How to choose a content agency: a guide for marketing and procurement
A good agency shows itself in three things: cases with numbers and a time frame, questions about your business before the proposal, and a transparent estimate. Do not choose by the most beautiful presentation but by who understood the task best and described the expected result most honestly.
Step 1. Prepare a brief
The quality of the brief determines whether you can compare proposals. The minimum worth writing down:
- Business objective: what should change and how you will measure it.
- Audience: whom you want to reach, in which languages, cities and countries.
- What you already have: channels, audience, brand book, past campaigns and their results.
- Constraints: deadlines, approvals, regulation (mandatory for pharma and finance).
- A budget, or at least a range. Without it, agencies will propose solutions you cannot compare.
Step 2. Check the cases
A case is not a pretty picture but a story with a task, a solution and a result. Pay attention to:
- whether there are numbers and for what period (“+90% sales in two months” rather than “the campaign was a success”);
- whether there are cases in your industry or with a similar audience;
- whether it is clear what exactly the agency did and what the client or contractors did;
- whether there are projects the agency has run for a long time: it means clients stay;
- festival awards and shortlists (Tagline, Aq Mergen and others): not a guarantee, but an independent assessment of quality.
Step 3. Ask questions at the meeting
- Who will work on the project and what experience do they have?
- How do you study the audience before the strategy?
- Which metrics do you propose, and what do you consider a realistic result at 3 and 6 months?
- How does the approval process work, and how many rounds of revisions are included in the price?
- Do you work with the Kazakh language yourselves or outsource the translation?
- What happens if there is no result after three months?
A good sign is when the agency asks you more questions than you ask it. A bad sign is when it promises specific sales before studying your market.
Step 4. Compare proposals using the same criteria
| Criterion | What to look at |
|---|---|
| Understanding of the task | whether the task is restated in their own words and whether there is an audience insight |
| Scope of work | what exactly is included in the price: number of publications, formats, languages, reports |
| Team | names and roles, whether there are specialist editors (for example, medical ones) |
| Metrics | whether they are linked to the business objective and not just to reach |
| Estimate | itemised, with the agency's work separated from the advertising budget |
| Timing | whether there is a week-by-week launch plan |
Be careful with the lowest bid: most often it leaves out research, editing or promotion, and that will surface a month later.
Step 5. Documents for procurement and tenders
- legal entity details, VAT payer status;
- a standard contract and payment terms;
- which closing documents the agency provides;
- reference letters from clients;
- if the project spans several countries, experience working with clients outside Kazakhstan.
TELLER Kazakhstan has all of this on a separate “Procurement” page: the company details can be copied with one click.
Red flags
- The portfolio has only mock-ups without results.
- Promises of virality and “top rankings in a month”.
- Not a single question about the audience.
- You cannot meet the team, only the sales manager.
- The advertising budget and the agency fee are lumped into one sum.