Roger Chiocchi
Founder and CEO at RFPalooza
Website Address: www.rfpalooza.com
The important conversation that everyone’s looking for is how to make money, how to go find new customers in this COVID-19 environment, and you I believe my friend have the solution for marketing agencies, is that correct?
Yes. RFPalooza probably is the number one online service which every day lists an inventory of RFPs all around the country, and we have helped quite a few of our subscribers win a lot of business.
So you look at all the public bids, the databases out there, you aggregate the content whether it’s cities or schools looking for graphic design media buying, planning, and you serve that as a feed to your customers, is that correct?
Yes we do. We sort everything by region, we have seven regions, by disciplines such as marketing, advertising, Web Development, digital marketing, branding, media, and market research.
What got you into this business?
I did it on a lark. I’ve been involved in new business and agencies for years, and one day I was looking for RFPs and I found one and a friend of mine said, “Well why don’t you start listing them for everybody else to see them?” So I had never built a Web site before, this was 10 years ago, and so I’ll build one for a lark just to see if I can do it, learn a little bit, and it took off. What can I say?
So what do you think the biggest challenge businesses are going to face coming out of COVID-19?
Well I think the first thing that gets cut during a downturn is marketing. But one of the things I think that RFPalooza has as an advantage right now is that we do public sector. First of all, the public sector usually pays; a lot of startups don’t. And we have seen a lot of COVID-19 related projects like health care, remote education programs, a lot of academic institutions are advertising, and general government in particular to inform people about programs available as a result of COVID-19. So our business has been relatively healthy.
What are the other benefits outside of the low costs that customers have from using RFPalooza?
Well we offer a variety of services. I’ve been in advertising my whole life and new business. And so we do RFP consultation. If somebody wants another set of eyes on an RFP, we’ll look at it in their submission of course. We’ll do RFPs in conjunction with an agency if they need to outsource it. And a lot of related activities within the new business there.
So if you had to finish this sentence for me: in five years, RFPalooza will _____.
Double in size.
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