What to send an agency before asking for a quote
Ask three agencies for a quote with nothing more than 'I need more work' and you will get three proposals that cannot be compared. Send the same three a one-page brief and you will get sharper prices, fewer discovery calls and a far better sense of who listened. This guide gives you the page.
Why the brief matters more than the budget
Agencies price uncertainty. If they do not know how many services you offer, how far you travel or whether you already have a website, they either pad the quote or quote low and recover it later. Both are bad for you.
A clear brief removes the padding. It also filters agencies: the ones that read it and respond to its specifics are the ones that will read your reports later. The ones that send a generic deck did not open it.
You do not need marketing language. You need facts about your business that only you know.
The twelve facts to include
Everything below fits on one side of A4. Write it once and send the same version to every agency you approach.
- Trade and services: what you do, and which three services you most want more of
- What you will not do: the jobs you turn away, so nobody markets them
- Service area: towns or postcodes you cover, and how far you will travel for a big job
- Capacity: how many enquiries a week you can handle before you start turning work down
- Current situation: website address if you have one, how many Google reviews, whether you have ever run ads
- Where work comes from now: word of mouth, trade directories, a local Facebook group, past customers
- Average job value and a rough range, so cost per enquiry can be put in context
- Timing: when you need enquiries to start, and whether your trade is seasonal
- Budget range: a band, not a number, covering fees and any ad spend
- Team: who answers the phone, and what happens to calls while you are on a job
- Accreditations: Gas Safe, NICEIC, FMB, TrustMark, insurer-approved schemes, anything a customer would recognise
- What went wrong before: if you have used an agency or a lead-selling platform, say what you disliked
Why each fact changes the quote
Capacity is the one most tradespeople leave out and the one that changes the proposal most. A one-person plumbing business that can take six new jobs a week does not need a £2,000 ad budget. An agency that knows this will propose something smaller and cheaper, or tell you honestly that it works with larger firms.
Average job value lets an agency sanity-check cost per enquiry. If a new boiler installation is worth £3,000 to you, a £60 enquiry is cheap even if only one in four converts. If you mainly do £120 call-outs, that same enquiry cost would sink you. The agency cannot judge this without the number.
Services you will not do prevents waste. A roofer who does not touch flat roofs should not be paying for 'flat roof repair' clicks, and a well-briefed agency will exclude them from day one.
| Fact | What it stops | What it enables |
|---|---|---|
| Capacity | Over-sized ad budgets | A proposal scaled to what you can handle |
| Average job value | Meaningless cost-per-lead promises | A sensible target cost per enquiry |
| Services you refuse | Paying for the wrong clicks | Tight targeting from the start |
| Budget band | Proposals at the wrong price point | Comparable quotes |
| Phone cover | Leads lost to voicemail | Missed call text back or call handling in scope |
What to leave out
Do not send a list of tactics you have read about. Asking for 'SEO, PPC, social and a chatbot' tells the agency what to sell you rather than letting it diagnose the problem. Describe the outcome you want and let each agency propose the route.
Do not send your exact budget as a single number. A band gives agencies room to propose something sensible without anchoring every quote to the top of your limit.
And do not send passwords, access or customer data at the quote stage. That comes after you have chosen, as the guide to agency onboarding explains.
The questions to attach
Along with the brief, ask every agency the same four questions in writing. Their answers will do much of your comparison for you.
First, who owns the website, ad accounts and Google profile at the end? Second, what exactly is included in the monthly fee, and what costs extra? Third, can you show me two clients in my trade? Fourth, what is the notice period?
An agency that answers all four clearly and in writing has already told you something about how it will behave over the next year. The guide to reading an agency proposal shows how to check those answers against the proposal itself.
A worked example brief
Here is how a brief might read for an illustrative heating firm. The details are invented to show the format.
'Two-person heating and plumbing business in Wakefield. Gas Safe registered. Want more boiler installations and full heating system jobs; happy to take servicing, do not do commercial or drainage. Cover Wakefield, Castleford, Pontefract and Ossett, up to 25 minutes' drive. Can handle five to six new installation enquiries a week. Website is a six-year-old template, 31 Google reviews, never run ads. Most work comes from recommendations and a Checkatrade listing we are not happy with. Average install around £2,800. Busiest October to February; want enquiries from September. Budget £600 to £1,000 a month all in. Phone is answered by whoever is not under a boiler, so calls are missed. Previously paid a lead platform and found leads were shared with four others.'
That paragraph takes ten minutes to write. Every agency receiving it knows the trade, the area, the capacity, the economics, the pain and the constraint. The proposals that come back will be comparable, and the one that mentions missed calls and the lead-sharing problem is the one that read it.
Sending it, and what to expect back
Send the brief to three or four agencies at most, chosen from the shortlists on this site. If you are comparing regional candidates, the guide to whether your agency needs to be local will help you decide how wide to cast.
Give a deadline of about a week. A good response will reference your specifics, propose a scope sized to your capacity, state a price with inclusions and exclusions, and answer the four questions. A poor response will be a generic deck with your company name typed on the front.
Keep the brief. When you review the agency in six months, it is the document you compare their performance against.
Frequently asked questions
Should I tell an agency my budget before a quote?
Give a band rather than a single figure. It lets agencies propose something sensible without every quote anchoring to your maximum.
How many agencies should I ask to quote?
Three or four. More than that and you will not compare properly; fewer and you have no benchmark.
What is the most important thing to include in a brief?
Your capacity: how many new enquiries a week you can actually handle. It determines the right size of everything else.
Should I list the services I want, like SEO or ads?
No. Describe the outcome and your situation, and let each agency propose the route. Prescribing tactics invites them to sell you a list.