Manager EMEA, Bid and Proposal Team 8x8
We caught up with Gareth Meredith, Manager EMEA, Bid and Proposal team at 8x8 on using Turtl for bid management and writing, combining design and content, and creating stand-out Turtl Docs.
Before I joined 8x8, I spent time at a consultancy that emphasized the importance of design alongside writing. The two work in harmony essentially: design impacts content, and you have to strategize your writing around design.
I brought this outlook to 8x8 alongside a bid writing model that centers the customer. This means not talking about how great 8x8 is, but talking about how 8x8 can enhance what you can do. We wanted to use design to really make this message impactful and stand out.
We explored many different options. We looked at InDesign first, but the problem when you use a tool like that is you have to train everyone else on your team. We tried using the templates in InDesign to make it simpler, but you've still got a learning curve and added costs.
When I found out that marketing was looking to procure Turtl, I sat in on one of the first demos and I was like 'this is cool, and looks like it's really easy'. I saw an avenue to start to bring design into bids in a way that democratizes design for people in the team so all I have to do is show them how to use Turtl and how the process works.
Then I introduced some simple design concepts. The simplest thing you can do is put an image on one side of the page and have your text on the other. Then you can start getting more creative, looking at tri-layouts and more complicated design. We share work among the team, but I also like to pull inspiration from things like The Egg that show dynamic layouts in Turtl.
I can say that feedback internally has been fantastic. Everyone wants to have their content built in Turtl. The feedback we've had from customers has been really positive too. I know that most other bid writers will have submitted in Microsoft Word and a few will use InDesign. The ones that have used InDesign will still have sent something that looks like a Microsoft Word document. I've been around the houses enough to know that. So unless it's a huge opportunity and someone has brought a consultant in, I know that we're doing more.
It's a different approach to writing alongside Turtl that makes the difference. If you look at a traditional way of writing which is very plain - let's talk about an exec summary for example. It's going to go for most companies - 'we were first formed here, we have this many offices, we've won these awards.'
We approach the writing process differently. It's highly strategized, we don't talk about ourselves at all, it's very much focused on client challenges and pain points, how we're going to help them solve them, and how we can help them achieve their operational goals. We do thorough planning and research into that, so Turtl always enhances the written content instead of putting gloss over poor content that's not engaging.
Yeah, it's pulling the writing process that you'd usually see in design (2 column planning). We've introduced that into bid management because when you use that, it makes it a lot easier to bring content into Turtl. You've got your headings on one side, you've got your content on the other, and you can start to visualize your layout because your content is in separate ‘containers’.
It also means that we can enhance that content with strong imagery, which we've started playing around with more. Little tricks like that and just using nice clean layouts make it as simple as possible. Put the reader first.
The best thing to do is to throw yourself into it. The Egg is a good place to start for layout inspiration because you need to start to identify shapes. You can do this with magazines as well, but I find if you look at something in a magazine, it's quite intimidating, whereas if you look at something in Turtl it's easier to digest because it's using the same tools you have access to.
The easiest thing to identify is two squares and two rectangles - again, that picture on one side, text on the other side layout is a great place to start. You can't really go wrong there.
The only thing you have to focus on is reducing your content. Don't try and fit two pages of text into one - can you take those two pages and distill them into three strong paragraphs? Think about the messaging and the clarity. Then just play around, keeping that shape idea as a reference. Take those two rectangles and cut one of them in half, and you've got a triad layout. Experiment with negative space. That could just be a white page with a heading and maybe a small image, or it could be a full image and you're looking for contrast, so you're putting white text in a contrasting area and letting the whole page breathe. It's just experimentation. But that dual layout is a great place to start.
For marketing, it's very much a question of 'how effective was my campaign, did it reach enough people, did it get enough engagement?', because you want to guarantee ROI.
For me, the ROI is 'did I get that deal by separating myself from the competition?' I tend to look at how many people have engaged with the content because it gives me an idea of whether it's being shared through the company, is it being read, and how far through is the reader is getting. If they're opening it and closing on the first page I know it isn't working, but we don't tend to see that.
When we expand the bid team both in the UK and internationally, I'll start to focus on those engagement metrics because they will help me understand coaching through the team. If one person's producing something where the engagement is really high and someone else isn't - you can examine why that is. Is it layout and navigation, or is it content? That's when I’ll start to use analytics more and more.