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Tag:   Marketing tenders

Why choose Creative Tenders?

Posted on by John Hudson

Why choose Creative Tenders?

Mr Tenders vs Mrs Finder

Our system is used by two types of customers, creative agencies and freelancers looking for new business opportunities. Business owners and marketing managers looking to source creative partners will also benefit from Creative Tenders.

How can we help your business grow you might ask? By using Creative Tenders (for agencies and freelancers) or by using Creative Finder (to source creative partners).

Here’s how….

Mr Tenders vs Mrs Finder

Mr Tenders will…

 

  • Source creative only tenders, minimising the time needed to search for tenders
  • Work with his team who has decades of creative sector experience
  • Provide a time saving solution for business development teams
  • Provide a dedicated account manager to make sure you don’t miss out
  • Set up cold calling campaigns to generate unique opportunities for our subscribers
  • Grow his team who are currently operating UK wide with a clear international strategy
  • Create an ideal solution that works for both growing UK agencies and freelancers

 

Mrs Finder will…

 

  • Give you access to our ‘free to use’ system for unlimited invitation to quotes
  • Help you write your creative and digital specifications
  • Ensure your opportunities are seen by hundreds of relevant freelancers and agencies
  • Take the legwork out of securing competitive quotes
  • Ensure our system is an easy to use online solution
  • Allow agencies to respond via our system, reducing the amount of emails you receive
  • Provide you with a dedicated account manager with over 10 years’ industry experience

Don’t waste your valuable time searching for tender opportunities and suppliers….we’ve got them all in one place.  Sign up today at www.creativetenders.co.uk

Tel: 0203 051 2217

 

 

 

Top five reasons for tendering

Posted on by John Hudson

Top five reasons for tendering

 

We’re often told by companies that we work with, that they don’t tender as it takes too long, they’re never successful, they don’t have the time…etc. etc.

Tendering is a powerful way to generate new business, so powerful in fact that many businesses use this as their sole route to winning new business. We think every business should at least try tendering.

We understand why businesses are put off from the long, in-depth process you have to follow. But, spending the time upfront to learn how to tender could be vital to the success and growth of your service based business.

Our Growth Director, Jill has been winning work via bid writing for well over a decade, and she is sharing with you below, her top five reasons for tendering in creative and digital agencies.

1. You don’t need to sell the need for your service

Responding to tenders means businesses have already established the need for your services and have allocated a budget to carry out the work.  This reduces the need for selling the benefits of the services, and establishing the benefit of investing in XYZ.

Responding to a tender means you’ve just got to prove that you’re the best fit for their business.  Surely it’s worth a try? Just make sure you follow a strict process of what you will and won’t apply for.

2. The project has clear start and end dates

When tendering the client usually outlines when they would like the work to start and end, meaning you can work your studio time around this.  When selling directly B2B we often have projects on hold waiting for content / imagery etc. We’re not saying this won’t happen with tendering, but your client is likely to be more prepared.

3. Budget signed off in advance

As the budget has already been allocated, you know what constraints you’re working within, allowing you to best advise your client where to allocate spend.

4. Clarifies your offering to clients

You won’t always be successful when tendering, but completing a tender document often gives you additional clarity on other areas of your business. It also teaches you how you can productise service offerings.  It also allows you to benchmark your fees against what people expect to pay.

5. Research

Tendering allows you to see how businesses are spending their marketing budgets.  This helps you to better understand where you should be spending your own marketing budgets and what services are the most popular.  If you see an influx of social media tenders and this is an offering your business provides, read the Invitation to Tender documents. You should then align your service descriptions to ensure it is suitable for the market you’re selling into.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The most common mistakes when tendering

Posted on by John Hudson

The most common mistakes when tendering.

Here are Creative Tenders top 6 most common mistakes when tendering for new business.

1. Not answering the question that is asked

Many companies answer a question based on what information they think the tendering company should know about their business, their processes and their experience, instead of what they’ve actually asked for.  If you are being asked to submit a response to a question, double check you’ve answered what they’ve asked of you.

2. Not doing your research

Research is king! The tendering organisation will want to see that you’ve taken the time to do your homework.  Your tender response will be stronger for it.

