7. How to Choose the Right Vendors, Agencies, and Technology Partners
For organizations trying to evolve into a social business, strategic thinking must be an integral part of operational procedures and the decision-making process. With social media’s relatively newfound acceptance within business, minimizing barriers to success is critical. It is important to remember that perception is reality. The perception of any social media program, whether global or more focused (a product launch, events, a departmental initiative to connect with customers, and so on), has the potential to derail the program and buy-in for future social media initiatives.
Social media is still in the early days of acceptance as a meaningful and valued part of a company’s communication mix and go-to-market plan. Proving this channel as relevant specific to a company, product, or brand and then evangelizing the success is critical for establishing long-term acceptance across the organization. Selecting a technology partner or agency is perhaps a topic not often associated with much strategic thinking. Often it is viewed simply as a digital or IT process: Vendors are interviewed, pitches are given, the members of a team discuss options, and then the decision is made.
This process warrants a much more strategic approach. Failure to match a vendor to the unique requirements of a business can cause a social media program to fail miserably, or worse, derail the momentum of a company’s evolution into a social business. If the agency doesn’t fully understand social media, it could make a misstep in execution. If a company doesn’t understand the market and both how and why social media must be used effectively, its strategic moves could be all wrong.
Unfortunately, no one vendor offers end-to-end solutions that address all the social business needs of a company; so careful consideration should be used when choosing the right technology vendor.
Choosing the Right Technology Partner
Choosing a technology partner is the first step. Contrary to Forrester’s POST Method (for people, objectives, strategy, and technologies), in which technologies are the last considerations, it’s imperative to first identify the technologies needed internally, such as customer relationship management, collaboration software, and internal communities. Later in the process, after the company has adopted several social business initiatives, the company can hire external technology vendors for community sites, social listening, and social relationship management as well as publishing platforms such as Sprinklr, the Syncapse Platform, or Involver. Many times these technology vendors meet both internal and external needs. For example, vendors like Jive have service offerings that can support internal communities and collaboration as well as external communities that can be used for customer engagement.
Finding the right technology platform that can help operationalize social media internally can be a tremendous task. The good news is that dozens (several dozens, in some cases) of vendors are offering “white label” solutions; the bad news is that this makes the process for choosing one much more difficult. Additionally, many technology companies are now consolidating, so in the near future, the number of vendors may dramatically decrease. That being said, companies must consider a few points when making this decision. In particular, companies must have a firm understanding of technology feature requirements, vendor support models, training, and maintenance, plus its culture and leadership.
Several technology vendors (many are listed in Chapter 2, “Surveying the Technology Supermarket”) offer both community and collaboration feature sets. Many of them will also build social CRM functionality into their platforms. Most already have open APIs that integrate with traditional CRM applications. The benefit of this is that companies can use one vendor for everything, which is cost-effective and easier to scale.
Understand the Organization, Culture, and Leadership
The choice of technology vendor must be a strategic decision. Companies need to understand what they are trying to achieve before thinking about which vendor to hire. Are they trying to streamline communication between business units or geographies? Are they looking to roll out a collaboration application that will eventually replace their intranet? Or are they planning to use social CRM and weave it into their sales and marketing initiatives? Whatever the case, it’s important to understand the culture of the organization and its leadership. Social media will not change an organization’s culture. However, having a strong understanding of it will have a huge impact on the technical requirements, choice of technology, and approach for implementing and configuring it.
When a company understands how the need for technology aligns with its own goals, it can start thinking about more tactical considerations, such as feature sets.
Understand the Internal Technology Suite
Some companies may choose not to hire agencies at all. Perhaps they have the internal staff and expertise to manage the planning, strategy and execution from beginning to end. In many cases, large organizations will facilitate all the planning, then define a strategy, and then hire an agency to execute. In smaller organizations, they may hire an agency to do everything. Much of this decision will depend on the level of social media proficiency and expertise that exist within the company. Because this is still a relatively new space, many companies need to hire an agency for strategic counseling, education, and guidance. For the more proficient companies, they may only hire an agency to execute a program, build a blog, or serve as community managers on Facebook and Twitter. Every company is different, so this decision will depend on the size, organizational model, and culture of each.
Before choosing any external technology partner, it’s imperative to fully understand the company’s existing internal infrastructure. Companies must answer several questions before making a decision:
• What current applications are powering the intranet or network?
