Most GovCon firms have some version of marketing happening. A website that was last updated two years ago. A LinkedIn page the BD team occasionally posts to. A capabilities statement that’s been recycled since the last rebrand. Maybe a conference booth.
And then there’s the pursuit team — running capture, chasing intelligence, writing proposals — operating in a completely separate lane.
Those two things rarely talk to each other. And that gap is costing firms more than they realize.
What marketing is actually supposed to do in GovCon
There’s a persistent misconception in this industry that marketing is about awareness — getting your name out there, looking credible, showing up at the right events. That’s part of it. But in a market where contracts are won on relationships and past performance, marketing’s real job is to make BD easier.
That means when your capture lead finally gets a meeting with the right program office, that person already has some sense of who you are. Your firm has a point of view on the problems they’re trying to solve. Your people have been showing up in conversations that matter — conferences, publications, LinkedIn, wherever your buyers actually spend time — long before the solicitation exists.
When that’s working, BD conversations start warmer. Evaluators recognize your name on the cover. Your past performance section confirms what they already believed about you.
When it’s not working, every BD conversation starts from scratch. Your proposal has to do all the positioning work that should have been done months earlier. And you’re competing against firms that the customer already trusts.
The capabilities statement problem
Let’s start with the most visible symptom. Pull up your current capabilities statement and ask: does this describe what we actually want to sell more of, to the specific customers we’re trying to reach? Or does it describe everything we’ve ever done for everyone we’ve ever worked with?
Most cap. statements are the latter. They’re broad by design — because someone decided that showing range was safer than showing focus. The result is a document that doesn’t tell the reader anything specific enough to remember.
A focused capabilities statement that speaks directly to one customer segment’s problems — in their language, with proof that maps to their priorities — will outperform a comprehensive one every time. Because the reader feels like it was written for them. Because it probably was.
The content problem
In GovCon, thought leadership isn’t optional anymore. Buyers Google firms before meetings. Contracting officers check LinkedIn. Program managers ask peers who they’ve heard of.
If your firm has nothing out there — no articles, no points of view, no evidence that your people think carefully about the problems your customers face — you’re invisible in the moments that matter most.
This doesn’t require a content team or a publishing calendar. It requires your people to share how they think. A principal who writes one substantive LinkedIn post a month about what they’re seeing in their market is building positioning equity. Two posts from a credible practitioner will do more for your firm’s visibility than ten posts from a logo.
The test: if a program manager you’ve never met searched your firm’s name today, what would they find? A website with no dates on anything and a LinkedIn with your last post from eight months ago, or evidence that your team has a genuine point of view on the work?
The messaging problem
Most GovCon firms describe themselves the same way. “Mission-focused.” “Full lifecycle support.” “Trusted partner.” “Proven track record.”
These phrases mean nothing because every firm uses them. They don’t tell a buyer what you believe, what you’ve figured out that others haven’t, or why working with you produces a different outcome than working with someone else.
Your messaging should answer one question: why you, specifically, for this type of work, with this type of customer?
The easiest gut check: could your closest competitor say the exact same thing? If yes, start over.
Here’s a practical example. Two firms both do IT modernization for civilian agencies. Firm A says: “We provide scalable, mission-aligned IT solutions with a proven track record of federal delivery.” Firm B says: “We specialize in legacy system migrations for civilian agencies that can’t afford extended downtime — we’ve completed 14 of them, and our average transition took 23% less time than the government’s original estimate.”
Firm B is easier to remember. Easier to refer. Easier to score.
Where positioning actually connects to winning
The firms that don’t have to work as hard at proposal time are the ones who did the positioning work in the quiet periods. They showed up consistently in their target markets. They built a reputation around specific capabilities before the RFP required them to assert it.
That reputation shows up in proposals in ways that are hard to manufacture at submission time — evaluators who recognize names, past performance that’s directly relevant, references who will make a call on your behalf.
Marketing doesn’t close contracts. But when it’s connected to pursuit strategy — when it’s aimed at the right customers, reinforcing the right capabilities, at the right point in the acquisition cycle — it makes every other part of the growth engine work better.
If your marketing and your BD team are running separate playbooks, that’s the first thing to fix.
Krystn Macomber, CP APMP Fellow, LEED AP
Founder + CEO | Summit Strategy
Krystn you are spot on! Great article.