How to Write an RFP for Marketing Services (Agency Evaluation Guide)

Most marketing RFPs ask for the wrong things.

They request speculative creative work, which agencies spend real money producing for free. They evaluate on presentation polish rather than strategic thinking. They ask for references and then never call them. And they pick the agency that seemed most impressive in the room rather than the one most likely to perform.

The result: a year into the engagement, the work is mediocre, the relationship is strained, and procurement is blamed for not evaluating the selection carefully enough.

Here is how to write an RFP for marketing services that evaluates what actually predicts performance.

Do not ask for spec creative work

Free pitches are a common request in marketing agency RFPs. "Show us a campaign concept for this brief." "Present your vision for our rebrand." The idea is that creative work reveals how an agency thinks.

What it actually reveals: which agency has the most spare capacity to invest in pitching, and which team gave the most time to your account at the expense of their paying clients.

Top-performing agencies increasingly decline to participate in spec creative pitches. You are filtering for agencies who need the work badly enough to give away creative for free, not for the agencies most likely to produce great work once you pay them.

Ask instead for strategic thinking with existing work as evidence. "Walk us through the brief process for a past campaign. What questions did you ask? What was your strategic frame? What did the work look like and what did it deliver?" You learn more from a real engagement than from a concept built in two weeks with no actual client input.

What a good marketing services RFP asks for

Strategic capability:

Describe how your team moves from a client business objective to a creative or content brief. Walk through a specific example.
How do you handle conflicting input from multiple stakeholders on the client side?
What framework do you use to set campaign KPIs, and how do you adjust mid-campaign if early indicators are off?

Proof of delivery:

Provide three examples of work in categories relevant to ours. For each: the business objective, the approach, the measurable outcome.
What is a campaign or project where you missed the target? What happened and what did you do about it?

Team and process:

Who will be assigned to this account? Provide names, roles, and relevant experience.
Describe your briefing process: what you need from a client before work begins, and your typical timeline from brief to first deliverable.
What does your revision process look like? How many rounds are included and how do you handle scope creep on creative?

Measurement and reporting:

How do you measure campaign effectiveness?
What does your standard reporting cadence look like and what does a client report include?

These questions produce answers you can score. They reveal how an agency actually works, not how it presents itself.

Understanding agency pricing models

Marketing agencies price work in several ways. Understanding the models before you evaluate proposals prevents apples-to-oranges comparisons.

Retainer: A fixed monthly fee for an agreed scope of work or number of hours. Good for ongoing relationships with predictable volume. Requires clarity on what is included vs. what triggers additional billing.

Project-based: A fixed fee for a defined deliverable. Clean and easy to compare, but requires a very clear scope. Vague project scopes produce cost overruns or underdelivery.

Time and materials: Hourly or daily rates billed against actual time spent. Transparent on cost but unpredictable on total spend. Works when scope is genuinely uncertain. Often signals that the agency has not done the work of scoping the engagement.

Performance-based: Fees tied to measurable outcomes. Looks attractive but is often poorly structured in practice. Confirm what is being measured, how it is measured, who controls the variables, and what happens when external factors affect results.

Ask agencies to present pricing in the model that makes sense for the scope you have defined. If you get five proposals in five different pricing models, normalize them to a comparable annual cost before comparing.

How to evaluate agency culture fit (without being vague about it)

Culture fit is a real criterion in marketing agency selection. You will work closely with this team. A technically capable agency that communicates poorly, misses deadlines, or does not push back constructively on bad briefs will underperform.

The problem is that "culture fit" is often evaluated subjectively based on who you liked in the pitch meeting. That is not a selection criterion. It is a bias.

Here is how to evaluate culture fit through evidence rather than impression:

Reference calls: Ask references three specific questions. How does the agency handle feedback you disagree with? How do they communicate when something is running late? What would you tell a peer who was considering working with them? References give you candid information that proposals never will.

Day-two behavior: Ask agencies to describe what the relationship looks like in month six, after the initial enthusiasm fades. How do they handle a client who has become less engaged? How do they maintain quality when the account is no longer the newest or most exciting?

Conflict handling: Ask directly how they have navigated a disagreement with a client about creative direction. What was the disagreement, how was it resolved, and what was the outcome?

Red flags in agency responses

The response is all about the agency, not about your problem. A proposal that spends three pages on agency history and awards before addressing your brief is telling you about their priorities.

They cannot name the people who will work on your account. If the senior people pitch and junior people deliver, that matters. Press for names and experience before signing.

References are all old. References from five or more years ago may not reflect the agency's current team, leadership, or quality. Ask for references from the past 18 months.

Vague answers to process questions. An agency that cannot clearly explain their briefing process, revision rounds, or reporting cadence does not have a reliable process. Process clarity predicts delivery quality.

Pricing that is much lower than competitors. Low pricing on agency work usually means junior staff, high turnover on the account, or a scope that will expand significantly once the contract is signed.

Scoring a marketing agency RFP

Weight the evaluation across these dimensions:

Strategic thinking and process: How they move from objective to execution. (Suggested weight: 30%)
Relevant work examples with measurable outcomes: Proof that they can actually deliver what they are proposing. (Suggested weight: 30%)
Team qualifications: Who is actually doing the work. (Suggested weight: 20%)
Pricing and commercial terms: Total cost relative to scope and deliverables. (Suggested weight: 15%)
References: What past clients say about the working relationship. (Suggested weight: 5% scored, but a disqualifying factor if references are poor)

Weighting should reflect your organization's priorities. If budget is constrained, increase the pricing weight. If you are evaluating for a long-term strategic partnership, increase the strategic thinking weight.

Strutter AI helps procurement teams run structured, scored vendor evaluations for any category, including marketing services. Start free at rfp.strutterai.com.