Write Your Marketing Plan First

Jen Martire, principal designer for J. Martire Design in Pittsburgh, says a potential customer often has “lots of ideas but they’re not really solidified.” She urges businesses to “do the self-analysis to save on the [research and development] time.” Set your expectations for positioning your business and measuring results. The more solid your business and marketing plans, the fewer resources you’ll have to invest into the final results.

See What They’ve Done

Examine a company’s case studies to ensure that the company has experience relevant to your business. Look for a company that requests to tour your facilities or meet with your sales force; these are indicators that the company seeks to understand your business—not just determine how much you have to spend.

Be sure that the company’s clients are similar in size to your business. If its current clients spend $100,000 per month on marketing and you’re budgeting $10,000 per month, then “you’re not going to get a lot of attention,” says Clive Maclean, president of North America Agency Services for The Marketing Store. “Or you’ll get the B or C team at that firm.”

Beware of a company that has a brochure for every customer, but every brochure looks the same. Your marketing firm should attempt to solve every challenge creatively and not with cookie-cutter strategies. Avoid a company that offers, “glittering generalities,” Maclean says, “such as, ‘our campaign exceeded expectations.’ Whose expectations?” Ask for a sample of the weekly reports the company currently provides its clients.

“Make sure they can prove what they say in a sales pitch,” says Becca Wilson, president of Spherexx.com in Tulsa, Okla. She encourages small businesses to Google the firm to see what Web presence it has, which can be suggestive of what success you can expect them to have in branding your business.

Listen for New Ideas

Wilson says budgets are moving toward digital technology rather than traditional print campaigns. “Some companies are perfectly happy spending $5,000 on a one-time business card-sized [advertisement] in the newspaper rather than investing $5,000 on a Web site that will last virtually in perpetuity,” she says.

Many small business Web sites lack convenience items, such as a mechanism for a customer to schedule an appointment. Even if you don’t win the business immediately, the customer still can be added to a database. “The value will be there,” Wilson says. “Everyone is shopping online.”

A marketing firm also can point you toward related industries with which you may not have considered affiliations. For example, some manufacturers have created co-op marketing services, aggregating the marketing power and dollars of several smaller vendors.

Maintain the Relationship

Martire says that once the contract has been signed, communication is key, and it should be open, honest and timely. “Setting milestones and knowing those dates in advance means that if you or the client hit a bottleneck or an issue with the budget, you can avoid delaying the project,” she adds.

Maclean echoes the issue of trust. Before you hire a marketing firm, listen to your instincts. “If you don’t trust and you don’t like the people, it’s not going to go anywhere,” he says.

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