• Can the existing network infrastructure support the technologies being considered?
• Is there enough network bandwidth to support the application? If not, how much will it cost to upgrade the network?
• Does IT have the resources (both human and technical) to support the integration and installation of the application?
• Can this solution be built in-house instead of being outsourced to a vendor?
The answers to many of these questions may change the direction of the plan, so it’s important to understand what is and isn’t possible within the internal landscape.
Technology Feature Sets
Companies need to choose technology vendors that do more than just provide the features and functionality needed in today’s dynamic business environment. They must also choose vendors with features that might be needed in the future. For community-related software, some important features to consider include the following:
• Support for internal groups, forums, and profile creation
• Support for topical subgroups (private or open)
• Multiple-language support for global companies
• Support for microblogging, general blogging, group messaging, wikis, and chat
• Email support and integration
• Single sign-on (SSO) capabilities that integrate the platform with other internal registration databases, as well as external profiles such as Facebook and Twitter
Most of these features sets are standard among vendors, except for multilanguage support. For global organizations, this should be a must-have feature, especially if there are plans for global expansion.
Feature sets for collaboration software should include the following:
• Document sharing and control
• Task management, shared calendar
• Workflow-based and roles-based management
• Reporting analytics
• Self-service features that enable users to drag and drop of various widgets, to allow for customization of each user’s interface
• Full set of APIs, for integration with third-party internal and external applications
What’s important is that although many vendors have similar, if not exactly the same, features, much of the differentiation will involve price, scale, and customer support.
Support Models
Another consideration when choosing a technology partner is the support model. Many vendors today have their support teams overseas, in other parts of the world. No matter how good a software application is, support is sometimes necessary to troubleshoot a problem. Having a support team that is eight or nine hours ahead can potentially be disastrous.
Additionally, some technology providers may require a dedicated support staff per company or license, whereas others provide customer support for a fee. The cost of hiring support staff needs to be factored into the purchase decision. Support may come in the form of human help or an automated support engine. In some cases, there may be a need to have a dedicated support person on-site.
Before any decision is made, however, organizations should first conduct an audit of their existing IT vendors and analyze which support models work most effectively. Having a solid understanding of the suite of internal applications will help make the decision much easier.
Training
Training is another form of support and is imperative in helping an organization adopt and implement new technology. Some technology vendors offer free training (in person or via e-learning), to get companies up-to-speed quickly. In some cases, and depending on the size of the company, the vendor might offer paid training as well. This cost also needs to be factored into the purchase decision.
Determining the training needs of an organization may be difficult because most organizations take time to scale their effort and often expand in phases. That being said, planning beforehand will ensure that these questions are answered right from the start.
Maintenance Considerations
Maintenance models and cost-efficiencies have a major impact on the performance and adaptability of most technology vendors. When the application is hosted externally by the vendor, it’s vital that the software be available and online at all times. This is referred to as uptime. In most cases, uptime expectations are covered contractually under the service-level agreement (SLA) and range from about 98 percent to 99.99 percent. Smart and innovative vendors are consistently improving their software applications, fixing bugs, and releasing new versions to existing customers at no charge.
For nonhosted applications, it’s wise to get the IT groups involved early to ensure there is a common understanding of the existing infrastructure. Additionally, there will need to be internal support teams ready to manage, install, maintain and troubleshoot the application software.
When an organization has answered these questions and feels comfortable proceeding, it can start the process of hiring an agency.
Choosing the Right Social Media/Digital Agency
Selecting the right agency is a crucial business decision. Choosing wisely undoubtedly leads to positive marketing results, metrics that stand the test of time, return on investment (ROI), sales revenue, and, ultimately, long-term business value. On the other hand, making the wrong decision can have a reverse effect and most likely cost someone his job.
There is a new trend of “social business” agencies arising in the market today. The skill set of these agencies are different from that of social media marketing. They serve more as consultants and focus on change management, organizational models, governance, training and metrics. They are more strategic and often don’t execute marketing related programs. Many consultants are also positioning themselves as “social business consultants” and have experience in working internally for large organizations.
In any case, the following is a systemic approach to agency selection: research, listen, act, and evaluate.
Research the Agency
Research is fundamental in agency selection. Developing a list of agencies is a first wise step before conducting research. Most business professionals have dealt with agencies in the past, so coming up with a list shouldn’t be a difficult task. In many cases, compiling a list of referrals from colleagues should also be considered. Twitter is certainly a helpful tool for research. It’s recommended that the list include four to six agencies.
