Federal Connections Marketing Campaign | Episode 10

FedBiz'5

In this episode of FedBiz’5 we are discussing the importance of having a Federal Connections Marketing Campaign, and the strategy to create market visibility for your business to federal buyers.

Federal buyers are busy and take their fiscal responsibility very seriously. As part of this responsibility, they have quotas to meet small business contracting goals, especially for orders under the $250,000 Simplified Acquisition Procedures threshold.

The key is to begin forming federal buyer relationships in advance of contracts and solicitations. Many of these awards are for a particular set-aside category and the majority these opportunities never get publicly posted.

There are two ways to create these relationships with federal buyers: (A) they find you, or (B) you market to them.

A. They find you. – Federal buyers are required to do market research to find buyers. According to FAR 10 of the Federal Acquisition Regulations, buyers are required to “take advantage of commercially available market research methods in order to effectively identify the capabilities of small businesses and new entrants into federal contracting.”

Common means of market research include FedBiz Connect, the SAM and DSBS databases, Google, LinkedIn, etc.

B. You market to them. – This is similar to how you would market your products or services in the commercial marketplace; however, relationships and timing are particularly important in the government arena.

For example, in an emergency a federal buyer might need thousands of facemasks. If you are in their rolodex, then you are most likely to be contacted if you have made yourself known, including being properly registered in SAM and DSBS, as well as having a professional Capability Statement.

Besides emergency purchases, federal buyers like to have pre-vetted vendors to speed up their ordering cycle. To accomplish this, you need to be proactive with your marketing to build relationships.

Federal marketing means finding the buyers who buy what you sell. Identifying those agencies and offices to get the specific points of contact and reaching out to them on consistent basis.

You want to create top-of-mind awareness and your capability statement let’s them know your core competencies, differentiators, past performance, socio-economic set-aside, etc.

While marketing to federal buyers may be more difficult than commercial marketing because you have to peel back the layers of department and agency offices. The first task is research to identify the buyers.

The second task is to create an engagement plan, which includes an email strategy. Government emails have strict security so the wrong subject line, image, or attachment can make the email undeliverable behind government firewalls.

The third task is your actual engagement. This is when you make that human connection. You need to be prepared for what questions might be asked of you and know what questions you should be asking them.

You have a short window to speak with these buyers. You want to make a good first impression and create an ongoing dialog to develop the relationship.

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