe all good things come in threes, so we are heading to Leeds to the Buy Yorkshire Conference (http://buyyorkshire.com) on the 17th and 18th May. We’re ready for a lie down just thinking about it.

So, if you’re based on London, Newcastle or Leeds this is your chance to find out more about what we’re up too and even have a demo of our fantastic new product.

Look forward to chatting to you all more over the next couple of weeks.

WE SOURCE CREATIVE CONTRACT OPPORTUNITIES FOR SECTORS INCLUDING;

Book a free live demo with Creative Tenders to see how we can help your business grow. 

Have you had a demo of the Creative Tender business development portal yet? Creative Tenders Reviews

Posted on by John Hudson

Have you had a demo of the Creative Tender business development portal yet?  What do you think? Creative Tenders reviews

We are so keen to hear people’s thoughts on the Creative Tenders portal. Have you had your demo yet? We are so pleased at how well the take up has been since we launched the product. It’s very exciting that people also see the value in our product from what has been a year’s worth of planning and development.

Our promise to our clients is that we will constantly develop this system to be the best tendering product on the market for creative businesses, but in order to do that we need your feedback.

Creative Tenders reviews

Feedback we have had so far has all been positive and includes the following reviews

“Amazing product, a good mix of public and private tendering opportunities”

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“We have the confidence that you are finding 100% of the public tenders we want to bid for, something we have not had from other systems we have used in the past”

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“Totally worth £12 per week, it helps our sales team dramatically and save’s so much time searching for opportunities”

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“So good we want to go for more tenders ”

 —

So basically we want to know the good, the bad and the ugly. If you have seen a demo but don’t think it’s for you, we definitely want to hear from you so we can create a product you want to use. If you’re a current client and think the product is fantastic, let us know why, we don’t want to change any features that work for you.

Please send any product feedback and to enquire more about tender writing support to John at john@creativetenders.co.uk.

Sign up for a free demo of Creative Tenders and review the following opportunities:

Event Tenders

Website Tenders

Printing Tenders

Video Production Tenders & many more.

 

 

Creative Tenders moves to Durham

Posted on by John Hudson

Creative Tenders moves to Durham

We are excited to announce that Creative Tenders will be moving to Durham in April 2016 to support its bid for high growth. The growing software company will be moving to the prestigious business park – City West at Meadowfield in Durham after signing a five-year lease for 1,600 square foot.

Managing Director John Hudson said “we are very excited to move the business to Durham. The new office space allows us to grow massively and will support with finding the right team, with the right experience to lead our business to become the leading creative tendering portal across the UK”.

He went on to say “if you are looking for a new challenge then Creative Tenders could be the business for you. We have a full list of open vacancies on our website ranging from sales executives to account managers”.

Creative Tenders Portal

The product is due to go live in February and the team believes that it’s the start of something very exciting for the creative industries. The team will launch UK wide from day one and Directors Jill and John a husband and wife team has heavily invested into the business and its product development.

Jill said “I have worked in the creative sector my whole career, and I always knew I wanted to streamline the way new business was secured, as no matter what agency I worked with they struggled to find quality leads and new business opportunities”

“Our new team will be forward thinking experienced sales and marketing representatives from the creative sector and will drive forward the agencies that sign up to our product. Following the signing of the new office lease we have everything we need to build a leading brand”.

We welcome feedback on our product so please contact Jill Hudson – jill@creativetenders.co.uk to discuss our business further.

Sign up for a free demo of Creative Tenders and review the following creative contract opportunities:

 

 

 

Are you looking for a new creative agency to work with? Creative Agency Tenders

Posted on by John Hudson

Are you looking for a new creative agency to work with?  Look no further 

Businesses work with creative agencies for different reasons, and you don’t have to be a multi million pound business to benefit from an agency relationship. Branding in a business is so important and people follow brands sometimes without realising due to their creative marketing campaigns and strong communications.

This should be the same for all businesses, no matter of size, sector or service offering. Everything consistent, from the use of colour, how you use your logo on printed and digital materials, the type of imagery you use, even the messages you put down on paper.

What’s the best way to do this? Find someone to look after your brand.

A proactive agency will present new ideas and concepts to you to support with the growth of your business. It doesn’t have to cost a fortune but you should consider putting a dedicated budget in place, no matter how small for the consistent management of your brand.

We have a pool of hundreds of UK based agencies

We have a pool of hundreds of UK based agencies and freelancers on our books. These agencies and freelancers work with businesses to help them grow, support with creative ideas and engage new customers.

Creative Finder works with marketing managers, business owners and senior business professionals with the responsibility of marketing. These businesses work with us to ensure they find the right agency relationship for their business, the wrong relationship can be costly and brand damaging.

