Avoiding Agency Dangers

Marketing & Media Agencies must be selected in a competitive bidding (RFP) process

  1. Agency selection, comparison, and execution

    This will drain time, effort and cost, so your status and cadence can suffer. Many things have to be in place for readiness. The CEO in particular will need to participate in writing, reviewing, and interviews.

  2. Prove they have sufficient technical depth for Your company
    You may be building Quantum clocks, or new packages of gum. Differentiation, uniqueness and customer value are specific to your product, market and industry.

  3. Prove they need NO hand-holding on Your concepts, context, and connections
    Startups in particular, do not have excess time to educate partners and agencies. Select one that you can learn from, and that has connections and experience in your domain. They know the channels, they know the buyer’s mindset, and so on.

  4. Prove they have industry, market, and user experience in Your space
    Assuming that a good product alone will drive sales is misguided. The reasons why past products were bought, thrown out, or expanded broadly, are aspects of fit, function and utility in the context of specific target markets. Test your agencies for fit.

  5. Don’t get billed for hours of input — but for milestones and successful outcomes
    Agencies will position for time billing often, because that is easiest to prove weekly and monthly. The problem is you only care about RESULTS: Accuracy, depth, metrics achieved, and timing. Some agencies will do that with 10 hours of input, others might take 75. Ask for time inputs for results achieved, and from an ROI point of view, you should feel good with continuous progress.
    Make sure the metrics they have achieved do cause your downstream business metrics to grow.

  6. Review example reports, and define Your ideal weekly, monthly, quarterly report from the Agency
    When you review past example reports from Agencies, ask yourself, is this detail and format useful and relevant for me? Ask for modifications that make it a better fit for your company, and person in charge of that agency relationship. The rapport should expand the value of that Agency relationship and value created for your company.

  7. You may not yet be ready to hire an Agency

  • Do you have the right person to select the right Agency?

  • Does he or she have the bandwidth and experience to do this professionally?

  • Do you have active product users who are customer references?

  • Could those references make compelling videos or interviews in media settings?

  • Does your sales contract require cooperation from customers like that, and allow for interaction with Your company and outside Agencies?

  • Can your references handle curve-balls, indirect, or surprise planted questions, which could be seeded by competitors? How do you know all these answers?

It’s a journey …

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