Most of the initial research can easily be done on the Internet. Every agency today has a website that lists its service offerings, client roster, and company cultural tidbits, and the site often showcases bios from company leaders. It’s important to determine whether the agency focuses on specific industry niches like network storage, food service, or packaged goods or has a broader focus like sports, entertainment, or technology. It’s also important to research whether the agency’s expertise aligns more with business-to-business (B2B) or business-to-consumer (B2C) initiatives. It’s highly recommended to get the full client list from each agency, to ensure that a candidate doesn’t already work with a direct competitor. Checking references early on will help weed out agencies that have questionable reputations.
A close examination of the list of services is also key. A few years ago, every agency (digital, PR, creative) started offering social media services simply by adding it to a website, pitch decks, and capabilities presentations. If an agency truly is a social media agency, examining the website closely should validate it. Are they blogging? Using Twitter? Does their content make any sense? Is their website optimized with social functionality with social bookmarks, Twitter, and Facebook? Simple observations such as these help narrow the focus and separate social media agencies from the ones who just add social media to a website as an add-on service. There is an important distinction between the two, because agencies that are socially proficient should be very active on Twitter, blogging, and also have some level of Facebook presence.
Finally, Google the agency name and study the results. This uncovers two important insights. The first is that it will show whether previous clients have publicly praised or criticized their work. Second, it proves how actively (or not) the agency is using social media to market itself. Investing in a conversational audit will provide more granular insight about the agency. A conversational audit uses tools like Radian6 and scours the web—such as blogs, Twitter, forums, news sites, and random web sites—for mentions of the agency name.
Listen to What They Are Saying
This step is the most critical. If the agency’s leadership or employees are using Twitter or writing blog content, it’s important to read the content of what they’re sharing within their communities. This is crucial because an agency is a direct extension of the companies it represents. If an agency is using Twitter inappropriately, it may not be a wise decision to hire them. Examples of inappropriate behavior can include tweeting obscenities or sharing content about clients without any disclosure.
Additionally, it’s important to listen to the agency’s context or point of view about social media in general. If an agency believes social media should be more promotional than conversational, that candidate might or might not be a good fit. A few other considerations include these:
• Is the agency using the basic principles of disclosure and transparency?
• Is this agency using the latest technologies when executing social media programs?
• Is the agency providing any thought leadership in the industry, or is it simply recycling others’ content?
• Is the agency strategic or merely tactical?
The key here is to get to know who these people are, what they believe, and how they interact within their own communities; listen to their online voices without them necessarily knowing.
Act Personally
After spending some time listening, a company’s list of potential agencies might in fact shrink. Then it’s time for a company to start the request for proposal (RFP) process. (Some companies call this a request for information, or RFI, instead.) The end goal is to collect some specific information from each agency on the list.
It’s good practice to ask each agency if it is interested in participating in the RFP process. This allows any agency that doesn’t want to participate to opt out of the process right away, saving everyone a lot of time and effort.
When developing the RFP, it’s important to be as specific as possible about the requirements of the proposal. This includes company background, industry data, target audience, competitors, and the specific “ask” of the proposal. This ensures that the response is just as specific as the RFP.
Before sending the RFP to the participating agencies, it’s good practice to ensure that all the internal stakeholders agree with the proposal, the on-boarding agency’s proposed responsibilities, and the criteria for scoring them during the pitch. Nothing is more frustrating for an agency than to have to start the entire RFP process from scratch because someone on the internal team wasn’t brought into the loop early.
Evaluate and Make a Decision
After receiving the RFP responses, it’s time for a company to evaluate them. Common reasons for not making the cut are not following instructions, being late to return their proposal, or simply not being a good fit with the company’s culture. When evaluating the responses, important questions to consider include these:
• Does the agency have enough social media experience?
• Does the agency understand the basic fundamentals of social media?
• Does the agency understand the business value of social media?
• Has the agency executed any social media programs in the past?
• Is this a metrics-driven agency?
• Is the agency too big? Too small?
• Is the agency creative or simply recycling old ideas?
• Does the agency have any thought leaders on staff?
Additionally, it’s important to call references and specifically ask about the quality of work and overall satisfaction with the agency relationship. Some key areas to focus on include time management, deadlines, personalities, and synergies such as between the agency and client; also consider asking for a quick case study on a specific program that the agency executed.
