From the course: Hiring a Marketing Agency

Use an audit to set agency expectations

From the course: Hiring a Marketing Agency

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Use an audit to set agency expectations

- Now you're ready to write your RFP. The RFP aligns everyone internally, clearly communicates your expectations to the agencies, and provides an objective way to evaluate agencies and then choose one. We'll talk about what to include in the RFP later. For right now, I'd like to talk about conducting an internal audit. An audit is important background work to understand relevant history and lessons learned from previous agency relationships. This will give both you and your perspective agencies insight about what's worked well in the past and where you need to improve. The insights could be about anything, like maybe process, aligning expectations, how you communicate, or how you define great creative. Even if your company hasn't worked with an external agency before, you probably have at least some internal staff who's worked on creative projects. There likely will be lessons learned here too. An audit should include interviews, in-person or by phone, with key stakeholders across internal disciplines. I like to start with open-ended questions that don't lead people too much. Then, you can ask targeted questions, probe for positives and negatives. These are just the sampling of questions to ask people. While I always recommend interviews, either in-person or by phone, if that's not possible, you can use an online survey. Most important is that you be open to whatever feedback you receive, both the positive and negative and apply lessons learned as you write your RFP and define the new relationship.

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