RFP for Marketing Support Services

Metropolitan Energy Center (MEC) is issuing this Request for Proposals (RFP) seeking proposals from marketing support firms for web page design and maintenance, videography, and graphic design agencies. It is expected that this proposal will secure the On Call services outlined herein for up to 5 years.

RFP (updated 8/12/2021) (link to view or download)

Pre-Proposal Webinar (link to view)

Response Deadline: August 26, 2021, at 2:00 PM

Funding Allocations: The contracts are supported in part by federal grants and contracts. Funding is available to start immediately upon placement.
Eligible Entities
: MEC will not make awards to individuals. Offerors must be registered as WBE or MBE with the City of Kansas City Missouri. MBE are preferred, pursuant to an active contract with the City.
Proposals from a consortium of agencies led by an eligible entity will also be considered.

Separable Service Awards
: Offerors may compete to provide one or more of the services required under this RFP, according to your areas of expertise and experience. Your proposal should clearly state which service(s) you are offering.
MEC reserves the right to select one, up to three, or no service offers.

Questions and Answers

Question Deadline: August 17, 2021 (email RFP@metroenergy.org)

Q1.  Are you looking for services from a marketing company, or marketing support services, or both?  Attachment A only addresses Marketing Support Services 

A1. Just support services for now, as addressed in Attachment A 

Q2.  If you’re not looking for a marketing company, are you looking for marketing staffing support per RFP Requirement F?  

A2. Contract marketing services, not staffing support. Requirement F is meant to indicate our likely need to make planning calls during our office hours. 

Q3. Do you currently have an in-house marketing person or staff? 

A3. No, we do not.  

Q4.  Would marketing support staff work at your facility or their own facility? 

A4. Marketing support agencies would work at their own facility.

Q5.  How are you using the term ‘On Call’? For instance, does “On Call’ mean you don’t need services daily or weekly; or does it mean something like ‘a meeting got scheduled and you decide to collect footage of the meeting and need a crew in 3 days?’. 

A5. The short answer is it might be either, though we anticipate scheduling assistance with plenty of planning time. It’s more that we don’t have a fully-formed marketing plan, and that the marketing services are needed to fulfill specific needs identified within specific projects. It may grow over time into something more regular, as we see results from our use of the work products.

Q6.  How many hours of services do you anticipate for any mix of services per month? 

A6. We currently have a budget for marketing services of approximately $30,000 in the next 12 months. The budget for the following 12-month period is not yet established. 

Q7.  What overarching goal is MEC wanting to achieve, i.e., more visibility, more energy engagement from the local community, or better notification of events, etc.? 

A7. Our goals include more visibility for our organization (we are something of a best-kept secret), but our main intents are to achieve more engagement in energy issues from the local community, and to provide digestible educational or inspirational content for our government and business stakeholders.

Q8.  What are MEC’s typical requirements? 

A8. Our company does not have established requirements for marketing outputs. Our requirements would depend on the purpose of the particular work product. Look and feel will need to be consistent with our brand and with the purpose of the work product. It will also help us generate a cohesive brand image across our programs and media platforms.

For illustrations or infographics, we’d usually need a reproducible digital product that in some cases might need to also be delivered in print quality. Logo updates will need to refer back to our company brand.

For some video products, selfie-style or casual video might be called for, with a personable and inspirational feel. For a training or tour video we will want a higher quality professionally produced video that might still be personable but will need to be focused on information, and can still be easily streamed online. We don’t anticipate we would need highest production quality finishing.

See Scope of Services attachment for additional detail on currently planned outputs.

Q9.  Do you have samples of similar videos like what you’d like to produce for your social media sites? 

A9. We have not gathered any examples; however we can do so if it is helpful to bidders in developing a proposal. 

Q10. We are interested in submitting a response to your Marketing Services RFP, however we are not a MBE/WBE. The cover page of the RFP document states that those designations are preferred, but “Eligible Entities” outlined on page 2 appear to require those designations. Can you clarify? 

A10. Minority and Women’s Business Enterprises currently registered with the City of Kansas City, Missouri, as MBE/DBE/WBE must lead all responses to this solicitation (see modified RFP document). On your own, you would not be eligible, but you could join a consortium led by an MBE. Thus, the consortium would be eligible. 