Some companies require agencies to present their pitches, or capabilities presentations, more than once to different audiences within the company. It’s important to explain this to the participating agencies up front. While the agency is presenting the proposals, evaluate the presenters’ level of proficiency in presentation skills, their confidence, and team cohesion as well as how accurate they were with the task in the RFP. Of course, the most important criterion in evaluating the agency is whether there’s chemistry between the company and the agency. This is probably one of the most important factors when making the hiring decision.
A Company Point of View to Agency Selection
This book wouldn’t be complete if it didn’t include some thoughts from decision makers working for fairly large organizations such as Adobe, Intel, and Cisco. One point to highlight is that choosing vendors or agencies is more than just one person’s responsibility. It requires support, collaboration, and agreement from the broader organization to make the right decision for the business and everyone involved.
Maria Poveromo, director of social media at Adobe, says:
When Adobe got organized internally around social media, we knew we needed an agency to help us build out our internal infrastructure (or center of excellence) while helping teams across the company to implement programs. We wanted an agency that could bring industry best practices, actionable learnings from other clients, and a combination of strong strategic counsel and implementation capabilities as we lacked the internal resources to do everything ourselves. Also, we needed an agency that could understand our complex business and our very diverse audiences. But we also wanted an agency that we would partner with—one that would be a great fit and would complement our team. At Adobe, we view our agencies and consultants as extensions of our internal teams, so finding the right agency partners is critical to the success of our programs.
As my social media team was going to focus simultaneously on engaging with Adobe communities at a corporate level while organizing our hub and spoke model, we needed an agency whose skill set could span the gamut. The first thing we did was identify top agencies in the field and provide them with an overview of our business objectives and challenges. They were invited to present their recommendations. In order to ensure we used a consistent approach to our analysis of the participating agencies, we developed a score card that ranked the following criteria:
• Social knowledge and expertise
• Range of services (strategy consultation, implementation capabilities, measurement, reporting, crisis management, expertise in marketing communications and training)
• Staffing (will their best employees be available to work on the Adobe business?)
• Ability to work with other agencies (Adobe, like many companies, has other agencies of record—it is critical for the social agency to be able to partner well with those)
• Proven track record, ability to get results, case studies
• Quality of work (based on case studies and/or references)
• Size of agency (would we be a small fish in a big pond?)
• Cost (can they provide excellent work within the budget available?)
Kelly Feller, social media strategist at Intel, says:
So what are the qualities I look for when determining which agencies I might work with? The simple answer to that question is “It depends.” At the highest level, I must ascertain whether the assistance I require falls into the “strategic” category or whether it’s help with social activation that I need. I’ve found that the larger, more established agencies generally offer some excellent guidance when it comes to helping me formulate a social media strategy. However, I often look to smaller, local, boutique agencies when I need help activating social campaigns. Because these agencies often employ younger, more flexible social media practitioners who don’t mind rolling up their sleeves and doing some of the activation work, it’s natural that I look to them when I have campaigns that require things like travel in order to activate.
One of the critical items to consider when looking for an agency to help round out your team is the expertise of the individuals on your team. My current team, in particular, includes some of the smartest social strategists in the business. Because of this, we don’t typically need as much strategic support as we do either creative thinking or assistance with activation. Finding an agency that possesses wildly creative ideas in addition to solid experience in the area of social media is truly the elusive holy grail of social media marketing. Oh, there are some out there, but they are few and far between, in my opinion.
Petra Neiger, corporate social media marketing strategist at Cisco, says:
I believe that agencies need to be able to provide business value to their clients. As a social agency, they need to be equally comfortable with strategy and execution. Sometimes they may be hired to help articulate a strategy, and sometimes they may be tasked with execution, or both. They need to have a solid understanding of organic and paid search, earned and paid media, and the target audience’s online behaviors (not just offline). They need to be able to look at holistically how these things affect each other and make recommendations accordingly. They need to be equipped to efficiently and effectively handle any potential online crisis or other PR issues.
And last but not least, support is a critical consideration for practitioners. The best way to get to know an agency is in challenging situations. Customer service is crucial. I believe this can be a great differentiator in a space where there are hundreds, if not thousands, of agencies offering similar services.
