Life Science Marketing Agencies: The RFP is Dead
This episode is primarily aimed at life science marketing agencies but in-house marketers will learn a few things about how to build better relationships with agencies and improve the selection process. For even more on that, listen to the previous episode Connecting Life Science Marketing Budgets to Outcomes.
Companies don’t always come to the table with a clear intention to buy. That can lead to an expensive process for an agency. The cost to an agency of the selection process can be between $15000 and $50000. How do you get around that? My guest, Laura Browne, CEO of CovalentBonds.net has some ideas.
Making sure your client has done their homework to have a strategy and KPIs in place is the first suggestion. In fact, telling clients you can’t work with them until they do is a very strong selling point. It takes courage, but it builds a lot of trust when you set high standards for them and for yourself.
The other alternative is to use a broker to make sure clients are ready and intend to buy within 3 months (and have skin in the game during the process). An additional advantage of either of these approaches is knowing what clients really need before you get into a project so you can avoid scope creep that occurs when you find out what the client needs is not what you thought.
All of this adds up to better client-agency relationships and as important, better results for everyone.
About My Guest …
Laura Browne is the CEO of Covalent Bonds. Covalent Bonds works with scientific and tech companies for free, to develop a brief for their marketing programs and to help them select the right agency to ensure that the partnership is as powerful and long-lasting as possible.
I should also mention that Laura has been heavily involved on the program team for the ACPLS annual meeting, and has made a huge contribution to that effort, so I thank her for that.
