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Meet our Corporate Member: Aurora Marketing
Meet our member, Leann Webb, Founder and Managing Director of Aurora Marketing.
Leann Webb is the Founder and Managing director of Aurora Marketing, a tendering consultancy agency founded in the year 2000. The company has joined the Queensland Chapter at FACCI as a Corporate member in June 2022. Aurora Marketing is networking and working regularly with the French community.
How would you describe the core activity of Aurora Marketing?
Aurora Marketing is a consulting firm specialised in tendering. Tendering is the formal procurement process that Governments and major organisations use when they need to procure goods and services. This is where Aurora Marketing excels: we assist companies to prepare their responses in the best possible way, by finding their point of differentiation and helping to assemble comprehensive and compelling documentation. It is a blend between strategy, sales, marketing, communications, psychology, and different types of technical work.
Aurora Marketing covers a broad range of industries, particularly Construction, Infrastructure, and Defence which is where we find the largest and most complex tenders coming to market. We also support clients with leadership coaching, teaming support, awards submissions, grant applications, tender audits, tender training and marketing collateral.
Can you tell us about your personal background and Aurora Marketing’s history?
I was born and raised in Australia, and I have a background in Marketing, Business and Human Resources, with a master’s degree from the University of Southern Queensland. I originally started working as a product and marketing manager for various companies, before starting my own companies: Aurora Marketing, and shortly after, Childhood Australia. Childhood Australia developed unique educational programs for young children, focused on languages, self-defence, and physical development. Although this business did not achieve the success I was hoping for, I remain proud of the programs I developed, and the experience I gained trying to grow that business. After several years of trying to manage both businesses, I ultimately decided to focus Aurora Marketing which was growing from strength to strength.
When I started Aurora Marketing in the early 2000s it was a very broad marketing consulting business; we were doing everything from websites to capability statements, to coaching professional services partners (eg law firms) in business development. Within about 6 months of starting the business, I had the opportunity to work with a client on a tender, and through that tender, I met some people from a global bank that financed infrastructure projects. They were impressed with my work on the tender, project managing the submission, developing strategy, wrestling content from subject matter experts, writing the submission, even formatting the document… As a result, this global bank became a client of mine. At the time, there was no one else in this field, and my growing relationship with this bank was the springboard to work with dozens of amazing clients. Within about a year, I chose to drop the pure marketing aspect to focus solely on tendering. Currently, tendering is still about 90% of our focus, with the associated services growing alongside.
How do you see the future of your company?
We currently have six offices in Australia in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide and Canberra. We have a plan to grow geographically and also to further expand our range of services. We are the market leader based on our length of operations, track record, client base, geographic footprint and size of team so we are passionate about maintaining our market position. We are also relentless in the pursuit of excellence. We genuinely care that our clients win the bid they are working on; we do not see our work as a formality, we actually take part in the competition with them.
How can the French-Australian Chamber help you achieve your objectives?
For us, FACCI is a great connection point to major French companies in Australia, which helps us learn about their various industries. We currently work with many French companies, therefore, being close to the French community is very important to help us approach those clients. We really enjoy the FACCI events, especially the Bastille Day Business Breakfast, which always have the most interesting speakers. We are extremely satisfied with the events organised, and the networking is what helps us the most.
For more information, please consult Aurora Marketing’s website: Aurora Marketing
Interview conducted by Tiphaine Gentil, on 28 April 2023.
