I've worked in digital marketing since 1997, led business operations at two digital marketing agencies, and advise digital agency owners on improving the business side of their agencies.

Agencies tend to use some version of the standard consulting phases: Discovery, Analysis, Recommendations, and Implementation. Some agencies like to give them cutesy, proprietary-sounding names. In my experience, I'm not sure that really fools anyone.

You also want to convey that you understand their problem. When I evaluate proposals by agencies, the biggest problem is talking about the agency and not the client. Focus on how they'll benefit (including likely metrics and potential results), not what you'll do.

Milestones and deliverables will depend on the nature of the project. If it's implementation work, you might list typical deliverables (e.g., landing pages, nurture campaigns, or eBooks). If it's strategy work, your deliverables will be the research, analysis, and meetings you do to make recommendations. Beware of getting too specific about granular deliverables -- you don't want to prescribe a solution before you [get paid to] diagnose the problem.

Which leads to your second point -- don't give them the plan/strategy you have in mind until they pay for your help. Don't treat your strategy advice like the free coathangers at the drycleaner (so value-less that they're thrown in with your cleaned shirt).

Many prospects won't like this. I think you should refuse to do business with them. When agencies deliver spec work (a la 1960s ad agency pitches from "Mad Men"), they're making it harder for everyone else (and themselves), by showing prospects and clients that strategy has so little value, you're willing to give it away.

What can you do instead? Position yourself as an expert as solving their problems in their industry niche. (If you call yourself a "full service agency," you're already doing it wrong.) People hire specialists. If you need heart surgery, would you hire the surgeon who does general heart surgery or who's done your specific procedure 500 times? I know I'd pick the specialist-specialist!

Instead of sharing specific recommendations, use case studies of how you've solved similar problems for similar clients before. And if you don't have similar clients yet, use the closest analogy you can. You've got to start somewhere. And it's a reminder about doing the same type of work over and over again, rather than jumping around to a million types of projects.

Ultimately, don't over-invest in the proposal process. Once it becomes clear someone isn't a good match, gracefully bow out and invest your energies in working with clients who value your expertise by paying for it.

Good luck on your proposals! I'm glad to do a call to answer any followup questions.

We offer two different documents -- a proposal (quote), and then, after the client signs a contract, a strategy (plan).

The proposal explains what we're do. Since we're in content marketing (blogging, social media and email marketing), that includes details like frequency -- how often we'll post to the blog.

The strategy dives more into the HOW. We explain how we'll accomplish those goals and meet those deliverables, and do all the research we need to do on our end to launch into the project.

Good luck!

Depends on who you are talking to. Many small companies and startups won't pay anything for a strategy. They can't. They pay for work and for results.

So be careful about over valuing a plan and under valuing execution. The former is easy, the latter is time consuming and usually what clients are far more interested in.

We talk through a client's needs and priorities, then we start with a simple, short engagement. We call it "dating before getting married." The idea is that we'll learn so much more about each other in 3-6 weeks than we will in a negotiations process.

We start with a pain point, we solve it. Then we move on to the next. The strategy evolves out of the work, and is far more value added after we've been immersed for a time in the actual data.

My philosophy is that too much time is wasted in conference rooms planning not to fail when it should be about putting things into the marketplace and learning from experience and data.

Clients who don't want that are not likely to be a fit for us.

So, do your best. Be yourself. Keep trying new things with each negotiation and you'll learn as you go. And track your time. You'll be amazed at how you have no idea how much time it takes but over time you'll get good, really good at it and that will make estimates more accurate. It will also help you identify which tasks deserve investment in automation or which should be delegated to lower cost resources.

To grab the attention of their audiences, businesses need to follow a great marketing strategy. For all this, they go through Digital Marketing Proposal before hiring a Digital Marketing Agency. Since there are several similar agencies looking for top clients, you must be very good in order to make your Digital Marketing Proposal powerful enough to convert business owners. Logistics is the major factor where most of the digital agencies focus. The Digital Marketing Proposal that you offer will be like others that are in the client’s inbox. Let us first understand how a proposal of one digital agency differentiated from others. Being a full-service digital agency, you will be asked to provide different kinds of services like few clients will demand one or two services whereas others may ask for even more according to their need. You need to focus on the structure of the best Digital Marketing Strategy Proposal Sample that is fetching a maximum number of bids online. If you are new & want to know about sample marketing proposal, you should stick to a traditional structure that will let you know a better way to convey your messages so that they match to the interest of the client. You should consider them while drafting your sample marketing proposal. If the project requires a better and a comprehensive solution, then you can introduce the below-listed elements in your sample marketing proposal:
1. Organic Search Marketing Details: Digital marketing is recognized as successful if your brand presence is there on different search engines. Your web presence is optimized with the help of organic search marketing input and you can witness your presence on maximum search engines. Marketing through content is best possible if you can provide a satisfactory answer to all the questions of your user through that single content. Hence a good content marketing plan is extremely important.

2. Subscription Program Details: Providing a constant update to your user about your products/services is extremely important and subscription program helps you to share campaigns and relevant material with your user.

3. Lead Nurturing Concepts: You need to follow good marketing actions and in a limited period. PPC or pay per click marketing is extremely helpful that run on different search engines. Whenever you opt for PPC, the ad related to your products will appear on the search engines whenever a user tends to make a search and through these ads, you can effectively attract users towards your products/services. Paid marketing plays a major role when you are looking to increase the reach of your business/brand. In this way, you can make the customers happy and they also get to know about your products/services hence you need to target this factor in your proposal.
Besides if you do have any questions give me a call: https://clarity.fm/joy-brotonath