With companies having to justify every marketing dollar spent, I’ve now gotten away from the traditional agency way of selling the engagement. In the past, I set a monthly retainer and tailored the scope of work around that.
Before, it came down to asking for the client to try taking a portion of the budget for the usual pay-per-click, advertising and traditional PR and use it for organic SEO and community-building efforts.
That still works for some of my clients who’ve been able to tie our efforts to their bottom-line. But now many of the new companies we’re meeting for the first time, are gun-shy about marketing spending altogether.
So we’ve crafted the proposal process differently. We first present a concept board that is based on the new “funnel,” now made up of the many places niche communities hang out.
Then, each concept i.e. utilities like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter is explained with meaningful examples and what they can do with these to build the list and create lead-gen. Each “concept” is then assigned estimated project hours taking the client’s in-house resources into consideration and then priced in a proposal like a menu item. The client then can start by picking the top 3 or 4 concepts whether it be our custom designed strategy doc or a blog, LinkedIn or Twitter strategy. The menu items are modular, like a bento box, also allowing the client to sample each concept before “going deep.”
The feedback I’ve received so far has been positive since this is giving clients a visual understanding of this stuff, as well as the power to control the strategy.
Marketing consultants: What's working for you?
Marketing customers: What would you like to see done to improve the concept/proposal process?
Posted under Business
This post was written by bridget on November 2, 2009
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