Winning federal contracts requires more than a great business development (BD) team; it requires marketing designed to support them. We have found these five steps help align your content and brand marketing strategy with your BD team’s business strategies.
Start with Alignment, Not Tactics
Does this scenario sound familiar? Your business development team is within weeks of a major bid deadline. The government agency they’re targeting wants proof that your company has provided this kind of work before. Marketing scrambles, pulls together something generic, but BD ends up submitting something they wrote themselves.
This isn’t a content problem; it’s an alignment problem. Your GovCon marketing initiatives aren’t in sync with your business development needs.
Most government contractors approach marketing and business development as parallel tracks that occasionally intersect. Business development hunts opportunities, manages relationships, and navigates the procurement cycle. While marketing produces content, runs the website, and chases brand awareness.
These two business units need to link arms if marketing is to deliver the right materials to meet BD’s business objectives. A successful B2G content marketing strategy starts with a shared understanding of what the BD team needs to win more business.
Ocean 5 Strategies has found that a cadence of meetings between the two teams keeps everyone on track and aware of new business objectives. Weekly check-ins allow business development to share new opportunities with marketing. Monthly planning sessions are for mapping out what content and support materials are needed for the weeks and months ahead. When marketing knows what’s coming down the pipeline, they can have the right assets ready before your business development team needs them.
Build an Account-Led Messaging Map
The next step in GovCon marketing is to take BD’s list of target accounts and create a content marketing strategy. Focus on building a specific plan around each targeted agency instead of a general federal government marketing plan.
For each targeted agency, identify:
- What their mission is
- What problems they’re trying to solve
- How contracts are typically structured
- How likely are they to change vendors
- What would trigger them to look for a new vendor
With the answer to these questions, you’ll want to create core messaging around 3 to 5 content clusters. These clusters connect your company’s strengths directly back to the problem(s) the agency(s) are trying to solve.
Provide supporting documentation for each cluster:
- Past contracts you’ve delivered
- Certifications you hold
- Measurable outcomes you’ve achieved.
Vague claims about being a “trusted partner” aren’t enough for government buyers. Specific, documented results will validate your capabilities and reduce their risk of failure.
Finally, make sure the language you use actually matches how government buyers search for vendors online. Every organization develops internal shorthand and acronyms over time, which are fine for internal communications, but not for customer-facing communications.
You want your website to reflect your target agencies’ messaging. Research tools like GovWin can help you understand how agencies describe their own needs, and your messaging should reflect that language.
Design a Content Marketing Strategy for How Government Buying Actually Works
Government agencies don’t often make quick decisions. Before an RFP even hits the streets, the agency has often been researching vendors for months (and sometimes much longer). This means your content strategy needs to be built for the long game and not for quick clicks.
Before creating your content marketing strategy, meet with your business development team. They understand their clients better than anyone else in the company. Pick their brains to discover what materials their clients request regularly.
Once you understand BD’s needs, organize your content around your company’s specialties. Pick two or three core topics that matter most to your target agencies and build a library of content around each one. Create comprehensive and informative overview pages, supported by FAQs, checklists, and how-to guides. This signals to both search engines and government buyers that you are a subject matter expert.
Create your content based on real proof. Government buyers are skeptical of marketing hype. They want to see documented results, partner endorsements, and evidence that you’ve solved similar problems before. Case studies, past performance summaries, and measurable outcomes will always outperform generic claims.
Package your best materials into easy-to-access kits for the BD teams. Make it easy for them as they work towards a bid deadline, meet a new potential client, or meet with a teaming partner. Minimally, your kits should include:
- One-page company summary
- Capability statement
- Relevant case study
- Short presentation
Pick Channels that Actually Support Business Development
Not every marketing channel is worth your time in GovCon. The goal isn’t to be everywhere. The goal is to show up in the right places and make it easy for your team to follow up on the interest you generate.
The Three-Channel Buckets
- What You Own: your website, landing pages, and email list. These are your priorities because you control them. Set up your website to capture contact information from interested visitors into a CRM tool. Your business development team will have almost instant access to follow up.
- What You Earn: speaking at industry events, appearing on podcasts or webinars, and mentions in government contracting publications. These will cost you time rather than money, and are often more effective than paid advertising because they build genuine credibility. When your team reaches out to a new agency contact, it helps if that person has already heard of you.
- Paid Advertising. In GovCon, this is generally limited and targeted. Instead of spending broadly, use paid channels to boost your best content and promote events.
Measure What Matters To Your Business Development Team
Most marketing teams track website traffic, social media engagement, and email open rates. While these statistics are important, they don’t tell the whole story as it relates to more business.
The metrics that matter to your business development team are different: How many qualified meetings is marketing helping generate? Is the pipeline moving faster? Are the right agencies paying attention? Make sure you’re tracking both sides (the marketing numbers and the BD numbers), so you can connect your efforts to real business outcomes.
The same thought process applies to your SEO strategy. Chasing keywords with the highest search volume isn’t the right approach for most B2G content marketing strategies. A term like “government contractor” gets a lot of searches, but it’s also extremely competitive and unlikely to attract the buyers you’re targeting.
Instead, mix a handful of broad terms with more specific phrases that your target agencies are actually searching for. These terms may have lower search volume, but the people searching them are more likely to find you.
Build a GovCon Content Marketing Strategy That Wins
Remember, marketing and business development shouldn’t operate in silos. When both teams are aligned around the same goals and targeting the same agencies, marketing stops being a support function and starts being a competitive advantage.
The five steps outlined above aren’t a one-time project; they’re an ongoing discipline. The government contractors who win most frequently are the ones whose business development teams utilize the power of their marketing teams.
If you’re ready to build a content marketing strategy that actually supports your business development team, the experts at Ocean 5 can help. Contact us today to schedule a consultation.
