Marketing

About a year ago, I wrote an article with guidelines on writing a website design and development Request for Proposal (RFP), which received a great response. Now I think it’s high time to do the same thing for those wishing to engage an agency for Social Media Marketing and other Online Marketing and Advertising consultation and implementation.

Below are my suggestions of how to prepare an RFP for social media projects, retainers and campaigns. I also suggest doing research online and viewing other Request for Proposals to see what works best for your organization. Keep in mind that whatever format you choose will determine not only how long the responses are, but also what type of focus you are looking for from the respondents. Each section of the RFP is outlined below, along with some explanation and suggested questions. Have fun!

If posed the question, “What is the hardest profession to convince of the importance of social media?” I would most likely, instinctively, reply “journalists.” But then I would stop and take a moment and rephrase my response: “Well, journalists are painfully aware of the importance of social media because their profession is forever and unavoidably changing because of it. But also that they are the hardest profession to teach best practices in social media.” My first session of Digital Capital Week addressed this very issue.