Around this time every year, I am engaged in at least a half a dozen conversations with companies that are looking for a marketing firm to help them reach their goals for the upcoming year. Some know exactly what they’re looking for, and are fully prepared for the selection process. Some don’t know exactly what they’re looking for, but think they’ll know it when they see it. And sadly, some just enter this process with trepidation, because they’ve been burned in the past.

Fear – and in particular the fear of making a mistake –  is a very strong force. For a select few, it can be a trigger for adrenaline and aggressive decision-making. For many others, it can cause inaction, paralysis and conservative decision-making.

For companies that have been burned in their selection of strategic marketing firms in the past, let me offer a few pieces of advice on making a better decision this time around.

1. Know the Difference Between Marketing Strategy and Marketing Services

Marketing strategy should inform and guide marketing planning, which in turn informs and guides marketing services and tactics. Building a new website or distributing one press release each month is not a marketing strategy.

If you have your marketing plan all buttoned up for 2012, you may be ready to hire a marketing services firm to handle one or more of the tactics you identified in that plan. If not, you need to find a firm that can think strategically as well.

Good marketing strategists can not only help you with things like customer, competitor and target market analysis, but they can help you evaluate past marketing performance and use that information to guide 2012 marketing objectives.

2. Get Educated, Set Parameters and THEN Compare Apples to Apples

I see a lot of marketing proposals, and it makes me feel terrible for the people that have to translate, evaluate and compare proposals from different companies.  Even when you cut through the buzzwords and verbosity of the average proposal, you’re often left with dramatically different approaches and price ranges.

Here’s how I solve that riddle when on the buying side:

• Explain the situation and objectives – as you see them – to the firms you’d like to speak with.

• Ask them to come back with a general approach for how they would handle the situation. (This is where you’ll see good firms separate from weak firms.  A good firm ought to be able to explain their approach and how and why it might be different from others.)

• Get educated on the different approaches, and decide which general direction you like best.

• Make that your new approach, and ask for proposals addressing that new approach.

Now you ought to be able to compare apples to apples. You just used this process to educate yourself, get information from some (hopefully) smart marketing firms, and make your decision-making process more efficient.

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Andrea Goldstein is a member of the Towson University Class of 2012 who interned with us this fall. We wanted to give her a chance to share some of what she learned on our blog. Below are her words of newfound wisdom—beginners and veterans alike, we hope you can learn from this post as Andrea learned from her experience with us.

Stepping in to a new company is always quite the adventure.  Even though I knew what Right Source Marketing did before I started, I was excited to be able to get some hands on learning experience in a marketing field that is becoming more important every day—content marketing. While working at Right Source, I was not only introduced to content marketing, but also effective team dynamics, and the wild world of social media when before, I was normally on the other side of the table as a consumer.  Overall, what I learned goes far beyond teachers and books.

Here’s a few top takeaways:

1. The importance of  personal branding. Originally I met Will Davis, Right Source’s Managing Partner, when he came to Towson University to speak on the importance of blogging – little did I know he would be my future employer.  At the time, he inspired me to start my personal blog, and to take more seriously how I was viewed online. Slowly, I began to brand myself and the next time I saw Will at a Towson job fair, he seemed excited to know I had started blogging. One thing led to another, and here I am sitting in Right Source’s office today writing this blog post. Will said a large reason why I got the internship is what and how I wrote on my blog.  It will be hard to forget the first few times I met the Right Source team, somehow they took a complicated concept and made it seem so simple: write online, brand and market yourself, and you’ll get attention from the right people.

2. A small business can do big things. Working at Right Source is definitely not what I am used to after interning at 200+ employee companies.  The work that comes out of the smaller RSM team is astounding.  Everyone has their specialties, and they all complement each other.  We have everything from the business savvy, social network savvy, copywriting savvy, and project managing savvy—and a large network of specialist partners. Right Source works with national companies – because they can.

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If you need an internship, or know someone who does, we’ve got good news: Right Source Marketing is looking for motivated, energetic college students or recent grads for a winter/spring internship. We’re looking for a hard worker with big ideas, leadership skills and of course, writing talent.

