Shopping Around: 5 Tips on How to Choose Your Marketing Agency

Guest blog by Allison Weiner | CEO/Founder, Brand New Marketing, LLC

In this five-part series, I hope to clear up some of the fog when it comes to finding the right agency for your business. Follow us and check back each day to get the rest of our tips on this topic!

1. Core competency

“Define marketing.” I was actually asked that question by an interviewer for a job I did not get many years ago. My thoughts were yanked back to that ridiculous scene in Reality Bites when that C-Level, bitter, corporate woman asks Winona Ryder to “define irony.”

It’s true, the function of marketing is to provide qualified leads and optimize the sales process to turn those leads into customers, who then become advocates of the brand. This is what marketing does, but what it is, is so much more. It is so much, in fact, that I opt to save it for another post. This is why, when shopping for your marketing agency, finding one with a core competency is critical.

Many, many marketing and advertising firms and agencies do great work (and many, many do bad), but to become a client at an agency that “does it all for anyone and everyone” is chaotic and unfocused.

Ask yourself:

What would their role be in my business?

Develop my marketing plan. Bring my product to market. Brand my company. Whatever the answer, it should be short, sweet, and clear.

Am I ready to commit to working with an agency?

This is about money. Are you willing to carve out a budget and put it towards marketing?

Ask them:

What does your agency do best?

If their answer is, “Everything,” walk away.

How long have you been in business?

Young is not bad; in fact, it can actually be better in many cases, but an agency that skirts the issue is unprepared for you as a client.

In an effort to avoid information overload, I’d like to end it here and give you some time to mull all this over before we move on to tip #2.

Check out the rest of the series:

Tip #2: Where do you fall in their range of clientele?

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