Should I include a budget in a marketing agency RFP?

Yes, even as a broad range. Without one, agencies propose very different levels of investment and you cannot compare their proposals. Disclosing a range lets bidders show what they would prioritize within it, which is far more useful than a price for a scope they had to guess.

How should marketing agency proposals be scored?

Publish the criteria and weights in advance and emphasize understanding of the problem, approach, relevant experience, the named team and measurement. Price should matter but not dominate. A two-stage process, written proposals then interviews with the people who would do the work, gives the most reliable result.

Is it fair to ask agencies for spec creative in an RFP?

It is common but usually counterproductive. Creative made before any research reflects pitching skill rather than how the agency works, and many strong firms will not bid when it is required. If you want to see thinking, ask for an approach or pay shortlisted bidders for a small defined task.

How long should a marketing agency RFP process take?

Allow enough time for bidders to ask questions, receive answers and prepare a considered response, then time for shortlisting, interviews and reference calls. Rushed timelines produce templated proposals. Public bodies should also build in their own approval and posting requirements from the start.

What to Include in a Marketing Agency RFP

What makes an agency RFP different

Most RFP advice is written for buying a defined thing: a website, a brand identity, a piece of software. You can describe the output, compare bids against it, and judge the result at handover. We have written about that kind of procurement for municipal website rebuilds, and how to write a website RFP that produces better proposals covers website projects generally.

Hiring a marketing agency is different in three ways. The scope usually spans several disciplines (strategy, creative, media, search, content, reporting). The work is ongoing, so you are choosing people you will meet with every month, possibly for years. And the result depends heavily on decisions you have not made yet, because a good agency will change your plan once it understands your business.

Full disclosure: we are an agency, and we answer these RFPs, so read what follows with that in mind. The advice is the same either way: a clearer RFP gets you better proposals from everyone.

An RFP that lists services and asks for a price per service treats all of that as a shopping list. The bids you get back will be comparable on paper and nearly useless for choosing a partner.

Decide what you are buying before you write

Many weak RFPs are weak because the organization has not decided what kind of help it needs. Settle these questions internally first.

Strategy, execution or both? If you do not yet have clear positioning, priorities and measurement, you need strategy first. An agency hired only to execute will execute whatever plan you hand it, including a stale one.
A project or a relationship? A defined campaign or launch can be procured as a project. Ongoing marketing support is a retainer or a standing arrangement, and should be evaluated as one.
One agency or several? A lead agency that coordinates specialists, a single full-service firm, or a roster of specialists you coordinate yourself. Each puts a different load on your team.
What stays in-house? Be clear about what your staff will keep doing, so bidders scope around them rather than duplicating them. Agency vs in-house marketing team helps with this split, and what a fractional marketing strategy partner does describes a middle option.

If leadership cannot agree on these, run a short strategy or audit engagement first and procure the larger relationship once the answers are known.

What to include in the RFP

These sections give bidders what they need to propose something specific to you.

Background and the problem

Who you are, what you sell, who you sell it to and what has changed. Then the problem in plain language: why you are issuing this RFP now. "Inquiries have flattened while a competitor has grown" is far more useful to a bidder than "seeking a full-service marketing partner."

Objectives and measures

What the agency's work should achieve over the first year, and how you will measure it. Qualified inquiries, bookings, applications, pipeline, membership, attendance. If you do not know your baseline, say so; a good bidder will propose how to establish one.

Audiences

The buyers, decision-makers and influencers you need to reach, by segment, with whatever you know about how they make decisions. Include language requirements. In New Brunswick especially, state whether work must be delivered in both official languages and to what standard.

The current state, honestly

Your website and platform, ad accounts, CRM, analytics, brand guidelines, content, current suppliers and their contracts, and the internal team. Include what is not working. Bidders who know the real starting point propose realistic plans; bidders kept in the dark propose generic ones.

Scope, and what is excluded

The services in scope, the ones explicitly out of scope, and anything you are unsure about. Ask bidders to recommend changes to the scope if they think you have it wrong. Their answer is one of the most revealing parts of a proposal.

