Advertising

Procurement technique · See it on the map

Guide only — Reaching the market runs through channels Driftless does not own.

Publishing a notice that a project is seeking vendors, so the field of respondents isn't limited to whoever the buyer already happens to know.

When to use it

When the purchase is significant enough, or specialised enough, that casting a wider net than your existing contacts is likely to turn up a better or cheaper vendor — a public-sector contract where advertising may also be a legal requirement, or a large private purchase where the usual short list isn't enough.

When to avoid it

For most small-project purchases, advertising is overkill: you already know two or three vendors capable of the work, and running a public notice adds delay and response volume without adding a real candidate. Go straight to the vendors you know instead.

Steps

1. Decide the purchase is large or specialised enough that unknown vendors are worth surfacing.
2. Write a notice that describes the work clearly enough for a qualified vendor to self-select, without disclosing so much detail that it advantages whoever wrote it.
3. Publish through channels the relevant vendor market actually watches — a trade journal, an industry board, a government procurement portal — not just a general website.
4. Set a clear response deadline and a single point of contact for questions.

What it produces

• A published notice and a resulting list of vendors who responded to it

Common pitfalls

• Advertising broadly for a purchase small enough that the response volume becomes its own burden to sort through.
• Writing the notice so vaguely that unqualified vendors respond in bulk, or so narrowly that it reads as written for one vendor already chosen.

Worked example

A regional transit authority needs a specialised bridge inspection contractor and has no existing relationship with one. It publishes a notice in a civil engineering trade journal rather than relying on the two firms its staff happen to have worked with before, and receives bids from four qualified firms it had never contacted.

Source

• PMBOK-6 §12.2.2

Where it comes from: this technique is named by the PMBOK Guide, 6th edition.