Hiring an Agency
I believe that I have spoken about this previously, but, here is a little more info to help you.
Do you need to have a Scope of Work document to give to an agency (or RFD, etc.). Yes and no, depending on where you are in the process.
I am going to assume that you have not done this before and this will be the first time that your company has asked an Agency to “bid” for your business.
1.) Sit with your CEO, CMO, VP of Marketing and decide/determine what you want an agency to accomplish for you in the first six months and one year from date of hire.
This should be a simple statement (almost a mission statement) that address’ what you want – some want brand building, some want product awareness, some want damage control, etc.
2.) Write each of them an email and asked if they were interested – it gives great insight into how they react to the unexpected (and of course, if it took a week to answer, they don’t make the cut).
3) Have a conference call with them and lay out what you are looking for; this should be 10-20 minutes of you talking about what your want the END RESULT to be (one year from now). Then do 10-20 minutes of Q&A
4) Based on that discussion, THEN put together a scope of work and mail to them. The first page should state again your mission and what was already said in conference call; pages 2 & 3 are all the questions that they need to answer within “x” amount of time (I usually give 14 days business days). Questions should be like:
a. Who would manage the account (who, amount of time, what/who else do they manage on a daily basis)
b. How would they spend the $100,000 budget (example) (page one talks about what you want – so, say to them, “if you only had $100,000, how would you use that to accomplish our goals?”
c. What’s the reporting structure? Who calls whom when?
d. Who are some of their elite media contacts that could help you gain market awareness? (or share?)
You get the idea.
One last point – do NOT hire an agency until you and management have decided on the mission and what you want to accomplish. It is a waste of money to do anything else.
