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Agency procurement checklist
How to choose an India-based marketing agency: a six-step checklist
To choose an India-based marketing agency, give each candidate the same brief, inspect the evidence behind its claims, identify the actual delivery and review owners, confirm access and handover, test market readiness and agree a bounded trial. Record each finding as verified, conditional or unresolved; compare candidates on the same scope instead of service-list length or headline price.
1. Give every candidate the same brief
Write down the buyer, offer, target market, current constraint, known baseline, internal capacity and decision you need to make. Ask candidates to distinguish what they have verified from what they would investigate after access.
- Ask: What problem would you address first, and why before the alternatives?
- Request: A proposed scope with assumptions, dependencies, exclusions and required access
- Record: Whether the recommendation explains your actual situation or repeats a generic package
2. Inspect the evidence behind each claim
A client logo establishes neither the work performed nor an outcome. Separate relationship evidence, delivery evidence and measured results so a strong claim in one category does not substitute for another.
- Ask: Which work did your team perform, during what period, and what else changed?
- Request: A permitted example with its baseline, metric definition, source, dates and limitations
- Record: Which claims are supported, which are confidential and which remain unverified
3. Identify who will do and review the work
Evaluate the proposed delivery arrangement, not only the people in the sales meeting. Clarify who can change priorities, approve a release and resolve an issue when the usual owner is unavailable.
- Ask: Who owns strategy, implementation, quality review and escalation for this scope?
- Request: A responsibility list, review cadence and explanation of any subcontracted work
- Record: Named roles, approval dependencies and unresolved coverage gaps
4. Check access, ownership and the exit path
List the accounts and assets the engagement will touch before granting access. Confirm what stays under your control and what will be delivered when the work ends; route legal and data-handling questions to the appropriate adviser.
- Ask: Who owns each account and source file, and how can our team recover access?
- Request: An access plan and a handover list covering documentation, assets, open work and known risks
- Record: Any transfer dependency, missing recovery route or unclear usage permission
5. Test readiness for your market and language
Use one concrete scenario: a prospective buyer finds a page, makes an enquiry and needs a response. Walk through that journey in the intended market instead of accepting a broad claim of international capability.
- Ask: Who reviews terminology and who answers an enquiry in the buyer’s language?
- Request: The proposed reviewer, follow-up owner, working-hour overlap and market-specific dependencies
- Record: Whether the full journey is serviceable, conditional on a named dependency or not ready
6. Agree a bounded trial and compare the decision record
A trial should answer a useful question without requiring an open-ended commitment. Define a specific deliverable, time window, spend limit if relevant and acceptance check. Do not use a short trial to demand a guaranteed search ranking or revenue outcome.
- Ask: What will we be able to verify at the end, and what will remain uncertain?
- Request: The deliverable, reviewer, evidence source and handover format before starting
- Record: Candidate, criterion, supplied evidence, status, unresolved risk, next action and owner
- Decide: Proceed, request clarification or decline using the same criteria for every candidate
Direct answers
Questions this page answers
How many agencies should we compare?
Choose a shortlist you can evaluate consistently. There is no universal right count; using the same brief and examining the evidence matters more than collecting a large number of proposals.
Should the lowest proposal win?
No automatic rule should decide that. Compare equivalent scope, required internal effort, tool costs, review responsibility, exclusions and handover before judging price. A lower price with unresolved dependencies is not directly comparable.
What if an agency cannot share a client result publicly?
Confidentiality does not prove or disprove capability. Ask what permitted alternative can be reviewed, such as a redacted delivery example or a bounded trial, and keep any unsupported performance claim marked unverified.
Does this checklist apply to imagineInk as well?
Yes. Apply the same evidence and ownership questions to us. This guide is the evaluation resource; the India-based marketing partnership page separately describes our proposed engagement model and fit.