A marketing agency RFP that gets answers you can compare
A request for proposal works when every agency answers the same questions in the same shape. This template fixes the headings of the response, asks for named people and their hours, and gives a pricing table every agency fills in the same way. Download it as Markdown, and the pricing table as CSV, then replace the brackets.
How to use it
Send the same document to every agency on the shortlist, with the same deadline, and answer every agency's questions in one shared reply so no one gets extra context.
Score the responses with the weights you agreed before they arrived. The agency scoring sheet on this site does the arithmetic.
1. About us
- Company
- [What you sell, to whom, revenue band, markets.]
- Marketing today
- [Team size and roles, what is in-house, which agencies you already use and for what.]
2. Why we are hiring an agency now
- The problem
- [The business problem in two sentences, in your words.]
- What success looks like in 12 months
- [The two or three outcomes you will judge the work on, with the measure for each.]
3. Scope
- In scope
- [The work you want, as a list of deliverables or outcomes.]
- Out of scope
- [Work you are keeping in-house or giving to another partner.]
- Dependencies
- [Systems, data, approvals and people the agency will rely on.]
4. Budget and commercial model
- Fee range
- [A range for fees, stated separately from any media budget.]
- Media
- [Who buys media, who holds the ad accounts, and how media is billed.]
- Pricing format
- Fill in the pricing table as given. Do not substitute your own format.
5. What your response must contain
Use these headings in this order, so responses can be read side by side.
- 5.1 Your understanding of our problem
- One page at most.
- 5.2 The team
- Named people who would work on our account, their roles, their hours a month on it and their relevant experience. Say who leads day to day.
- 5.3 Relevant work
- Two or three pieces of work for comparable companies, the result and how it was measured, with a client reference we may call.
- 5.4 The first 90 days
- What you would do, in what order, and what we would see by day 90.
- 5.5 Measurement and reporting
- What you will report, how often, from which sources, against which baseline.
- 5.6 Pricing
- The pricing table, plus any third-party costs, markups or rebates, and how they are disclosed.
- 5.7 Conflicts
- Clients you work for in our category or with our competitors.
- 5.8 AI tools and data
- Which AI and third-party tools you would use on our work, what data of ours they would process, and where.
| Role | Named person | Hours a month | Hourly rate | Monthly fee |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| [Account lead] | [ ] | [ ] | [ ] | [ ] |
| [Strategist] | [ ] | [ ] | [ ] | [ ] |
| [Specialist] | [ ] | [ ] | [ ] | [ ] |
| Total | [ ] | [ ] |
6. Timeline
- Questions due
- [date]
- Our answers to all agencies
- [date]
- Responses due
- [date]
- Shortlist meetings
- [dates]
- Decision
- [date]
- Start
- [date]
7. How we will choose
- Criteria and weights
- [List the criteria and their weights, for example fit with the brief, relevant work, the team, measurement plan, commercial terms, working style.]
- Process
- [Who reads the responses, who meets the teams, who decides.]
8. Terms of this request
- Confidentiality
- This document and our answers are confidential.
- Speculative work
- [State whether you want speculative creative work. If you do, say whether you pay for it and who owns it.]
- Costs
- Each agency bears its own costs of responding unless stated above.
Written by the CMO Tribune Desk. A template holds no figures of ours: every bracket is for your own number. See how we work, or report an error on the corrections page.