How to get found on G-Cloud

Unfortunately, just being on G-Cloud doesn't guarantee you sales. Here, we break down the best ways to make sure you're easy to find for prospective government Buyers.

In February the Government restated their commitment to ensure SMEs are given a fair chance at being awarded IT contracts. But this commitment alone wont guarantee that your company is going to start making more and more G-Cloud sales. The crucial question is: how discoverable are you? Now is the perfect time to optimise your G-Cloud listing to make sure that you can be easily found on the framework.

For your G-Cloud 11 listing, we thought it best to reiterate our advice about the most effective ways to increase discoverability.

Service name and Summary

Our most salient advice at team AC is to review your listing from the perspective of the buyer. If you were looking to procure the services that your company offers, what key words or phrases would you put into the search bar?

Basically, the language used in your service summary is crucial in making sure relevant buyers can find you, and that your listing succinctly and accurately displays what you have to offer. Don’t make this too short; you need to be extremely clear in detailing what you offer, using key terms that buyers are likely to search for. Depending on what you offer, general examples could include “data analytics”, “unified communications”, “cloud consultancy”, etc. Add some more specific phrases as well, to make sure your unique solution can be found.

However, do remember that the reader may well be from a procurement team—not a technical or marketing team—so be weary of using any language that is too sales-orientated or technical. For this reason we recommend having a mixture of people involved in the listing process; from sales, technical and marketing departments. This way, you’ll ensure that your listing is more universally digestible.

Filters

Another way of narrowing down the search criteria on G-Cloud involves applying filters. This is where those without more “nice to have” attributes are eliminated from the search. So, here your selected filters come into play.

According to the sales analysis carried out by our Strategic Adviser Lindsay Smith, the most significant attributes worth mentioning in your G-Cloud listing to achieve sales success are as follows:

• Email or online and telephone support – Essential
• Service availability 99.9% or greater – Highly significant
• Audited secure software development standard – Significant
• ISO27001 accreditation – Significant
• Formal vulnerability management process – Significant
• Staff security clearance conforms to BS7858 – Significant
• Formal incident management process – Significant

Lindsay also carried out further research to determine the “Industry Standard” SaaS attributes across G-Cloud 9 listings. Results included “email support”, “knowledge of where data is stored” and “user authentication required”. Take a look at both reports for more detail.

Of course, not all of these attributes may be relevant to the service that you offer, but it is certainly worth keeping them in mind when writing and modifying your G-Cloud listing. If you refer to as many of the “Industry Standard” and “nice to have” elements that you can, research shows that your chances of sales success will grow.

Test it out

A good way to work out how discoverable your current listing is, involves working backwards. See how easy it is to find your own service on G-Cloud 10, by using key phrases and filters that sum up what you offer. If you appear with one or two other listings, great job! If you are one of 300, you probably need to rethink your listing. How can your service summary be more unique? How useful are your Features and Benefits to a buyer? Are you actually detailing what you offer, or simply using vague terms such as “software services” or “cloud solutions”?