Key Differences Between the SLED and Federal Markets
Photo by Jonathan Simcoe
The public sector is key to providing a wide array of important services - think delivering mail, paving roads, fighting fires, teaching kids, and even brokering million-dollar development agreements.
The public sector is also an important economic engine, employing roughly 15 percent of Americans and providing economic mobility for folks who can’t afford expensive degrees.
But the public sector is also an opportunity for any vendor who has a compelling sales pitch- if that vendor understands how to navigate it.
So what makes up the public sector? Public sector marketing splits it into two key markets: the federal market (selling to the federal, or national, government) and the “SLED” market.
The state, local, and education market (SLED) is the part of the public sector that is not the federal government. This includes city and county governments, public school systems, special districts (like health, utilities, or conservation), and state governments.
To say the SLED market is diverse is an understatement. SLED encompasses tens of thousands of individual organizations with differing missions and jurisdictions, while the federal government boasts more organizational continuity.
Still, even within the federal government, agencies serve different purposes and answer to different expectations.
Marketing to SLED vs Federal Government Buyers
Paid market research tells us that buyers in the SLED and federal markets have different priorities and preferences.
Just as industries, like technology or agriculture, possess unique motivations and standard practices, different segments of the public sector attract different types of people and thrive under different conditions.
When looking at how content marketing resonates with buyers in the public sector, Federal buyers consider research reports to be the most valuable form of content to consume. Whereas SLED buyers value product demos more highly. Federal buyers also regard content that is immediately relevant and comprehensive to be worth their time.
State and local buyers look for content that is specific to their unique problems, and Education buyers look for thought leadership from well-known speakers and authors.
These preferences stem from differing pain points, needs and motivations inherent to each form of government.
Federal agencies are generally mission oriented and open to innovation, whereas SLED agencies tend to be more responsive in nature. Budget cycles and funding amounts also differ dramatically among agencies and departments at all levels of government.
Because of these stark differences, when marketing and selling in the B2G market the government shouldn’t be treated as a monolith, especially if your goal is to build a trusting, symbiotic relationship with your government buyer.
Benefits of Understanding the B2G Market
Understanding the key differences between the federal and SLED markets is vital to honing your B2G marketing strategy. Here’s how:
It’s the first step to identifying, researching, and truly knowing your audience. Without understanding the breadth of the public sector, you won’t be able to identify the unique attributes of your audience.
Knowing the markets better will allow you to evaluate where your good or service fits in. Understanding your audience’s challenges must come before selling them solutions.
Once you evaluate in which market you and your team should be starting conversations, you know which tools to seek out and which to bypass. There’s plenty of public sector selling advice out there, and not all of it is relevant to all markets.
While their differences are not to be ignored, the Federal and SLED markets do share one characteristic: they want to be understood and respected from the outset without having to do the heavy educational lifting. Getting smart on the diversity of the public sector gets you smart on your future clients.
List of Key Differences Between the Federal and SLED Markets
The SLED and federal markets are made up of different types of public servants.
Nearly 15 percent of the American workforce is involved in public service on a national, state or local level, including in the education system. With a group that expansive, there are bound to be differences between public servants at those different levels.
Beyond the differences in who they serve and what their day-to-day work may look like, data shows that, on average, the SLED workforce and the federal workforce are distinct segments of the public sector. Each segment of the workforce has interesting demographic patterns and workplace trends that set it apart.
For example, only six percent of federal employees are under 30 years old. 33 percent are active duty or were once involved in the military, compared to six percent of the overall workforce.
Employment trends are also unique, though they may share some overlapping characteristics. There are arguments to be made that all branches of government are perennially underfunded and therefore understaffed. But it was not until 2019, a year before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, that state and local government employment reached pre-2008 levels, recovering from the previous economic recession.
These different trends, both in who comprises the workforce and the forces that impact them, are bound to influence your strategy as you attempt to sell to either market.
2. SLED and federal buyers value different types of marketing content.
While the differences may be nuanced, paid market research tells us that SLED and federal decision makers prefer different types of content to help them research solutions and make selections.
Federal government buyers value content that is immediately relevant and comprehensive. Plainly, they want all relevant information to their problem, and they want it delivered in a straightforward way.
Meanwhile, local governments are primarily interested in content that is specific to the challenges they are facing. Providing a more personalized approach may seem more challenging for smaller organizations like cities, municipalities, or even agencies, but that’s exactly why they’re looking for it. In a market where vendors take a copy/paste approach to state and local agencies, they’re starved for the bespoke treatment.
The education sector is full of, well, educated folks, and their content preferences reflect that. Buyers in the education space want the legitimacy and trustworthiness of your offering to be reflected in quality content coming from respected names in the field.
3. They also have different ideas of which sources of content are most reliable.
When it comes to sourcing quality content, both SLED and federal markets would prefer to stay close to home. Government is most likely to trust other government agencies, likely because they know the rigorous research and fact-checking that go into publishing and information-sharing in the public sector.
When they do venture beyond their own backyard, federal buyers turn to vendors. Selling to the federal government is serious, competitive business, so federal government buyers understand that vendors in that space are putting in the work to be at the table.
The SLED market’s second most trusted content source is the trade press. State and local government employees and education workers know how unique their particular challenges can be, so they want a unique yet learned opinion. Industry-specific trade publications are the perfect source of reliable yet applicable content.
4. The virtual content revolution impacted them differently.
The COVID-19 pandemic’s hastening of an already growing wave of virtual content impacted the public sector. Members of the federal market report relying more on webinars than before the shift to mostly virtual work. They report relying significantly less on content sources like podcasts, blogs and ebooks, seeming to prefer educational, even skills-based content.
The state and local workforce turned to online case studies during the pandemic, offering a modern example of a longstanding trend in local and state government: learning from their peers. They agree with their friends working for the federal government that podcasts, blogs and ebooks were not the subject of most of their research time.
Public servants working in the education field spent most of their time with research reports, with case studies and webinars also claiming top spots. In particular, webinars are a growth market in the education sector - 60 percent of folks said they’d prefer to attend webinars to in-person meetings or conferences in the future.
Based on our paid research, while some education buyers agreed that podcasts, blogs and ebooks were not a high content priority, the education sector saw the smallest dropoff in content consumption overall. This is in keeping with the education sector’s emphasis on gathering a diverse array of trusted opinions from experts in the field, not necessarily prizing brevity over comprehensiveness.
Steps to Improve Your B2G Marketing Strategy
So you understand key structural and preferential differences between the federal and SLED markets. How do you put this knowledge into action?
First, know that you will have to dive deeper into your prospective audience’s demographics, motivations, challenges, and business tendencies. Even within the neat segments of federal and SLED, the public sector remains diverse from organization to organization. This means that in order to fully understand your particular product or service’s potential public sector landscape, in-depth market research is always a good idea.
Second, take the trends you learned about in this short overview and look inward. At first glance, which of these distinct markets offers more opportunity for the good or service you offer? Which is more in line with your company’s mission and vision?
You’ve likely already answered these questions when developing a high-level business plan, but delving into the answers more deeply may help impart genuine, service-oriented values into your marketing strategy and language.
Selling to Government Starts with Great Content
Understanding the differences between the federal market and SLED market is certainly helpful, but you can’t stop there.
In order to take advantage of the distinct opportunities each market provides, you must identify your audience and create a B2G marketing strategy that appeals to that audience in a respectful, mission-based, and nuanced way.
Nailing the government contract starts with curated content, and curated content starts with copywriters that have been in your audience’s position. Get yourself creative partners who understand the markets as well as you do, and you too can take advantage of the opportunities of the public sector.
