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Getting awesome marketing campaigns for your brand is your aim.  Getting the right agency and the right brief is key.

In our experience, time and again, we find that a poorly executed campaign can be traced back to sloppy agency selection and poor briefing.  Any time invested up front at the beginning of the campaign will be repaid many times over in a successful outcome.

So we’ve done some research for you and here are our top 5 steps for selecting an agency

1. Write a short list – yes we mean a short list.  That means fewer than ten names on it – preferably five.  When compiling your list have about three criteria that are critical and each agency must have.  These could relate to the type of work (SEO, content marketing, direct mail); the location of the agency (geography) or the industry sector in which they are experienced (B2B, food and drink).  Some people also put emphasis on not having conflicts of interest.
2. Reduce your short list to a VERY short list.  This is the group you will interview:  Now prepare for the interviewing stage
3. You may want to set out an RFP if that  is the way your industry works or your prcurement department insists on competitive tendering.  Otherwise, set out your campaign plan and what you want your new agency to do with your brand.   Get internal sign-off for the briefing document.  Be sure you’ve thought of everything up front.
4. Call each agency on your list.  Introduce yourself and your company, and tell them you’d like to include them in your agency selection process.  Three reasons to do this 1. it allows any agency to opt out of the process right away. 2.  It enables you to speak directly to an appropriate individual at the agency and begin establishing a rapport. 3. It assures that you will be sending your agency selection document to the right person.

Part two of this post will publish tomorrow.

With thanks to Webbiquity for giving us the idea for this post.

If you are an agency looking for more leads take a look at Brands Seeking Agencies – the weekly marketing leads service for creative marketing agencies.

To summarise their web service we have made a short overview outlining the major steps.

The way Google searches and indexes your website is pretty important as the number one search site – if you’re not ‘found’ on Google your business loses out.

The change mainly affects sites who copy / reproduce content from other sites (commonly called farming) and do not add value to browsing readers.

What can you do?

1. Produce unique content.  Write or re-write your material.  If you resell for others, add depth to descriptions with your own review / opinion to differentiate your site.
2. Continue to write good copy in titles, metatags, HTML layout
3. Make it easy for human readers rather than trying to second-guess bot readers
4. Don’t waste your time working with ‘farmer’ website owners.  One of our clients set up relationships with sites who were sending traffic using automated link farming – their importance will probably drop after this roll-out
5. Do check your site analytics and see whether you have been affected.
6. Review your SEO and steer tactics away from those not favoured by Google.

SEO experts take a look at the SEOMOZ view.

A custom report for Google Analytics from Andy Beard.

If you have e-commerce clients they should read the analysis on Practical ECommerce.

Web masters read the technical issues on SearchEngineLand.

Related articles

• Google’s Farmer Update and Its Effect on Independent Publishers (xfep.com)
• Google Analytics Version 5 (seroundtable.com)

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And another tool that may come in handy.  Written
for the Firefox browser, a tool that enables you to assess your website
(and others) for the Search Engine Optimisation and key words that are
being used. SEO for Firefox.

It's a plug in and appears at the bottom of the browser window.  Greyed out if not in use. 

Good practice suggests you leave it greyed unless specifically working on it.

Check out the latest feature "Firefox SEO Xray" – it shows up meta tags as
well as providing keyword density analysis. 

Just right click on a web page and scroll down to SEO for Firefox and arrow across to SEO Xray.  Cunning device!

The message – just do it. 

1 – set up a website

2 – establish a simple linking strategy to raise visibility in natural searches

3 – do your research on search

4 – be prepared to spend time setting up an monitoring the search strategy

5 – set up an account

6 – pick the right key words

7 – start small, experiment with a low daily cost

8 – know the target market

9 – do it yourself

10 quality is paramount.  be relevant, increase inbound links