How to choose a Creative Marketing partner

If you're a marketing director or the owner of a company, you probably regularly think:

• What are the best ideas for this years marketing efforts?
• Who should we collaborate with to bring these ideas to life?  

These are great questions to ask yourself when you are the hunt for the best marketing.  As the Director of Operations, I am in many, many meetings with prospective clients.  Over time, I've discovered 6 tips that can help you answer these questions: 

1. Meet in Person

As often as possible, we invite prospective clients over for a "meet-and-greet." It gives them a chance to the meet the team, see the office space and studio, and watch some work. You get to feel the energy of a group as well as see them in their element. I believe this is a very important (and fun!) step. We no longer are a website. It makes things feel real; tangible. 

2. Be honest about your ideas

Share your initial project idea(s). Perhaps you can share inspirational examples, both within your industry or outside of it that help the creatives understand what you are thinking?  Don't be afraid to share all your ideas even if you think they're 'bad'! By talking through everything, we can better understand you and your company's needs. Look for questions, genuine interest and understanding from your potential partner.  

3. Be goal oriented

Share all your goals, whatever they may be. For example:

1. Soft - Engaging, inspiring, professionally done, create or add to our brand/our voice etc.
2. Hard - 10,000 views, increase clicks or conversions over the last campaign by 25% etc.
3. Other - How important is this to you, to your organization?  How much wow!

4. Talk openly about constraints

There will always be constraints on any project. It's important to share those constraints right off the bat to create absolute transparency. Share a budget range if known.  Discuss a timeline and the reasons (a conference, product launch, etc.) or if you don’t have a specific event, a general timeframe. All of these variables will help the creatives in coming up with a project that fits budget, timeline, and overall project scope. 

5. Be open-minded to your need

We don't know what we don't know. In this case, unless you're in marketing, you may not know the best way to market to your audience. Be open to additional marketing ideas which may be outside of your initial thinking. Maybe instead of doing one large video, you should do a smaller video with better social cuts that you boost with ads. Be ready to think about the problem in a different way. 

Also consider other projects that can be influenced by this project. Value increases with more projects versus one-offs. This can increase the marketing value beginning with the various end(s) in mind.

Combine these five tips with questions such as:

• Do they seem honest and straightforward and interested in your project?
• Do they have applicable examples or give you reason to believe they are a nice fit? 
• Do you like them and want to collaborate with them?

If your heart and head both say “yes” go for it. Choose someone who is going to be a great partner. This could be the most fun thing you get to work on all year!