Most creative industries will require similar steps to those shown here but the focus is really on the web development industry. In general, bear in mind a few factors.
Firstly, your selection at this point will probably have a lasting effect for the coming 4-5 years at least – most likely even well beyond the period of time you are dealing directly with an agency.
Secondly, no partnership should ever be seen as a cost – it is an investment, and should be approached as one. Ultimately all management, strategic decisions and budgets will (and should) remain with you.
Thirdly, through all the meetings, sales literature and promises of great things, the most relevant factor is the portfolio and the clients who have paid for them. Take some time to look through the work and talk to the clients directly – what is the agency like to work with? What was the brief? How close to budget and timescale did the project work out? What is the relationship like on an ongoing basis?
After looking for web design Berkshire or web design Newbury, you will need to draw up a list of potential “suitors” first so that you have a reasonable spread of names and contacts to start the process of selection. There are a number of factors that you may want to take into consideration at this point depending on you, your company, your market and your geography.
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Do you feel that you will need specialised assistance and in-depth market understanding from your agency? This is more common in highly technical or litigious industries such as pharmaceutical and or tobacco. If so, you can avoid costly mistakes but are likely to pay a premium and have your shortlist as a very-shortlist.
Are you likely to require many regular meetings over the course of a year? If so, being able to “pop next door” is often a lot less costly than trekking across the country but you may not get the range of services you had hoped for in one place.
You will want to write down the key capabilities that you are looking for so that they can be matched against suppliers services. It is generally best to stay relatively flexible on your secondary requirements, as these can often be arranged with an agency through outsourcing.
Do you prefer the larger, higher resourced agency or a smaller, more flexible agency? The general rule would be to find a creative development company othat reflects the size of tasks and projects you have in mind. If you have 5000 employees but your actual marketing and technical requirements are reasonably low, you are only likely to need an agency of 5-10 employees. If you have 100 employees, but you are very heavily driven by outsourced projects, you may be more suited to an agency of 50+ employees.
At this point it’s time to look for those names. You may find the Yellow Pages, industry magazines, the Internet or your own personal contacts to be useful sources. Have a look at websites, ask for some literature and, if you wish, give them a call to find out rates, capabilities and any additional information you may find useful.
The key here is that though you may have an initial list of 12-30 names, you really need to narrow this down to 4-5 companies so that you are not deluged with responses to your brief. Again, this may be higher if your requirement is very large and smaller if the proposed project is very small.
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