Agency Pitching: A practical and actionable approach to master it

How do you ensure you select the right agency partner, negotiate favorable conditions, and avoid common pitfalls? This article breaks down the pitching process into practical, actionable steps that will help you tackle challenges head-on, streamline decision-making, and achieve the best possible outcomes for your organization. I focused on offline media but is applicable to any kind of pitch.

The benefits of a pitch are several:

• Gain market and media landscape knowledge. Usually, we have a list of topics/questions we would like to know from an agency. By getting answers to the same question from many providers our knowledge increases

• Create a price benchmark and get competitive prices

• Gain negotiation power if our budget is limited. When working with media agencies remember:

  • We usually don't negotiate directly with the media providers - this is the core of what the media agency provides.

  • Be mindful of the agency position and, to a certain extent, negotiate with them as if they are the media providers.

  • If you believe the agency has its own agenda/interests, contact the media providers directly to benchmark or find additional synergies.

Easy step by step approach

1. Decide if we need an agency:

What is the specific problem we want them to solve that we cannot?

The service we get from an agency is directly correlated with the quality of our brief so don't expect them to do our job → We should define the problem to solve and provide a framework where the agency can operate

Be as specific as possible, usually each agency is best in one aspect, it is difficult to find an agency that is best in all aspects. 

• Operations:

  • Media Negotiation, buying and planning

  • Reporting (Contacts, cost, reach…)

  • Competition tracking

  • Spot Delivery

• Expertise:  Offline vs Online, organic vs paid, YT vs FB vs tiktok…  

• Strategy:

  • Cross media and cross funnel allocation

  • Branding vs performance balance

• Creative:  

  • Platform & Concept development

  • Production

2. Pitching timeline: min 5 weeks - max 8 weeks

• Agencies Selection: 3-4 days

  • For pitching we should select between 4 and 6 agencies looking for different perspectives. From pure performance to more traditional and from big international to small independent agencies.

• Sending invitation mail, getting answer and sending NDAs: 1 week

• Present Brief: 2 days

  • Make them excited about the potential of our company to make sure they give their 100%

  • Agencies must understand our business model and marketing approach. What do we care about? This will provide the framework where they will operate

  • Be crystal clear about the specific problem to solve (for example: get the cheapest price, drive usage, differentiate from competitors, reach new audiences…) and the main KPIs we will use to evaluate the campaign performance

  • Pitch template: In case of pitching for price make sure we provide a common template to be able to compare the proposals

• Agency presentations: 2 weeks after brief

  • For fairness, have all the presentations in the same format (in person or online), do not go for lunch/dinner with any of them and if it is not against country traditions, reject any kind of gifts.

• Evaluation & decision: 1 day See the next section

• Contract & fee negotiation: 1-2 weeks

3. Pitch evaluation

• Use a structured method. I recommend combining 2 formats:

  • Scorecard for the qualitative factors

  • Price template for quantitative factors

4. Contract and fee:

• Contract: This is better to check with your legal partner because usually is provided by the agency. Points to review are:

  • Duration

  • Obligations for the parties

  • Country of jurisdiction

  • Default clauses

• Usually extra documents needed are: 

  • Agent representation letter to allow the agency to negotiate in our name

  • Non-competition letter to prevent the agency for working with competitors

  • Letter of commitment and anti corruption to be safe in case the agency does something illegal 

• Fee negotiation:

  • In Europe, media buying fee usually is between 4% and 6%.

  • In some countries there exists a so-called kickback (usually 15% of media value). It is a commission that the media providers pay back to the agency as compensation for bringing business. Depending on the country, it is kept all by the agency, is transferred to the client or it is splitted between client and agency. Ask the agency