3. Not taking the time to submit your best response.

If you’re not going to give it your all, it’s pointless submitting a bid.  Someone else will put all of their company efforts into winning this work, and is it really the impression you want to leave for your business?  We’ve all been there when we’ve seen the tender response 24 hours before its due, but sometimes it really is best to pass than to enter a response that isn’t your best work.

4. Missing the deadline, but sending it anyway.

This shows lack of respect for the tender process, and makes it look like you can’t / won’t achieve deadlines provided.  Your tender response would be disregarded anyway, so if you’ve made a mistake and missed the deadline, don’t send in your response and use it as a learning experience.

5. Ignoring the requirements of the Invitation to Tender

Many tender documents will ask you to complete the tender documents in a specific way.  Don’t ignore these requests.  If the Invitation to Tender asks for you to submit your response using their pre-defined questionnaire, don’t ignore this, use it.  The client may fail your response for not following the guidelines provided.

6.Bidding for absolutely everything

So many businesses make the mistake of tendering for absolutely every piece for work and wonder why they don’t win anything.  You’re so much better off responding to five tenders extremely well, than 15 tenders quickly and rushed.  Create a tender checklist that gives you an understanding of the tenders you would like to win / can deliver well, and stick to it.

 

 

 

 

How much time do you spend weekly searching tender websites?

Posted on by John Hudson

How much time do you spend weekly searching tender websites?  

Although no one has actually said £12 per week is too expensive, we thought we would look at the time saving cost of our system, allowing us to put into context how useful Creative Tenders will be to your agency.

£12 per week works out at an annual cost of only £624 per year. This gives you full system access and access to all UK and European tenders.

If the average sales professional UK wide earns £25,000 in salary we are saying that, that person would only spend 2.5% of their time on searching for marketing tenders and website tenders generating proactive leads per year to cover the cost of signing up.

New tendering opportunities

Obviously this is not the case. A sales’ professional should be constantly looking for new tendering opportunities and new business opportunities in order to achieve their financial target.

Add on the cost of the telephone bill generating cold leads, payments to other tendering systems which don’t gibe you 100% of the creative sector leads and the wasted time looking through hundreds of tenders that are not relevant to your sector or your agency then the cost saving is huge.

People have asked us why it’s so cheap when so much work goes into making it useful to agencies, and the answer is simple! We have an honest approach to making money, we can make good money from £12 per week, we can invest in product development and we can encourage the best possible lead generators to join us with good basic salaries and good bonuses. Our system is popular in the industry so as long as you keep loving us we can keep the costs of joining down.

Be a part of something fantastic and join Creative Tenders today!

 

 

Do you think you miss tendering opportunities because you didn’t see them in time?

Posted on by John Hudson

Do you think you miss tendering opportunities because you didn’t see them in time?  Or the deadline had just passed?

My biggest bugbear over the last 16 years in the industry is finding the perfect tender at 9am only to find out the deadline is 12noon – THE SAME DAY. Very annoying, but it used to happen all the time.

Do you ever find this in your agency?

This was one of the main reasons for launching this system, and developing it specifically for creative businesses. In the early days of the business we were asked by an investor why we are minimising our potential client base by only populating it with creative opportunities? That’s simple, creating something as fantastic as Creative Tenders, takes sector commitment, sector knowledge and more importantly a desire to grow the sector.

We know we are fantastic at generating creative sector opportunities so we created a system that allows us to take that online. That doesn’t mean to say we won’t create a Professional Tenders, or an Engineering Tenders, we might, but it will still be sector specific to those industries so they get the same value you do from Creative Tenders.

Our core goal is to make sure you don’t experience the same bugbears we have over the years and ensure you are made aware of opportunities the same day they are published. If we see you haven’t logged into the system, your dedicated account manager will give you a personal call to ensure you’ve not missed it. We are not a technical product with zero face. We build relationships, the better we know your agency the better we can support you and help you to grow.

Don’t be that Company who see’s their life changing tender 2 hours before submission, give yourself the best possible chances of success by giving yourself time to produce a winning bid submission.

