Website Design and Delivery for Marketing Lancashire

Invitation to tender – Website Design and Delivery for Marketing Lancashire

Overview:

Marketing Lancashire is the destination management organisation for Lancashire, promoting the county as a visitor destination as well as a place to live, study, invest and work in.  It is Marketing Lancashire’s ambition to make the world sit up and take notice of Lancashire, and lead Lancashire to tell its story brilliantly, creating positive images and changing perception of the county. 

Marketing Lancashire requires a new media responsive website to promote the county and its assets to its target audiences of stakeholders from within Lancashire, those who could be attracted to Lancashire from outside of the county and wider external (national) audiences with an interest in learning more about Lancashire as a place to live, invest, study and work.

Marketinglancashire.com attracts over 60,000 unique visitors and 300,000 page views each year. Currently it has a dedicated market reach and interest group.  Social media is experiencing steady growth through Twitter with over 15,000+ followers. As part its portfolio,
Marketing Lancashire operates visitlancashire.com which receives over 6 million page views per year and attracts 2 million unique visits.

Marketing Lancashire has recently led on developing a strategic marketing proposition for the Lancashire Enterprise Partnership aimed at creating a compelling Lancashire narrative with a strong identity that we can actively take to market to generate more interest and enquiries.
Marketing Lancashire wishes to appoint an agency, company or freelancer that can bring creativity, experience, knowledge and structure to this project to ensure the website reflects the aspirations and visions of Lancashire.

Aims

To become one of the most digitally advanced and commercially driven Place Marketing Organisations in the UK.

Objectives

Marketing Lancashire is keen to develop a website that portrays the wide and varied work it does across multiple sectors and with multiple messages.  The site should assist in delivering the following objectives:

• Change perception and generate interest in Lancashire
• Present a coherent message that articulates Lancashire’s strengths of innovation and excellence
• Attract enquiries from businesses, developers and investors
• Raise the profile of Lancashire, its hero brands and assets across digital platforms and devices
• Become the shop window and first port of call for “all things Lancashire”
• Achieve 50% growth in unique visitors to www.marketinglancashire.com over the next 12 months
• Signpost users to relevant content, organisations and resources
• Encourage businesses to join relevant partnership schemes

Website Requirements

To work with Marketing Lancashire to plan, design, build and deliver a re-launch of MarketingLancashire.com that reflects the brand narrative and personality to successfully promote our services to partners through features including an innovative social media wall, supplier directory, interactive calendar, news centre, photo library and online shop for partnership subscriptions/ticketing & general sales.

Specifications

• Responsive build that works on mobile, tablet and desktop
• A CMS that is widely used and supported for team of in-house editors – approx. 6 users
• Different permission levels for publishing content
• Flexibility to easily add and remove pages
• Database housing unlimited listings
• Options for data collection connected to the database
• Editable event calendar or suggestions for reliable third party plugins that allow users to upload events, save calendar to outlook/ print calendar feature and offer priority listing level controls
• Ability to embed code from websites such as Youtube/Vimeo/Issuu/Eventbrite
• The website carries advertising solutions to drive revenue for the site
• Recommend Hosting Solution (current site gets 30,000 page views a month)
• Annual technical support package over 2 years to be provided separately – first 3 months after site go live should be free
• News Centre for Marketing Lancashire Press Releases/partner news stories and features
• Online press release submission that will allow external users to upload press releases to the site and held for approval before being released to the site by Marketing Lancashire
• Ability to generate emails from news stories and send to targeted audiences, suggestions for third party plugins
• Image/content library – available to registered partners (sign-up required)
• E-commerce facility that allows membership and marketing packages or events to be booked and paid for online

