Branding Your Bid – Advice From a Bid Designer

Welcome to my first VLE masterclass

Due to my experience as a Bid Designer, my classes will all be focussed on how design can assist with free form tenders, and how you can utilise it to express your brand to the buyer.

To kick off my segment I thought it was important to start with branding and what your branding says about you.

Most people assume that branding is just about their logo, but this is not the case. Your brand encapsulates everything your company is. It is your:

• Personality
• Values
• Story
• Tone of voice
• Visual identity.

Your brand is who you are and, as Jeff Bezos indicates, it is what people say about you when you leave the room, so it is crucial that these elements are aligned.

Does your brand support your business?

When starting the bid writing process, you should always consider whether or not the look of your brand fully supports your business: If you are selling yourself as a highly competent organisation, and stating that you operate on national scale, look at your brand identity and put yourself in the buyer’s shoes, is that what they will see?

From my experience as a Bid Designer, I recommend following the three As to ensure the effectiveness of your brand. They are:

ASSESS

Assess all aspects of your brand. You can do this via a spider-diagram, a list, an excel spreadsheet, whatever you prefer, to gather together all the elements that express who you are.

ANALYSE

Analyse your findings – Ask “Is this the image I want to portray?”

ACT

Act on what you find. Whatever it is that you determine to be misaligned with your brand – take action to make a change.

A misaligned brand could be the reason you’ve missed out on winning in the past. Making these changes now could see the improvement in your responses that leads towards the growth of your business.

Further support

For further support regarding anything tendering or procurement-related, please feel free to contact our dedicated team at Hudson Succeed. Look out for more design-focused masterclasses, coming very soon!