You sent five agencies the same brief and got five proposals you can’t compare. One quoted a monthly retainer, another priced by channel, and the third skipped your budget question entirely. The problem wasn’t the agencies. It was the brief.
Most RFPs ask questions every agency can say yes to. The result is five polished decks that all sound right and none you can score. A useful brief forces specific answers: names, numbers, tradeoffs, and at least one honest disagreement with your plan.
The short version: Give every candidate the same business goal, channel history, budget range, and responsibilities. Ask for named staff, a proposed approach, and evidence you can score against written criteria. The seven-section structure below makes differences in scope and fit visible before anyone presents a slide.
What should a marketing agency RFP include?
Seven sections, four to six pages total. Longer documents get skimmed. Shorter ones leave agencies guessing at the scope, which is how you end up with incomparable proposals.
| Section | What to write | What it filters for |
|---|---|---|
| Business context | Model, ARR or revenue band, ACV or AOV, sales motion | Agencies that have run your economics before |
| The outcome | One number and a date: CAC under $900 by Q1, or 40 SQLs a month | Proposals built around your goal instead of a service menu |
| Channel history | 6 to 12 months of spend, CAC, conversion rate, what you already killed | Agencies that will not re-pitch a test you already ran |
| Budget range | Retainer band plus media spend, stated separately | Priced-for-you proposals instead of package menus |
| In-house coverage | Who you have: designer, writer, analyst, dev | Scope that fills your gaps rather than duplicating staff |
| Your questions | 6 to 8 questions with a forced choice or a number in each | Answers you can lay side by side |
| Process | Due date, presentation window, decision date, scoring weights | Agencies that can staff your start date |
The history section carries the most weight. An agency that sees your last 9 months of CAC by channel can tell you where the money is going before the call. One working from a blank page can only describe its process.
Why do most agency RFPs produce identical proposals?
Because the questions allow it. “Do you have experience with B2B SaaS?” has one expected answer. Every agency says yes, and you learn nothing.
Rewrite each question so agreement is not an option. Ask for a number, a name, or a tradeoff instead.
| Question that gets a yes | Question that gets an answer | What you learn |
|---|---|---|
| Do you have SaaS experience? | Name 2 clients with our ACV and sales cycle. What happened to their CAC? | Whether the experience is real or adjacent |
| How do you approach creative testing? | How many net-new creatives per week at our spend level, and who makes them? | Real production capacity behind the philosophy |
| Are you data-driven? | Which 3 metrics would you put on a weekly dashboard for us, and why not the others? | What they optimize toward |
| Can you scale with us? | Who is on our account by name, and what else are they staffed on? | Whether seniors on the pitch stay after signing |
| What results can we expect? | What would you stop doing in our account in week one? | Whether they read the history section |
Pay closest attention to the last question. Defending what to stop requires studying your data. An agency that dodges it probably didn’t read the history section.
How much should you tell agencies about your budget?
Give a range, and say what it covers. State whether media spend sits inside or outside the fee. Vague budgets don’t protect you from being overcharged. They leave you with five proposals scoped for five different jobs.
The ANA and 4As published their Positive Pitch Principles in June 2026. The first principle calls for transparency on goals, KPIs, budget, and team structure. Marketing Dive reported average search costs of $408,500 for marketers and $406,092 for incumbent defenses.
Those figures cover enterprise reviews, but smaller searches still consume real time on both sides. Hiding the budget adds work without improving the field.
Practical version for a funded startup:
- State the retainer band. “$8K to $15K a month for the first two quarters.”
- Separate media spend. “Plus $60K a month in paid media, managed but not marked up.”
- Name the flexibility. “The band moves if you can show the payback math.”
How many agencies should you send it to?
Three to five, after a short screening call with each. A full response takes about 33 hours and pulls in roughly 9 people on the agency side, per Loopio’s 2026 analysis of RFP win rates. Wide fields get thin answers because good agencies triage.
Loopio’s data also shows organizations decline about 45% of the RFPs they receive. Agencies run go/no-go calls on inbound briefs. Send yours to 10 firms with no budget and a two-week turnaround, and some of the shops you want most will pass.
Screen before you send. A 20-minute call answers most of the questions behind a long questionnaire, and it removes poor fits before anyone starts writing. Our list of questions to ask before hiring a growth agency works well as that screening script.
Writing your brief this week? Send us the history section and the outcome you want. We will tell you whether the scope matches the outcome and budget you set. Book a Free Strategy Call.
What should you ask for besides the proposal?
Three things you can compare directly: a 90-day plan with owners, a redacted client report, and one proposed account cut. Slide decks vary too much to score fairly. These documents give each agency the same task.
Start with the order of work in the 90-day plan. One agency may fix tracking first, while another starts with creative volume or landing pages. Any sequence can fit your account if the agency explains the choice using your data.
Two deliverables worth requesting by name:
- A sample weekly or monthly report. Our post on what a monthly growth report should show covers what separates a real report from a screenshot of the ads dashboard.
- A trial structure. Ask each agency how it would run a paid pilot before an annual term. How to run a 90-day agency pilot covers what that should include.
How should you score the responses?
Score the written responses before any presentations, using weights you set in advance. Presentations reward polish. Written answers show preparation, which better predicts the first 90 days.
A workable weighting for a funded startup:
- Fit with your economics (30%). Do they know what your CAC payback needs to be?
- Plan quality and sequencing (25%). Is the first month specific and defensible?
- Team and staffing (20%). Named people, hours, and what else they carry.
- Measurement (15%). How they will prove the work moved anything.
- Commercials (10%). Fee model, term, notice period.
Price sits last on purpose. A cheaper invoice can become expensive when the work underperforms. Once you pick, agency contract terms to negotiate covers where to push hardest.
What should you leave out of the RFP?
Unpaid spec work, 40-question compliance forms, and requests for a full strategy before anyone has seen your account. These items lower the quality of the field. Agencies with steady demand are more likely to decline, which skews the shortlist toward firms with open capacity.
The ANA and 4As guidance recommends defining the role of speculative work, compensating pitch labor, and ending the process once a decision is made. If you want strategic work before signing, pay for it as a small scoped project. You’ll get better thinking and a real look at how the agency works.
Also leave out anything the agency should be telling you. “What channels should we be on?” is a strategy question dressed as procurement. Ask it on the call so you can challenge the answer. Our post on growth agency red flags in the sales process covers what the answers usually reveal.
How to use the brief after you choose
The brief doesn’t end at selection. The numbers, timeline, and scoring criteria you wrote become the first quarter’s accountability framework. Refer back to them in the 30-day check-in and the 90-day review.
If the winning proposal promised specific people, confirm those names in the contract. If it proposed a measurement plan, hold the first report to those metrics. The proposals that lost still have value: they often surface questions your winning agency hasn’t addressed yet.
A draft brief is enough to start a useful conversation with us. Book a Free Strategy Call and share it alongside your channel history and budget range. We’ll help you assess whether the scope fits the problem and which questions still need answers.
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