Considerations
•  Accurately reflect brand values
•  First class UX across smart phone, tablet and desktop
•  Support revenue targets through online shop/ subscriptions/ banner advertising
•  Showcase Lancashire to its best – be visually stunning – while providing ROI to advertisers
•  Champion Lancashire as a unique destination to live, work, study, invest (whilst incorporating the Visit Lancashire site)
•  Easy to update as an editor
•  Use content to support the research process and increase conversion rate (consistent high quality photography, Maps, Video, – that do not impact speeds
•  Fast page load speeds – for the number of traffic – consideration of this will be a vital part of  the project and testing
•  Presents right products and messages to audiences
•  Personalised blog flexibility
• Protect current equity/traffic of Marketing Lancashire
•  Ensure ability for excellent Search Engine Optimisation, ensure re-directs are in place to maintain current rankings and drive traffic further
•  Drive growth of our CRM – email and social media
•  Meets Accessibility legal requirements
•  Meets Data Protection requirements
•  Fully tested and compliant across various browsers / devices (list to be agreed)

Skills, experience and expertise required

• Must have experience of design and build of websites with demonstrable increases in visits,
user experience and commercial income over a period of time (portfolio /references)
• Must have experience of design and build of listings websites powered by databases with over 500 listings (demonstrated by portfolio / references)
• Must have experience (demonstrated through a portfolio) of excellent UX for websites with multi-purposes / functions / customers
• Must have experience (demonstrated through a portfolio) of designing visually stunning but functional/commercially focused websites
• Must have experience (demonstrated through a portfolio) of designing responsive websites
• Must be able to demonstrate (through a portfolio) of a balance creativity and UX, functionality, technical excellence and customer service
• Must be able to demonstrate (through references) the ability to deliver on time to budget including all costs – project managing / UX / graphic design / technical build

Response Requirements

Interested Agencies should submit expressions of interest outlining how they would approach
the project to include the following:
• Outputs from the brief if they were successfully appointed
• A budget breakdown for each component of the brief
• Track record details
• Client testimonials
• A portfolio of examples which clearly demonstrates your expertise

Budget and Timeframe:

The available budget is up to £20,000 +VAT. It should be noted that the direct, indirect and labour costs associated with the preparation of proposals in connection with this ITT are to be borne by those who are tendering for the contract.  Neither Marketing Lancashire nor any of its agents or partners shall be liable for any costs incurred by agencies in responding to this ITT.

Timeframe:

The proposed immediate timeline for the selection and appointment of the agency to deliver the contract is as follows:

• Agency to submit proposal by 29th January 2016
• Agencies shortlisted and advised w/c 8th February 2016
• Invited for Interview w/c 15th February 2016
• Agency appointed w/c 22nd February 2016
• Inception meeting w/c 29th February 2016

Bids will be assessed by a panel of the Senior Management Team comprising:

• Ruth Connor, Chief Executive
• Emma Walton, Head of Multi-Channel Marketing
• Anna Izza, Head of PR & Communications
• Justina Ma, Business Manager

In the event that an interview be requested, the above representatives will also form part of the interview panel.

For any enquiries about the tender please call 01772 426450 and speak to a member of the panel.

Deadline for submission of tenders is 29th January 2016. Submissions in writing (2 copies) to be sent to Catherine Redshaw, Marketing Lancashire, Farington House, Lancashire Enterprise Business Park, Centurion Way, Leyland, PR26 6TW or via email [email protected].

Background Information

The Lancashire Story

Lighting up Lancashire – it is ingenious, inspiring, innovative and international

Key themes;

• Creating and making
• Leisure and pleasure
• Food and drink country
• Linking Lancashire

Marketing Lancashire brand values

Can Do – we are hungry, believe in the art of the possible but focus on the things that can make a real difference

• Inspiring – we give people the confidence to engage with Lancashire and its many assets
• No nonsense – we adopt a straight forward approach that makes us easy to deal with
• Connecting – we believe in collaboration and connecting people and organisations to deliver better results

Marketing Lancashire brand personality

It is…  
To the point Confident 
Knowledgeable 
Inspiring 

It is not…

Waffle
Arrogant
Patronising
Dull

Download the Invitation to tender Marketing Lancashire website.