Content Library - Tariff Basics

Content Library is where your proposal content and all costing lives; it is the backbone of making exceptional proposal content that is profitable. While you may build content or costing ‘on the fly’ in a proposal, if you plan to reuse the content, it is worth your time to build it in the library.

Basic Checklist:

• Review or Build Categories
  • Categories by destination & groups that make sense for your costing. If a price is specific to one location, you will need separate categories. If a price is generic to all location, it can be a top level category.
  • Example: Transportation costs would be specific costing for each location. Gift amenities might be same cost for all locations and would be a top level category.
  • Note: you can move your data around as you go along, so keep it as organized as it makes sense to how you sell.
  • Add a templates category - so your team is building the same look of content based on your branding.
  • Add a company info category - to store your company branding articles.

• Build a product
  • A product is a single item (single box), typically without an article (photo) to go with it. An example would be a 5 hour bus charter which is a single item that may be used in many costing bundles - activity, dine around. A single product with an article is rare as most products (ATV ride) requires multiple products to cost – ATV ride, collision insurance, transportation, staff.
  • Does it have a specific location? A global product may be bottled water, but a 5 hour bus charter may need a location as the price is different from one destination to another.
  • Add a capacity for each product. In the example shown, how many people on a bus (50?). If you do that, when you add 300 guests to a program, it will give you 6 busses, instead of 300. Another example is a Jazz Trio – say it’s capacity is 300, you will only get one trio per event.
  • When costing, decide how far you want to break these down. Is it worth it add products for: linen, candles, centerpiece, menus or do you want one product called ‘Dining Table Decor w/linen, centerpiece, votives’ and combine the price and make a note for the pieces. Keeping it simple will help customers navigate your proposal costing.
  • Use unit measure - per person, per event, per trip.
  • Use price schedule - when you get a price for next season, enter it with a start date which Viper will pick up from your program dates.
  • Add a date to the notes section – 2019 rate for blah blah program. It’s a way at a glance to see that your costing is updated or stale.
  • Add a provider if possible, so you can track who delivers what. It also helps for yearly pricing updates to do them by provider. If you have several providers for one product, move the default provider to the top.
  • Build a placeholder product with a placeholder price - these are handy to have when building ‘on the fly’ in a proposal. Add to templates category - no provider, no capacity, just a blank costing product.

• Build a Bundle
  • A product is a single item (single box), typically without an article (photo) to go with it. An example would be a 5 hour bus charter which is a single item that may be used in many costing bundles - activity, dine around. A single product with an article is rare as most products (ATV ride) requires multiple products to cost – ATV ride, collision insurance, transportation, staff.
  • Build a new bundle and add several products to it
  • Order products how you want them to view in a proposal - decor, talent, busses, staff
  • Build placeholder costing bundles - for ‘on the fly’ content
  • Build template costing bundles - such as activities where generic costs such as transportation and staff would be the same

• Build an Article
  • An Article can be freestanding (a word document, maybe about your company), or it can be layered on top of a costing bundle (to describe an activity).
  • Build an article with no costing about your company
  • Build an article on top of costing bundle
  • Use the content blocks to add text, pictures, video, galleries, and slide show

• Build Proposal Content
  • Bundle some costs together > example: airport arrival vehicles, staff, porterage
  • Add an article to bundle > H1 header, photo (large), content
  • Add a photo gallery or slide show
  • Add a video
  • Copy a bundle
  • Copy and article
  • Note: There are typically 2 schools of thought around proposal content - some users like to build content in smaller batches - venue, decor, talent would be 3 separate bundles & articles and could be mixed and matched when adding to proposals. Other clients like to build large content blocks of events and delete the components they don’t want once it is in a proposal. Both methods work, so just use what works for you. Remember, any content library changes when building a proposal will automatically update in your proposal, so this is the BEST method to keep your content library up to date. Changes made within a proposal can be saved back to content library, but it is not best practices and we suggest updating within a proposal with client specific content only.

• Content Library Rules of Thumb for Success:
  • File items by category and sub-category
  • Keep pricing as simple as you can for clients and yourself
  • Use placeholders and templates so you can build on the fly when necessary
  • Use templates so your proposals follow a style guideline
  • When pasting from word documents to viper, use the clear format function
  • Use notes, providers, comments so the next person knows your logic
  • Keep as many prices generic as possible to allow proposal builders access to as much content as possible
  • Build great branding (company, destination) content to use in templates to start proposals with
  • Costing has many more features such as inclusions, but this is a good start.

Content Library Videos