An Agency Point of View to Agency Selection
The company’s perspective is certainly important to understand because the company is essentially the “hiring manager” when it comes to agency selection. At the same time, it’s equally important to understand the points of view from those who pitch big brands and have been involved in many agency-client relationships in the past. This section offers some powerful insights from leaders who work for highly regarded social agencies, Ogilvy, WCG, and Ignite Social Media.
Rohit Bhargava, bestselling author of Personality Not Included and executive vice president of strategy and marketing at Ogilvy, says:
When choosing the right agency partner, I’d say it comes down to four critical factors: strategic vision, point of view, relevance of experience, and depth of team. Strategic vision is first for a reason, because agencies make lots of money by delivering tactical execution. They offer arms and legs for any marketing task, and when they get fired, it is usually for lacking the strategic vision to make all those tactical things they did actually matter. The second is a strong point of view and is usually the hardest to find. The agencies that have this are the rare partners who will feel okay disagreeing and offering a professional opinion. They are the ones with the passion to care enough about your business to really want to succeed. Often the difference between a great agency and a mediocre one is that the great ones just have people who care more.
The third point on my list is relevance of experience, and this doesn’t refer to only industry experience. Sometimes we get stuck in the trap of looking for only an agency that has lots of experience in an exact industry. If you sell data storage, it’s tempting to go to the specialist group that already has done that. The problem is that they probably have another client (your competitor) that they have been used to working for and their best ideas are already spent. Instead, look for an agency that has experience in the skills that you are seeking, and you’ll likely find much better thinking aligned to what you actually need them to do.
Aaron Strout, blogger and Head of Location Based Marketing at WCG, says:
For me, I’ve always been fortunate to work with really smart people, many of whom either had written their own books or were often invited to speak at conferences. This form of thought leadership ends up being a great door opener to new business, mainly because it gives potential customers and partners an opportunity to look into the company’s ideology when it comes to marketing, communication, and social medial.
However, being able to articulate a thought process, having a point of view, and offering legitimate thought leadership is not enough to hire an agency. The real proof is in the actual work the agency has done for clients. Companies cannot settle for just logos on the agency’s website. After all, hasn’t everyone done a project with Kraft or Coca-Cola at some point in time? The real test should be real links to work that the agency or vendor in question has done. And the agency should be willing to connect you with the client (assuming you are serious about moving forward) for references.
Jim Tobin, president of Ignite Social Media, says:
Most of the large legacy firms in PR, digital, and advertising are fighting to make their case why they should be in charge of your social media dollars. But the very strengths they bring to their main disciplines often give them blind spots when it comes to social media marketing.
You need expertise on staff in search engine optimization, web development, blog outreach (which is very different than PR outreach), web copywriting, design, advertising, and much more. And you need a group conditioned to work across these disciplines in a fundamentally new way. When you’re hiring, you want to look for the deep thinking in the proposals/examples that agencies show, not just the high level. Look for strong thinking around SEO, seeding strategies, and social spread. Also ask for the agency’s blog. Take a look to ensure that it demonstrates thought leadership in social media marketing.
The key takeaway is that companies need to do their homework before hiring an agency. Ensuring that the agency is proficient in social media, community management, web development, copywriting, project management, and search engine optimization are key indicators of a good social media agency.
A Cisco Case Study on Vendor Selection
By keeping a close look on the external landscape, Cisco is positioning itself at the brink of innovation by using top vendors in the social space. After many individual one-off social media vendor discussions, in the fall of 2010, Cisco facilitated a comprehensive social media vendor sourcing event. This allowed Cisco to look at social media vendor management more holistically and strategically. Cisco brought in close to 30 different vendors from a variety of disciplines and asked them some very basic starter questions. To get started, each social media vendor candidate needed to submit a written RFI, and when Cisco felt there might be an opportunity for collaboration, the company invited the vendor to give a virtual presentation. Cisco had strict criteria, and several team members were a part of this vendor selection process. Starter questions included the following:
• Who are you as a company? Specifically, being a large corporation, we are interested in your ability to scale, whether you’ve have international experience, and your support and service model.
• What is your approach to social media?
• In your opinion, what do you believe is your key differentiator in this space? Why do you think it is important? In other words, why should we choose you?
• Show us who you are through real-life examples. What was the objective? What problems were you trying to solve? Or what opportunities were you trying to take advantage of? How did you go about it? What was the outcome?
