Changing agencies can be a major undertaking – if you let it be.
You got to move intellectual capital, physical capital, restart relationships…it’s like meeting and moving in with a new significant other…a lot of effort for what you hope will be a better day.
Here are some things you can do to make the process of finding and “moving in” with an agency as simple as possible:
- You probably have lots of agencies call you, right? Organize 3-5 simple questions, send it to those that reach out to you, and sit back and collect the responses.
- Have someone that works for you in marketing give the answers a look. Spell out what you’re looking for in the responses and have this person do a simple “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” on each of the answers. They miss more than one, throw the bums out!
- Once you’ve narrowed your list, send them a description of your challenge. Maybe a brief paragraph outlining what you’re struggling with and what you’re looking for. Be specific with these agencies – both in what you want to see content wise and what the limits are in terms of what they can/can’t submit.
- This time you have to do a little bit of work as it requires someone with more marketing experience to not only see if the agency hit the mark – but to also do your best to see if they’re giving it to you on the straight.
- Widdle down your list of agencies to 3 or 4 and pay them a visit (assuming it makes sense from a timing and cost standpoint). During the visit have them present their capabilities and have them introduce you to key departments on the team.
- Post these visits you’ll probably be able to narrow down the search to 2-3 agencies – at which point, you outline the assignment – what you’d want them to do for you if hired, and ask them to present to you 3-4 weeks out.
While it seems like a lot of steps, it really shouldn’t take that much time.
We follow a bit more involved process and the biggest time consumers involved finding the right firms to meet your needs (which you’d substitute with a more passive search), visiting them (which most of our clients do either pre-or-post the final pitch, and the final pitch itself.
If all this seems too overwhelming (even though it really isn’t), happy to talk about how we can help – either coach and counsel you through the process (at no cost to you) or by managing the entire process for you (again at no cost to you).
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