 

 

Creative Tenders – Officially launched – Website, Design & Marketing Tenders all in one place!

Posted on by John Hudson

Creative Tenders – Officially launched – Website, Design & Marketing Tenders all in one place!

The day has finally arrived, and the team at Creative Tenders couldn’t he happier. Creative Tenders officially launched.

We are now open for business. We have proactive marketing campaigns running in parallel recruiting new creative sign ups and new private sector opportunities onto our system. We have streamlined processes where we check over 1,000 tender websites daily to locate 100% of tenders available online that are relevant to creative sector businesses only, meaning two things you won’t miss a single tender, and you won’t need to search through hundreds of irrelevant tenders to find opportunities suitable for your business.

The system is running a start up cost of £12 per week for agencies and £6 per week for freelancers, but this cost is only for the first 100 registrations. Following the 100th registration, the full system fee is payable at £18 per week for companies and £12 per week for freelancers. So don’t forget the early bird catches the worm.

Website Tenders Launch

The site officially launched on Tuesday and by Thursday afternoon we saw the registration of our 10th user, and we are overwhelmed by the response from the sector.

If you are interested in seeing a demo of the system, you can organise by this emailing our Director of Sales Andrew Gibson or by phoning our office and speaking with one of our sales representatives.

Thank you for keeping up to date with Creative Tenders, we look forward to helping you grow your agency.

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

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

 

 

Struggling with creativity? Our suppliers can help!

Posted on by John Hudson

Struggling with creativity?  Our suppliers can help! – Marketing Tenders

We all hit a brick wall sometimes and this doesn’t have to mean that creativity has to stop. We just need to know where to look for support and guidance with marketing tenders.

No one person can know everything, but collectively as a group we can make a difference to UK based businesses looking for growth. Sometimes UK marketing isn’t a problem, but moving from UK to international sales can be daunting and sometimes we need professional help to move us and handhold us into the unknown.

Creative Tenders Suppliers

Our suppliers can help! Creative Tenders has suppliers UK wide who have experience in UK and international marketing, from app developers, to design agencies, web development companies to content marketers. Think of a creative requirement, and you will be able to find suppliers on our system.

Since we’ve launched the portal we have new suppliers joining weekly, meaning the breath of knowledge we can offer non-creative businesses is immense.

We say to businesses that need help with creativity to tell us what they want to achieve. We can then help them write a specification for this and help them find the ideal provider to drive forward their business. Sounds simple enough right? Best thing, it’s FREE.

Did you know there are approximately 180,000 creative agencies in the whole of the UK of varying sizes and capabilities? How could you possibly know which one is right for your business? Let us help find you that perfect relationship that will make a positive impact on your business growth.

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. 

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.

 

 

What do you find difficult about creative sector tendering?

Posted on by John Hudson

Creative sector tendering, what do you find difficult about it?

As you’ve probably guessed by now we want to see the creative sector in the UK grow, and we believe we can help. Each week we will launch an open discussion and your feedback counts. The more feedback we get from these discussions, the better our system becomes. Simple!

So. Today we are asking what you find difficult about creative sector tendering.

I have worked in the sector for 16 years now and the tendering process has changed somewhat, but the basic principles have remained the same. The hardest thing I have found is the sheer volume of different websites I have to check weekly just to ensure I have not missed any opportunities. How many do I actually check, you may ask? Currently it stands at 1,017. Yep you heard it right. Over 1,000 sites weekly and boy is it boring and time consuming, and definitely a task which needs to be done on an evening in front of the TV as I don’t actually have time during my working day.

Creative sector tendering

The worst thing, over 50% may not even have a single tender on the site, but I have to check them just in case anything is missed. Seriously, who actually has time to do this? Yes I could give it to a junior to do but I would be worried they wouldn’t pick up on all of the opportunities and the search functions can’t be relied on, as they don’t always work. It doesn’t help by the fact that around 75% of public tenders have been categorised incorrectly.

So, help us please understand what it is you don’t like about creative sector tendering and we will ensure our system provides you with a much improved system, a one that will take away your bug bears and make your life easier.

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:

 

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”