If this is the first time you’re hearing about what Right Source does, here’s the short version: we provide outsourced marketing leadership and teams, content marketing services, and a variety of other services to companies and organizations of all sizes and at all stages of development. Every day at Right Source Marketing is different—this internship offers exposure to an impressive depth and breadth of industries and tasks.

Right Source is also a fun place to work: the internship will be located in our Baltimore office, in the Canton branch of the Emerging Technology Center. Crab dip burgers in the Square for lunch, and sunsets over the Inner Harbor? Hard to beat.

The official job posting is bulleted below. Of note—our preferred qualifications are more of a wish list than a requirements list in disguise. If you’re smart, passionate, and a good writer, we want to hear from you. Read more about why we value writing and the kind of people we like having on our team.

Responsibilities:

• Writing and editing online content (articles, blog posts, email newsletters, website copy)
• Maintaining, optimizing, and formatting online properties (websites, blogs, social media)
• Social media engagement
• Social media monitoring
• Be prepared for anything! We value versatility.

Required Qualifications:

• Excellent writing and editing skills
• Leadership qualities, ambition
• Social Media/blog/computer savvy
• Familiarity with Microsoft Office—Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook
• Full of creativity and ideas
• Attention to detail
• Ability to work independently
• Sense of humor
• Must be a current college student or college graduate

Preferred Qualifications (the gravy!):

• LinkedIn/Facebook/Twitter/WordPress expertise
• Experience with Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver)
• Web design experience
• Graphic design experience
• Email marketing experience

Time Required and Compensation:

• PAID by the hour
• 16 hours a week minimum
• Flexible start date and hours
• Travel expenses reimbursed
• Optional unpaid evening and weekend educational and networking events
• Valuable on-the-job training and practical experience

Most importantly, we’ll provide support and guidance, but we want self-starters who thrive when they’re learning new things and wearing many hats.

If you’re interested, please send cover letter, resume, and 2-3 writing samples to Tracy Gold, tracy@rightsourcemarketing.com. Please forward this post and spread the word!

Looking for a job, and feeling like you’re shooting your resume into a black hole?

That’s sure how I felt when I graduated from Duke University this past May. Over the summer, I lost track of how many searches I did on craigslist, CareerBuilder, Idealist (and so on), how many cover letters I labored over, and how many applications I sent out, only to get a giant whopping nothing in response.

I knew there had to be a better way. So I swallowed my independent streak, and reached out to friends and family (and their friends and family) for help. As soon as I started using my network—both in person and online—I started finding jobs that were a better fit for me, and in turn, getting more replies.

In the end, it was a friend in the writing and marketing business, JoAnn Peroutka, who forwarded me the job post that sent me Right Source Marketing’s way. You can read more about how I got the job here, but I wouldn’t have sealed the deal without using what I had learned about job searching over the summer.

Some of what I learned is listed below. Of course, these tips will work better for some companies, and some jobs, than they’ll work for others. But hey, they worked for me. Whether you’re looking for a job at a small company like Right Source Marketing, or just searching for some good job search advice, read on.

1. Follow the right people on Twitter. If you’re interested in a company, follow it, and the people who work there, on Twitter. Use @s and DMs to catch some attention. People might not have time to sort through their emails, read your resume, and send you a formal email back—but they’ll probably have time to shoot you a 140 character tweet. And then when they do get to your resume, they’ll at least have your Twitter pic to put with your name. Sometimes, companies even tweet new job openings.

2. Like the company on Facebook. Commenting on the company’s status updates and posting on its wall will get people who work there to notice your name. In the process, you’ll be learning about the company’s news and personality. Just like with Twitter, Facebook can be a great way to learn about job postings before they even make it on craigslist. On the flip side, you’re practically inviting people at the company to look at your own profile, which makes it even more important that your own Facebook profile is inoffensive (which it should be anyways!). A good rule of thumb here is to run your profile by your parents, or use an internal “parental filter.” If you wouldn’t want mom and dad to see it, you certainly don’t want a potential employer to see it.

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