Budget

Give a budget or a range, even a wide one. Without it, you will receive proposals designed for completely different levels of investment, and you will not be able to compare them. Withholding the budget does not get you a better price; it gets you guesses.

Ownership and exit

State that your organization owns its ad accounts, analytics properties, domains, CRM data, creative files and content, and that all logins stay in your control. Ask how the bidder handles transition if the relationship ends. This is easy to agree before a contract and very hard to fix after one.

Working arrangements and process

Reporting cadence, your internal decision-maker, approval process, any accessibility or privacy requirements, the timeline for the RFP itself, how questions will be answered, and the submission format and length. Cap the length. A long proposal is not a better one.

Evaluation criteria that pick the right partner

Publish your criteria and their relative weights in the RFP. That is required for most public bodies anyway, and it helps private ones too: bidders write to what you value.

For an ongoing agency relationship, weight the evaluation towards these, roughly in this order:

Understanding and approach. Did they grasp the problem, and is their proposed approach specific to you?
Relevant experience. Comparable problems solved, not just comparable industries. Ask for results with context, and check them.
The actual team. Who will do the work and attend the meetings, their experience, and how much of their time you get. Require that named people are the people you will get.
Measurement and reporting. How they will prove what the work produced, and what they will do when it is not working.
Price and value. Real, but not dominant. Price-heavy scoring rewards the bidder who understood the scope least.

Use two stages where you can. Shortlist on written proposals, then interview the shortlist with the team that would actually do the work. Call references, and ask them what the agency was bad at. The interview is usually where the decision is really made.

Questions that reveal how an agency thinks

Swap the standard credentials questionnaire for questions that require judgment:

Based on what we have shared, what would you do in the first ninety days, and what would you need from us?
What in our scope would you change, add or remove, and why?
Which of our objectives do you think is least realistic, and what would you propose instead?
Describe a client relationship where results disappointed. What happened and what did you change?
How will we know, within a quarter, whether the work is on track?
What will you report monthly, and who on your team will explain it to us?
Which parts of this scope would you subcontract, and to whom?
If we end the relationship, what do we keep, and how long does transition take?

The answers to the scope and objectives questions are where strong agencies separate themselves. An agency that agrees with everything in your RFP is either very lucky or not paying attention.

What not to ask for

A few common RFP habits cost you good bidders.

Unpaid speculative creative. Concepts produced before any research show how an agency pitches, not how it works. Many strong firms decline to bid when it is required. If you want to see thinking, ask for an approach, or pay a shortlist for a small, defined piece of work.
Exhaustive credentials. Pages of company history, awards and staff biographies tell you little. Ask for two or three relevant case studies with the problem, the approach and the outcome.
A fixed price for an undefined scope. If you have not decided what you need, a fixed price is a guess dressed up as a commitment.
A very short response window. Rushed RFPs get templated answers. Give bidders time to ask questions and think.

Discipline-specific selection guides go deeper on what to check for particular services: how to evaluate a branding agency, the SEO agency selection guide, and when to hire a PPC agency.

Notes for public bodies and smaller markets

Municipalities, Crown corporations, health organizations, tourism bodies and other public buyers in Atlantic Canada must follow their own procurement rules and the trade agreements that apply to them, which shape thresholds, posting requirements and how criteria can be used. Work with your procurement office early, because many of the improvements above (published weights, two-stage evaluation, interviews, a disclosed budget) are usually permitted when designed in from the start. Where a standing offer or supplier list already exists, check whether the work can be procured through it before running a full RFP.

In a smaller market, the pool of qualified bidders is limited, and good firms choose which RFPs to answer. A clear problem statement, a stated budget, reasonable timelines and a commitment to debrief unsuccessful bidders all make your RFP one that strong agencies want to respond to. Weight local knowledge where it genuinely matters (bilingual delivery, regional media, seasonal patterns), but score it on substance rather than address.

If you are not sure the problem is defined well enough to procure against, a short marketing strategy engagement can produce the objectives, audiences and baseline that make the RFP itself much stronger.