Marketing agency RFP guide

When an RFP makes sense and when a simpler brief is better

Many businesses assume they need a formal RFP to hire any outside help. Often they do not. A formal RFP takes real effort from you and from every agency that responds, so it is worth saving for situations that call for it. Those include larger engagements across several channels, projects with technical integrations, decisions that involve several people who need to score agencies the same way, and organizations whose purchasing rules require a formal process.

If you are a local business looking for help with one or two services, a simple project brief and a few structured conversations will usually tell you more, faster. You still compare agencies carefully. You simply do it through a short written brief and a tailored proposal rather than a long procurement document.

When you do use a formal RFP, make it specific enough to guide the agencies but open enough to let them recommend an approach. If the document dictates every tactic, you are asking agencies to price a list of tasks rather than to think about your business. Ask them how they would reach your goals, and you will learn much more from their answers.

What to include

The structure of your RFP shapes the quality of the responses. A clear, consistent document gives every agency the same starting point and makes the proposals easier to compare side by side.

• Background on your business, your customers and your competitors.
• Your business goals and what you need marketing to achieve.
• The scope of work and the deliverables you expect.
• A budget range for the engagement.
• The selection timeline and your preferred start date.
• Specific questions you want each agency to answer.
• How you will evaluate the responses.
• Submission details, including format, deadline and a contact person.

Each section has a job. The background tells the agency who you are and what you are up against. The goals explain what success looks like. The scope shows where the agency's responsibilities begin and end. The budget lets the agency size its recommendations. The questions push each agency to think about your business instead of sending a standard presentation.

Describing goals, budget and timeline

Agencies cannot propose a sensible plan without knowing what you want to achieve and what resources are available. Broad wishes such as more traffic or better awareness are hard to plan around. Tie your goals to the business: more qualified inquiries for a particular service, more visits to a location, or a successful launch of a new product. Explain how you will know the marketing is working.

Budget is the part many businesses hesitate to share. Some hold it back to see who comes in lowest. That usually backfires. Marketing is not a standard product bought the same way from every seller, and agencies size their recommendations to the budget available. Without a range, one agency may propose a broad campaign while another proposes a small, focused effort, and you end up comparing approaches that cannot be compared. A realistic range lets each agency show what it would do within the same limits.

The timeline should be realistic too. Agencies need time to read the RFP, ask questions, think about your business and prepare a considered response. A very short deadline tends to produce rushed, generic proposals. Build in a question period, a submission deadline, time for your review and time for short presentations from your finalists.

Evaluation criteria

Decide how you will judge the proposals before they arrive. Without agreed criteria, it is easy to be swayed by the most polished presentation rather than the strongest plan. A simple scoring guide helps everyone involved judge each proposal the same way. Share the criteria in the RFP so agencies know what matters to you.

Weights are a guide, not a formula. If an agency cannot explain its thinking clearly in a proposal, it may struggle to communicate clearly once the work starts. Pay attention to the questions agencies ask during the process, too. Good questions about your business are often a better sign than enthusiastic agreement with everything in the RFP.

Running a fair process

A fair process respects everyone's time. Invite a short list of agencies that look like a good fit rather than sending the RFP to every agency you can find. Agencies are more likely to invest effort when they know the field is small and the decision is genuine.

Set a period for questions, answer them clearly, and share every answer with every agency at the same time so all of them work from the same information. Keep to the timeline you published, and tell agencies when you will decide.

Do not ask for free speculative work, such as a new logo, finished ad concepts or a detailed custom strategy, before you hire. An agency's time and thinking are what it sells, and many capable agencies will decline to take part if spec work is required. Judge them on their past work, their thinking about your challenges, their references and their proposed approach. When you have decided, let every agency know the outcome, including the ones you did not choose.

A simple RFP outline

If you are ready to write your RFP, this outline covers what agencies need. Keep the language plain and avoid internal terms an outsider would not understand.

1. Your business, your customers and your market.
2. Your goals and what you need marketing to achieve.
3. Current marketing and what is or is not working.
4. Services and deliverables in scope.
5. Budget range.
6. Timeline and preferred start date.
7. Questions for each agency to answer.
8. How proposals will be evaluated.
9. Submission format, deadline and contact person.

Frequently asked questions