Q11. If we are operating as a joint venture,  does each company provide a proposal or submit just one?

A11: Just one proposal from the lead organization. MEC would also expect the lead organization to manage work and invoicing for all consortium members.

Q12. I will be the lead MBE, WBE on the proposal. The RFP requires us to submit a W-9 and DUNS Number. My question is: If I will partner with another company, will they need to submit W9’s and DUNS info as well or just My Company?

A12. The tier one vendor is the only vendor that will need to provide a DUNS number. Lower tier vendors will need to provide their zip+4.

Q13. Will another state’s WBE/MBE certification be recognized as meeting the requirements of this RFP?

A13. Technically speaking, that circumstance does not meet the requirements. In the interest of inclusivity, however, here is a further breakdown. Web service offerors MUST be registered with Kansas City Missouri. Offerors for the other services who are eligible to register with Kansas City may apply, but we will score those proposals lower than those who are already registered with Kansas City, MO.

Q14. Does your organization have a current consultant who is filling this role for you? If so, will they be likely to apply for this same RFP?

A14. No.

Q15. Is the $30,000 just for marketing services and does it include the other items listed for the 12 months?

A15. The approximately $30,000 budget is inclusive of all support services.

Q16. How is the current website structured? Is it built completely from code? Or is it using a design-friendly tool for citizen developers like Elementor? To be clear, will MEC expect an entire website re-design?

A16. See https://metroenergy.org. We are on a WordPress platform, hosted by Ionos, using the Enfold theme, which has decent wysiwyg tools. We are not interested in custom coding, because staff frequently makes minor updates to pages, and we will maintain that useability. We are not interested at this time in radically changing our look and feel.

Our immediate need is to add new pages for a program that is expanding (in essence creating a “subsite,” potentially based on a submenu structure), and we also want to use current best practices to update our web site map. The latter includes an existing submenu-based program structure that should change to mirror the new program’s structure. We also have few page or post templates and would be interested in creating new ones, along with SOPs for end users.

The job will also entail general maintenance of this web site and our sister site electrifyheartland.org (same hosting and theme setup), including monitoring compatibility of sites with platform, theme and plug-in updates. This may also entail consulting on domain maintenance (godaddy) and other related items. Maintenance will also entail occasional content updates, new page generation and the like.

Graphic elements for the site updates can be sourced from the Graphics/Illustration service provider selected through this RFP.

 Q17. How would you expect to see processes documented?

A17. Comprehensive documentation is not necessary. Documentation requested may include:

  • Updated site map in text outline or graphic form
  • Should we mutually agree that custom coding is necessary to meet a need, that page(s) must be identified by URL and the rationale for using custom code written up, along with alternate solutions considered and discarded.
  • Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for using page templates created (these can be simple and concise) and other SOPs as needed.

Q18. How would you like curriculum and graphic design examples? PDFs of full documents? PNGS?

A18. These may be provided in a manner convenient to you. PDFs are preferable as standalone documents, though we can read PNGs, if necessary. You may also provide a pdf with links to online images of your samples.

Q19. If I were to add another member to the team such as a different graphic designer in year 2, would I need to submit their work and get it approved prior to?

A19. No, that would not be necessary. Refer instead to references in the RFP regarding work products being acceptable to MEC, specifically Section II. Scope of Services-Requirements, paragraphs D, L, & M.

Q20. Are you interested in SEO services within the Website Design services?

A20. We are interested, but it is not a first priority and not required under this RFP.

Q21. Does any of the marketing pieces need to be in any other language other than English?

A21. Excellent question! We are currently planning for baseline work products (i.e. English only), but we can reasonably assume Spanish-language versions of work products would also be useful in the near term. The ability to provide bi-lingual services would be a bonus, though it is not required under this RFP.

Q22. I do not understand the wording of item C: “…and success in the recruitment and placement of contract personnel in non-for-profit positions. D. …the Offeror’s employee training plan… does this mean how I will train my team on?

A22. Please see the updated RFP. Both of those references were artifacts from a previous RFP and have been removed and replaced with language more appropriate to this RFP.