The businesses post opportunities on our system and agencies will showcase their experience, their ideas, and any sector specific case studies they may have suitable to your bespoke requirements. Everything is managed on our system from uploading the ITT to organising shortlisted presentations. Meaning you won’t be bombarded with emails from the agencies that use our system.

The support doesn’t end there. Our experienced marketing team works with businesses to help specify their needs or help them identify what type of agency would be best to support their specific needs.

If you are interested in finding out more about Creative Finder, and how we have helped other businesses to find suitable suppliers, contact Jill on jill@creativetenders.co.uk.

Can we have your feedback on how you currently tender for new business?

Posted on by John Hudson

Can we have your feedback on how you currently tender for new business?

Before we started developing our product we took a selection of creative agencies feedback on the systems they use and how they tender for work. This ranged quite a bit but a few usual culprits appeared. Usually the ones that people knew about were from their local authorities, but there are so many opportunities out there, you just need to be able to find them.

If we understand how people currently tender, we will be able to improve our tendering system. We believe Creative Tenders should be a constantly evolving product and we believe with more ideas up our sleeve that we can change the way business is done globally – a big statement to live up to, right?

So which tendering websites do you use? Do you pay for tendering access or do you only use the free websites that you have found by accident as and when they appear?

What do you like about these tendering sites? Do you find any of them particularly easy or hard to use? If so we need to know, we need to make sure that our system is the best on the market. As we only have sector relevant tenders and we are industry experts, we know with the right feedback from our clients we can create a system that will have huge impact on the sector, and a huge impact on each and every one of our clients businesses.

If you want to send us your feedback so that we can shape a system that is right for you and your business, email Jill on jill@creativetenders.co.uk.

What percentage of your work comes from tendering?

Posted on by John Hudson

What percentage of your work comes from tendering?  Do you think you maximise this sales channel?

After me moaning last week about what people find difficult about tendering for the creative sector, I thought I best discuss something a little more lighthearted. Success rates!

As I have worked in all size agencies in my career, tendering success rates have been different. Mainly because there was no standard format in place, they were usually rushed due to studio time not being available and sometimes winging it a little with the hope that we might be in with a chance.

If I look at the most recent agency I supported, we can see that around 50% of the overall business we won came from public tendering, which for an agency of only 5 people is quite high.

Design is a very personal thing

Obviously it helped that I know how to write bids and more importantly how to write a winning tender so our success rate stood at about 80% for those projects we did bid for, but we never included creative artwork. This is a bugbear of mine. How can we actually develop creative material when we haven’t even met the client, haven’t discussed the brief properly, don’t really understand their client base or even their core objectives. Design is a very personal thing and we don’t believe that a tender should be put to one side based on a tiny fraction of the information provided.

Many people probably don’t maximise tendering as a channel to winning new business because of the studio time needed to produce the tender. I am pleased to say though that fewer tenders these days actually ask for artwork to be created, something we will also advise for those clients we work with on Creative Finder.

We’ve all sorts of standard templates to help our clients be more successful with tendering, one being a tender checklist, if you don’t tick all the boxes, don’t waste the time submitting the tender. Be ruthless.

If you want to access the standard documents we have in place, or even want me to take a look at one of your tenders, send it over, we are happy to help.

Sign up for a free demo of Creative Tenders and review the following opportunities:

Event Tenders

Website Tenders

Printing Tenders

Video Production Tenders & many more.

 

 

Struggling to find the right supplier for your marketing project?

Posted on by John Hudson

Struggling to find the right creative supplier for your marketing project? 

Finding the right creative supplier for your business is extremely important. From research into the businesses that use Creative Finder we have been informed that they use our service for multiple reasons:

  1. They wouldn’t know who to contact, or who the best in their region are?
  2. They don’t know how to approach agencies or if they are getting a good price?
  3. They don’t know how to specify what they are looking for and don’t want agencies to take them in a direction they don’t think they need / want
  4. They want to obtain competitive quotations with the right advice and guidance
  5. They have used the same agency for years and want to see if they are getting the best deal, the best creative ideas or the best marketing approach

Creative Finder

Businesses who use Creative Finder each have their own reasons for using the service. Those who use it is either business owners, marketing managers, or senior business representatives looking for help. It is a great way to get competitive quotes and find the best agencies.

Using our system is so easy and it is 100% FREE. There is also different levels of support available:

  1. You may already have a brief and just want to upload your opportunities and start marketing it suitable agencies
  2. Or, you may be struggling to set out your exact requirements and need help writing a specification

Whatever category you fall into, we can help and its 100% free. Our marketing experts have 15 years experience in the industry so helping you specify your needs is second nature to us, giving you the confidence that we know what we are doing and you will be asking for your exact needs, allowing you to get like for like quotations.

