A few questions marketers should ask themselves when looking for a marketing agency
So, you’ve decided to look for a marketing agency; but before you start contacting anyone, make sure you can answer these important questions. What are your goals/objectives? What type of services are you looking for? What is the timeframe for your marketing needs? What is your marketing budget? If you can’t answer these important questions, you may be wasting your (and a lot of other people’s) time.
Each week I’m approached by multiple marketers interested to see if our agency can help them with their needs. Quite frequently I find that a high percentage of them are not prepared to engage in a serious discussion. Asking the following questions prior to reaching out to an agency can save precious time and help narrow the search for the best fit for marketers.
What are your goals/objectives?{{cta('aa398cb6-1d8b-483e-af89-f88a1ea593e6')}}Basically, what do you want marketing to help you accomplish? This may be a single goal, such as acquiring new customers. Or, it could be multiple things, such as acquiring new customers along with increasing participation in a rewards or loyalty program and increasing awareness. By being able to answer this question, you have already established one of the most important pieces of the puzzle. It will also give the agencies you speak with a clear understanding of the purpose of your marketing needs.
The goals and objectives can provide a foundation of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), one of multiple factors that will be used to measure the success of a marketing campaign. This also helps tremendously with developing a marketing strategy.
What types of services are you looking for?
If you are able to answer the preceding question, perhaps you have uncovered the type of services you are looking for. If you are seeking solutions to an email campaign, maybe you should be approaching agencies that specialize in email solutions. If you are looking to air a commercial on television, you may want to speak with a media agency.
Keep in mind that even if a marketer can answer the goals/objectives question, they still may not be sure of what services would be most effective. Stating your goals and objectives up front can help the marketing agencies you approach better recommend services that could provide the solution for your particular needs.
What is the timeframe for your marketing needs?
Marketers should have an idea of when they would like to accomplish their goals and objectives. Perhaps they already have a timeline in place and are looking to execute against that. Often it may simply be a large range such as this year, or half of the year.
Please note that marketers need to have a realistic timeframe in mind for executing marketing solutions. Too often I hear, “We need to get this done within the next 3 weeks.” Granted there may be some marketing solutions that require little up-front timing to execute; however, for the most part a marketing agency can tell you if a timeframe is realistic. Based on the recommendations from the agency, marketers should be prepared to adjust the timeframe they have in mind to a more realistic and achievable time period.
What is your marketing budget?
The question that most marketers tend to avoid happens to be one that can save the most time and aggravation. Unless a marketer truly has no idea what a particular marketing plan or campaign will cost, and is looking for direction and justification from the agency, there is no good reason for not disclosing a budget, or at least a range.
Marketers often are not sure about cost when it comes to executing marketing campaigns and often look to agencies to give them a sense of what size investment it may take. This is understandable; however, most marketers do have a sense of how much they are willing to spend toward their marketing efforts. There should be some type of budget range that the marketer can give so that the agency has a baseline when thinking about solutions and crafting a recommendation.
If marketers have an answer for these questions, they probably have a good guide as to which type of marketing agencies they should be speaking with. {{cta('c28b5667-87bc-4eb0-aa0e-c1ce7d3e2982')}}If you don’t have all the answers, no worries; just be aware that these questions are likely to come up in an initial discussion and you should be prepared to speak about them. For more valuable resources to help you analyze your marketing needs, download our First 90 Days Marketing Kit. The kit includes an Agency Scorecard, which highlights 5 key criteria you should be evaluating for your current or future agency’s performance. Download the kit today.