A good briefing of a marketing company in which you can make them fully aware of the marketing background to your situation is crucial to the outcome.
With this in mind, here is a sort of check list of the information Bath Marketing Consultancy suggests you to have to hand for the briefing meeting:
- Company background
- Your objectives
- Your preferred method of communication
- Your target market
- Their location
- What materials
- Timing
- Budget
This information will go a long way towards giving your marketing company a “full creative brief;” something that will allow your company to really get their teeth into!
Once your marketing company has had time to wave its magical wand, how do you want them to present their ideas back to you? i.e sometimes you may want the information to be presented back in a face to face follow up meeting or you might simply want ideas sent back by email. To be honest, I would always go for the former out of respect for the marketing company as much as anything. Simply getting people to email you their ideas is a little cheeky. In addition, it shows very little commitment from you and your organisation and I am always a little suspicious that such proposal documents could end up being used for others to pitch against.
If your brief was delivered to a number of companies, you might require a formal “glamour parade” presentation of the findings as well as some sort of leave behind document. However, please keep in mind that formal “pitches” delivered by marketing companies can require huge amounts of time and resources allocated by the company and not every marketing company can do this or would want to as it basically falls into the speculate to accumulate category and statistically only 1 in 5 pitches are successful.
On that note, Bath Marketing Consultancy does not do work on spec or pitch work preferring to invest a similar amount of allocated time in getting to know the prospect better, but, when you receive the company’s response, you should evaluate it on the following criteria:
- Why
- How
- Who
- How many
- Where
- What
- When
- How much
I hope all this helps you the client get the best from a marketing company. Like any “relationship” I feel transparency is key. There is no point in withholding information to your marketing company as without everything, things which could be vital and influence the outcome can be missed.
Also, as a final plea, please respect your marketing company as the ideas they come up with and what they produce really can make the difference to your business!