If you wan to chat further about Creative Finder, contact Jill by email at jill@creativetenders.co.uk and she will call at a convenient time to discuss your needs further.

 

Struggling to win website tenders?

Posted on by John Hudson

Struggling to win website tenders?  Would you like us to provide feedback on your website tender submission?

Are you struggling to win public tenders, or even be shortlisted when submitting proposals? Isn’t it annoying?

We have produced a blog previously about the importance of gathering feedback, but some feedback isn’t actually that helpful. For example, the client may say – cost. Well that’s helpful isn’t it?

Tender writing is an art form.

Tender writing is an art form. Once you’ve got a formula that works for you, you’re onto a winner. No, that doesn’t mean you will win everything you go for, but it does mean that you are presenting your business in the best possible light, answering the questions that are asked of you, rather than telling them information you believe to be important and sometimes realising that less is more.

For those of you struggling to win bids, it’s sometimes good to get an outside perspective. This is what we launched Creative Growth. We work with creative agencies to help them become bid ready. We can usually see from an initial tender review where you might be going wrong and we can help you to reduce the number of common mistakes you ate making.

Free tender review service.

Throughout the next 12 weeks, Creative Growth is offering member companies of Creative Tenders access to a free tender review service. We will critique one of your recent tenders that has not been successful and provider pointers for improved success. What’s not to love about this?

If you would like us to critique one of your tenders, you need to send us the ITT in full (including all of the supporting documents) and your response (in full, including appendices). Once we have this we will get our review complete with 14 days and offer a telephone advice session about what you need to be to be 100% tender ready.

Please send all documents including the reference GROWTH21 to jill@creativetenders.co.uk.

 

Sign up for a free demo of Creative Tenders and review the following opportunities:

Event Tenders

Website Tenders

Printing Tenders

Video Production Tenders & many more.

 

 

Meet the Team – Creative Tenders – The Tendering Website for the Creative Sector

Posted on by John Hudson

Meet the Team – Creative Tenders – The Tendering Website for the Creative Sector

Meet the Creative Tenders Management Team

We are thrilled to have our full management team in place now at Creative Tenders. Meet the members of our team below.

Meet Jill

Jill has worked in the creative sector her whole career spanning 16 years. She has secured millions in business for the agencies she has worked with, managed teams of up to 30 creative lead generators and managed creative and digital contracts up to 500k in value. Jill’s role at Creative Tenders is Director of Marketing and she will be responsible for marketing to creative companies encouraging them to use of our system, but also non-creative businesses looking for creative, digital and marketing providers.

You can contact Jill by emailing jill@creativetenders.co.uk

Meet John

John has worked in the creative sector his whole career since starting his first business when he was just 19 at university. He has successfully grown and sold several of his own creative and digital ventures, has a BA in TV and Radio and a MA in Media. John owns Creative Tenders and takes the role of overall business management, recruitment and retention, HR and accounts.

You can contact John by emailing john@creativetenders.co.uk

Meet Kathryn

Kathryn has worked with the management team at Creative Tenders for 7 years and is passionate, energetic and creative. She has a BA in Theatre and an MA in Media. Kathryn’s role is Head of Creative and is responsible for the brand management and overall look and feel of our communications, including our website, video content and designed promotional materials

If you think you’ve got what it takes to work for Creative Tenders, send us your CV to jill@creativetenders.co.uk

Sign up for a free demo of Creative Tenders and review the following creative contract opportunities:

 

Creative Tenders free for a year

Posted on by John Hudson

Creative Tenders free for a year

This month sees Creative Tenders launch a competition via its social media pages Twitter and Facebook to gain access to the system for your business FREE for the first 12 months. You can have access to all creative contracts in the UK at your fingertips!
Continue reading “Creative Tenders free for a year”

Why should SMEs tender for work through digital marketplace?

Posted on by John Hudson

Why should SMEs tender for work through digital marketplace?

As an experienced writer of tenders for a variety of SMEs, I have asked myself whilst writing tenders and racking my brains for a synonym for ‘experience’ – should SMEs tender for work?
Continue reading “Why should SMEs tender for work through digital marketplace?”

Key factors of writing a winning tender

Posted on by John Hudson

Key factors of writing a winning tender

Writing bids may be a laborious task. I have written so many over the course of my career and on occasion I have been fed up with them.
Continue reading “Key factors of writing a winning tender”

NHS Digital Tenders & Public Sector Tenders in one place | Creative Tenders coming soon

Posted on by John Hudson

Creative Tenders was launched to support the growth of the UK’s creative sector.

Continue reading “NHS Digital Tenders & Public Sector Tenders in one place | Creative Tenders coming soon”