Besides other members of the Corporate Social Media Marketing organization, feedback was solicited from the corporate social media communications team, the corporate events team, the corporate branding team, and the corporate media team, as well as a few selected practitioners in the business segments. The sourcing event was virtual and recorded, so any team member who was unable to attend the live event could provide input after each session. In addition, the social media team also reached out to social media teams from other, noncompetitive companies to solicit feedback as well.
After the initial virtual presentation, Cisco then had to narrow down the vendor pool. When selecting individual vendors, Cisco considered the business needs and social strategy. These were categorized into five areas:
1. Social strategy development and consulting
2. Program or campaign development and execution
3. Tools and applications
4. Third-party paid social media and social media advertising and outreach
5. Social media platform provider
Cisco then shifted the focus to assessing the vendor’s capabilities, both hard and soft skills. To Cisco, the vendor was just as important as the service model it came with. After several weeks of vendor meetings, the team selected a few vendors they had an immediate need for and granted them Cisco preferred vendor status. They also earmarked a number of other vendors they thought could offer some value to the company later.
The vendor sourcing event had several positive outcomes for Cisco. Not only did it help the corporation approach social media vendor management more holistically and strategically, but it also helped strengthen internal collaboration and streamline the process for future vendor engagement.
By keeping a close look on the external landscape, Cisco is positioning itself at the brink of innovation by using top vendors in the social space.
For companies evolving into a social business and ready to hire vendors to help them along the way, having a vendor fair is an excellent way to get a comprehensive view of the market.
Taking the Next Step
Hiring a technology vendor and a social media agency can be critical to businesses. It can mean the difference between success and failure. Success equals strong partnerships, effective planning, and top-notch execution. More important are the results of the initiative. Great social media agencies deliver value; it’s up to the company to decide what that value is, such as sales, community growth, engagement, or increasing share of voice.
Before jumping head first into finding the right technology partner, companies should listen, watch, understand, and interview the constituent base that will be using the technology internally. It’s important to understand feedback and how the people and teams that will be using it will receive it. Additionally, ensure that there is high involvement and buy-in at the early stages of the initiative to establish collaboration and avoid internal pushback.
It’s imperative to also initiate conversations with legal, human resources, and IT and privacy teams early, to understand the limitations and potential risks that may be associated with the technology initiative. As with any new business plan, companies need to do their due diligence and fully understand the risks involved with selecting, acquiring, integrating, and installing social technologies behind the firewall.
Companies also need to consider whether they should build or buy the technology they need. Many large companies do have the expertise internally to develop their own solution (such as with engineering and IT). They also have the infrastructure (server space, hosting, security, and applications) to support and maintain the development of robust internet/intranet applications. Companies often build their own applications instead of using an “off the shelf” solution because there is more control and the ability to customize is easier. However, the challenge in building the technology from scratch is timing and cost. Smaller companies will probably purchase solutions due to scale and lack of internal resources. All of these factors need to be considered before making any technology decisions.
In most companies, building a new social application can take years, mainly because most IT and network engineering teams are busy maintaining the company’s network and ensuring that it’s safe from intrusion. Unless the initiative is a business priority, a project such as this might take a year or two to even get started. In addition, ongoing support when something breaks can easily be a full-time job. It’s important to determine early what the technology plan will be. If it’s going to be built in-house, will there be enough internal resources to support the deployment and ongoing maintenance of the application? If purchased, is IT comfortable with the security of the application and is the business willing to pay for a long-term maintenance contract? Either way, companies need to think strategically about the opportunities and implications and ensure that there is internal buy-in from all stakeholders before making the final decision.
When selecting a social or digital agency, a company needs to think strategically and take the time to find the right partner. The importance of long-term business relationships with any agency or business partner should trump any motivation for speed or convenience. Points to consider when seeking such a partnership include these:
• Scalability—As the organization grows, the agency can grow as well.
• Research—Utilize colleague referrals and Google.
• Listen—Spend time understanding the nature of the conversation surrounding the agency. Follow the agency’s leadership if it’s on Twitter.
• Act—Be as specific as possible when developing an RFP. Call the participating agencies to begin establishing some level of rapport.
• Evaluate—Make smart decisions and ensure that there is a strong chemistry between the agency and the company.
Probably most important are the agency’s core values. Everything an agency does online—everything it says, tweets, and blogs about—is a direct reflection on the clients that the agency represents. This is why it’s crucial for organizations to be diligent in hiring the right agency.