Proliferation

If you’re a brand searching for the right marketing agency with an Request for Proposal (RFP), you’re out of touch and dragging dead weight.

Brands often spend months getting a traditional RFP put together, which no longer cuts the mustard in a world where the media landscape is changing at a rapid pace. Those wasted months creating an RFP could be critical to raising your brand’s awareness through constantly evolving, modern digital marketing techniques.

Not only do RFPs waste valuable time, they potentially increase employee stress levels and workloads as employees are asked to help organize an RFP on top of their regular duties, often resulting in low employee morale and work output.

Marketing Agencies Know What They’re Doing

RFPs can be aggravating to those who have already spent years working and studying in the digital content marketing arena. Many digital marketing companies view RFPs as naive and condescending when, through those proposals, a brand assumes that it knows exactly what marketing hurdles it faces and solicits a narrow, ready-made solution.

While it can be useful for a brand to use an RFP to ask advertising agencies for basic info like client lists, case histories and strategic approaches, brands should instead look at an advertising agency’s willingness to adapt to changes in the media landscape.

Brands looking to hire digital marketing firms should seek those that develop and utilize forward-thinking, dynamic and unique communication strategies — not just those good at responding to a complex RFP. Creativity and out-of-the-box thinking are also discouraged through the traditional RFP approach since they are so formal and rigid.

Perhaps RFPs would still make sense if people didn’t have the ability to communicate instantaneously via the internet. Brands can now search for content marketing companies online, check out their work and list of clients, then email or message ideal candidates and set up a quick meeting, eliminating the wait time and costs associated with an RFP.