Part 3: The Art of the Profile
Match with City agencies.
Whether you’re filling out the business profile section for the first time or coming back to it now as a certified M/WBE, it’s important to sell yourself to city agencies. Procurements over $100k are publicly listed on the City Record Online (under solicitations), but procurements under $100k are not so straightforward.
For procurements under $100k . . . well, the solicitation has to find you. City agencies are not required to publicly advertise projects under $100k, so several choose to directly contact vendors they know of. Agencies identify appropriate vendors by: (1) searching the Online Directory of Certified Businesses for potential matches, or (2) requesting a “Bidders List” through the NYC Department of Small Business Services (SBS), which is generated from the same directory.
If your business is hard to find on the directory through these two routes, the missed solicitations add up. To improve your business profile discoverability, let’s start by understanding how the directory works.
Breaking down the search
When you land on the directory homepage, you are first prompted to search by company name or job experience.
If you opt for Advanced Search instead, you’re also given the option to search by (1) business description keyword, (2) National Institute of Government Purchasing or NIGP code, or (3) NIGP keyword. To achieve *peak* discoverability, you’ll want to tailor your business profile to satisfy all of these search functions.
Consider the business profile below for a hypothetical design firm, Red Banana Labs. Red Banana offers branding, digital marketing, and web design services, with a focus on social good. Its mission statement is: “We design with people to tell powerful narratives about inequity.” The basics (e.g. address, contact information, certification information) are automatically pulled from its M/WBE application, and Red Banana Labs used its mission statement as a business description. If a city agency were interested in procuring design services, surely they’d come across Red Banana Labs in the directory?
Chances are they won’t. With a profile like this, Red Banana Labs would barely register on City agency radars.
Since Red Banana Labs chose to leave out relevant job experiences and NIGP codes from its profile, searching by NIGP code, NIGP keyword, and job experience keyword would leave it out of results. Even if a City agency interested in design did a quick, basic search for “design” on the directory homepage, Red Banana Labs would not appear. Basic search looks for company names and job experience, and the word “design” is in neither on the Red Banana Labs profile.
Red Banana Labs would only come up if a City agency did an advanced search for “design” by business description keyword, the third advanced search option. But even then, if the agency searched “branding,” “digital marketing,” or “web design” — all services Red Banana Labs offers — its profile would not appear. Although the Red Banana Labs mission statement is great copy for an about page, it fails as a business description. It does not include enough relevant keywords about the company’s design services to aid profile discoverability. It’s not easy for interested parties to find Red Banana Labs, so it most likely would not be contacted about potential design projects.
So with that in mind, try these quick tips to get more City eyes on your directory profile:
Leveling up your profile
1. Test keywords for finding your business
Put yourself in the shoes of an interested City agency and try finding your business through the directory’s basic and advanced search. Are you able to find your business profile through keywords and NIGP codes alone? Is it clear what services your business offers from its profile?
2. Use relevant keywords in your business description and job experience
If you’re missing a business description and/or job experiences, start by drafting those. Then, write a list of specific services you provide, and try to weave those keywords throughout both sections. Remember: having a relevant keyword in your business description won’t make a difference if the agency is searching by job experience. Have all of your bases covered.
For businesses doing digital design, service design, and communications design, we’ve compiled our recommended keywords in this spreadsheet.
Pick and choose the keywords that are most applicable for your business. There is no limit on how many you can use, but you want to make sure the keywords accurately reflect the goods and services your business provides. To update your business description and job experience, edit your account through SBS Connect, the online portal you used to first apply for certification.
3. Choose the right NIGP codes
Like keywords, NIGP codes are a great way to self-identify the work your firm does. When it comes time to contact potential vendors, City agencies often request a Bidders List, a generated spreadsheet of certified vendors that match requested codes. If your profile is not attached to any NIGP commodity codes, you will not be included in these results.
For all of the benefits of using NIGP codes, it can be quite time-consuming to identify the right ones for your business. There are over 250 “parent” class codes, with each class including around 25 individual NIGP codes. The commodity code directory comes out at a tremendous 161 pages, so we’ve also included individual NIGP codes we’d recommend in the spreadsheet:
Think of these codes as a starting point; finding niche, underutilized codes will set you apart from the pack. You can add and edit NIGP codes through the Procurement and Sourcing Solutions Portal (PASSPort).
4. Keep contact information updated
If your business ends up on an agency’s search results or Bidders List, you want to make sure they can get in touch with you. Make sure your address, contact information, new business email, and website stay up-to-date. You can also update this information through SBS Connect.
We hope you find these tips relatively low-effort, high-reward in marketing your business. If you’d like to learn more about government contracting or finding opportunities, NYC Small Business Services offers monthly “Selling to Government” workshops.
If you enjoyed this article on the ins and outs of M/WBE certification, check out our other posts in this five-part series:
Part 1: New Year, New M/WBE
Part 2: Earning your M/WBE Badge
Part 4: Meet some M/WBEs
Part 5: More M/WBE Resources
If you have any unanswered questions about the M/WBE process, or want to get in touch, contact us at design@nycopportunity.nyc.gov or @NYCOpportunity.
