Author: Prashant Swami

Video Production Tenders & many more.

Creative Tenders launch Creative Growth | Write Good Digital Tenders

Posted on 21st April 201610th January 2022 by Prashant Swami

Creative Tenders has officially launched Creative Growth, a tender training service for creative agencies and freelancers.

The service has been launched by Jill Hudson Founder of Creative Tenders to help agencies maximise the potential of their access to Creative Tenders.

Jill said, “this service allows businesses who are struggling to win tenders to seek advice and guidance about where they may be going wrong, or those agencies who have not tendered before, to become tender ready”.

“The service is only available to customers of Creative Tenders, as it is dramatically reduced in cost to be affordable to agencies UK wide. We want the businesses who use our system to be at the top of their game and we believe this service will help them to do so”.

The service is a very hands-on experience, where Jill will work in the selected agency for a maximum of two days, offering the required advice and structure to their sales team responsible for tendering. With experience of winning creative tenders into the millions, we are confident Jill is the right person to deliver this service for agencies.

The service, which has now officially launched, secured its first two clients within a matter of days, giving the team at Creative Tenders the confidence that the service offering alongside the product offering is a great mix for agencies who are serious about growth. The service hosts a wide range of creative contracts in the UK.

If you would like to know more about this offering, the full service information is present on the services section of the company website.

WE SOURCE OPPORTUNITIES FOR SECTORS INCLUDING;

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

Creative Tenders moves to Durham

Posted on 16th April 201610th January 2022 by Prashant Swami

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 15th April 201626th January 2022 by Prashant Swami

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 23rd March 201626th January 2022 by Prashant Swami

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 10th March 201626th January 2022 by Prashant Swami

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:

Video Production Tenders & many more.

Struggling to find the right supplier for your marketing project?

Posted on 7th March 201626th January 2022 by Prashant Swami

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:

They wouldn’t know who to contact, or who the best in their region are?
They don’t know how to approach agencies or if they are getting a good price?
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
They want to obtain competitive quotations with the right advice and guidance
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:

You may already have a brief and just want to upload your opportunities and start marketing it suitable agencies
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.

What do you find difficult about creative sector tendering?

Posted on 29th February 201627th January 2022 by Prashant Swami

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:

Video Production Tenders & many more.

Struggling to win website tenders?

Posted on 23rd February 201627th January 2022 by Prashant Swami

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: