How to choose a marketing partner who doesn’t disappoint

Clear expectations are a foundation

You need to understand first what exactly you need from the potential partner, whether this is an agency or a freelancer. We won’t be covering the pros and cons of freelancers vs agency or full cycle vs specialty now – those are whole separate topics. Instead, let’s focus on the content and modality of work.

These are important questions to clarify for yourself:

• What is the desired outcome? It might be a precise scope of work if you know it or an expected result, and that would be on a partner to offer a solution.

• How much involvement is expected beyond execution? Do you need guidance on top of execution? How much collaboration with your internal and external teams is needed? All this adds up to the scope and expertise required.

• What degree of industry expertise vs subject expertise is really needed? A common desire to work with someone who has experience in a precise industry. In my opinion, this is overrated: marketing skills are transferable. This is simply a sign of professionalism: being able to dive into a new industry and get to know the specifics quickly.

• What’s the budget range? I would highly recommend having a range, not just a number in mind. This allows you flexibility, especially when deciding what to outsource and which functions to keep in-house.

  
  

Once you've answered the questions, you'll have a list to check the potential candidates against. It's okay to be unsure on some of the points – flexibility helps in this process.

Execution ≠ Project management ≠ Client service

Understanding this distinction brings a lot of clarity to your considerations:

Execution is the doing of actual work. For example:

• For copywriting, this is actually writing the text, 

• for design, designing the asset, 

• for website development, building the site.

  
  

Project management is the logistics of the moving parts required to get work done. 

• Planning and scheduling,

• Back and forth for editing,

• Running rounds of approval,

• Keeping track of the progress.

  
  

Client service is broadly relationship and communication with a client, including:

• Online or in-person meetings,

• Communication via email and messages,

• Presentations and reporting.

The more of each element the prospective partner is expected to provide, the higher the expected price would be. The less of it the partner is doing, the lower the budget is, but more is left for the in-house part of the team.

A very real situation: a partner is a subject-matter expert (execution) but cannot coordinate the rest of the team (project management). Or communication is not their strength (client service).

It’s on you to decide how important the project management and client service components are in your particular case.

Helpful questions to ask a potential partner

Experience

• Tell me about a similar experience. If this is not the exact industry, then What can you apply to our project? – shows understanding of the task. 

• How would you approach this project? – demonstrates the thought process.

• What were the key challenges with projects like this? – shows a deeper understanding of the real process.

Project management/coordination:

1. Who handles project management on your side? Is it the same person who does the job or a separate role?

2. If the PM is on their side, What does the process look like? – now you can understand whether the process itself works for you

3. If the PM is on your side, This is how our current process looks – is this okay? – aligns expectations on the logistics

Client service:

1. Who is the contact person? – extremely important to understand: this might not be the person who makes a sale.

2. What is the communication mode? Daily/weekly/monthly, Email/Zoom/In-person? – aligns expectations on communications

3. What does the reporting look like? – tell if you have specific requirements

AI-policy is crucial to understand and agree on

A relatively new issue in the agency/freelancer world is the AI usage. It is crucial to explicitly ask about their approach to AI. Then see if it aligns with your vision/policy/values. 

I saw quite a few frustrating situations that companies got into. They got a low-quality result, clearly AI-generated but presented as a human job. Not only that, but they were expected to pay a cost like that of high-quality expert work. This is a matter of ethics and transparency for an agency or a contractor to disclose the use of AI and to be accountable for the results. 

Your company may have a certain approach to it, so this is important to align with the future partner. At Rain City Marketing, we are curious about our AI capabilities and test them internally frequently. We see how good it is for many things, like automating some tedious tasks. But this is never an end result for a client and always involves a human in the loop to double-check the output. At this point, we’re too far from trusting AI to do a real, high-quality job without human expert oversight.

Starting small is a safe option

An approach I strongly recommend is to start small. Let the first engagement be a relatively small one before signing a long-term contract. This way, you can see if you actually feel good about working together.

Imagine how frustrating it is: being locked into a 1-year contract, only to realize after the first month that it doesn’t work for you.

I hope this guidance helps bring clarity to the selection of a marketing partner and makes it more productive and enjoyable.