Every year we read dozens of RFPs from hospitality groups, real estate developers, tourism boards, and nonprofits looking for a marketing partner. The best ones spark enthusiasm for thoughtful solutions. The worst take twice as long to decode as to answer, diluting resources from a thoughtful plan and clear proposal response.

An RFP is the first work sample you produce for a potential creative or marketing partner, and it sets the tone for the relationship. A clear, well-organized RFP attracts sharper proposals, faster turnaround, and more accurate pricing. A messy one attracts padded estimates and agencies guessing alongside you. Here’s how to structure one that works.

Start With the Problem, Not the Project

The most common mistake we see is an RFP that jumps straight to deliverables: “We need a new website, a rebrand, and a social media strategy.” That tells an agency what to build, but not why. Spend a paragraph describing the business problem you’re trying to solve. These could be declining bookings, building a customer funnel, or inspiring a donor base that needs new energy. Naming the challenge lets the agency propose a strategy instead of executing a checklist, and filters out agencies without relevant experience.

Give Real Background, Not Just a Company Blurb

Agencies need context to write a proposal that isn’t generic: your organization’s history, market position, target audience, and competitive landscape. Include project-specific details. For developers, this may be price point, unit count, buyer demographics, and target sales timeline. ; For a tourism board this can look like current visitor demographics and destination data. For potential clients running ads, it can include CPA (cost per acquisition), Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) and other campaign metrics.

Be candid about what’s already been tried. If a past rebrand or ad campaign underperformed, say so. Your pool of prospective agencies can only ask smart follow-up questions if they know what’s already happened. Omitting this history doesn’t protect you; it just means the first few weeks get spent rediscovering what you already knew.

Define Scope With Enough Precision to Compare Apples to Apples

This is where most RFPs fall apart. Vague scope produces vague, incomparable proposals. For a website, specify roughly how many pages, any custom functionality needed (booking engine, CRM integration), and whether content and photography will be provided or need to be produced. For brand identity, clarify a full system versus a lighter refresh. For advertising, naming the channels under consideration, such as paid search, paid social, programmatic, connected TV, is helpful. Most helpful is your paid ad budget range because it lets the Agency run real projections and numbers

You don’t need every answer. It’s fine to write “we believe we need X, but are open to the agency’s recommendation.” What matters is giving every agency the same starting information, so responses are actually comparable. A good structure for this section:

  • Primary deliverables (website, brand identity, campaign, video, social management, etc.)
  • Specific must-haves versus open-to-recommendation items
  • What currently exists that can be leveraged
    • Content: brand assets, photography, video
    • Full list of your technology platforms (website, CRM, analytics, social, eCommerce, etc)
    • Overview of past campaigns, including analytics data, creative, rough spends, and messaging examples
  • What is explicitly out of scope

Be Upfront About Budget and Timeline

We understand the instinct to withhold budget so agencies don’t just propose up to your budget ceiling. In practice, this extends the bidding timeline significantly. Without a range, agencies either lowball a proposal that can’t deliver, or pad an estimate to cover the risk of guessing wrong.This leads to projects that blow past budgets, or passing over a great-fit agency partner because it was conservatively priced in response to unknowns around budget. As an agency, we really appreciate the ability to avoid quoting RFPs that fall wildly outside of our project budget ranges. A range is enough; you don’t need an exact number. Budget allows the agency to work backwards from your real resources to address your goals and needs in the most efficient and impactful way for your organization.

The same goes for timeline: share your ideal launch date and any immovable deadlines like a groundbreaking, peak season, fiscal year-end, or gala. For seasonal businesses especially, timeline context changes how an agency plans a campaign entirely.

Explain How You’ll Evaluate Proposals

Tell agencies what you’re weighing: price, creative approach, relevant experience, team structure, or some mix. If cultural fit or industry track record matters, name it. This shapes how much space an agency spends on case studies versus process versus pricing, and results in a proposal actually built to help you decide. If you know your evaluation process such as number of finalists, presentation format, decision date, or scoring rubric, we love to see that too. Transparency earns more thoughtful responses.