Signed Marketing Proposal Template Made Easy

E signature product marketing proposal template

I'm real excited about you guys getting this program I know it's going to make a major difference in your business and the way you guys crank out proposals and what yielded us at 80% close rate with clients from LegalZoom itachi 18t all these major clients all right step number one and creating a great proposal it all starts with the cover letter most people actually leave this offer don't pay too much attention to it but it's probably one of the most important things because this is actually going to encourage your clients to actually start to read through your proposal think about it they're probably getting 10 20 different proposals that they have to read through and they're probably making a snap judgment right off the bat it's just like a landing page you have to entice them in order to look further or scroll down and that's what you need to do here so a lot of times what I always like to start off with is saying hey I understand your problem I understand your requirements for this project and I have a high quality solution for you and that just starts to set up okay this guy is actually listening to me then I actually go into what our business actually focuses on is it interactive marketing is that technology is it creative services is it all three what really separates us and you want to keep it brief and then I also start talking about and letting them know if you have questions at any time I am here and if you have any feedback on their proposal let us know and you'd be surprised a lot of people saying you know hey I love that you wanted to hear questions from us or they would provide us feedback in order to create this proposal and a lot of the things that I'm going to show you was actually feedback because I asked this in the cover letter so the cover letter is really really important and then lastly on the cover letter you really want to focus and let them know that you're here to be a partner so you tell them I look forward to being your partner alright step number two is starting and really putting together a good cover page it's different from the cover letter as you can see it basically gives the you can put your call logo there or type it out you put a date on it and then you kind of put on your mantra or why you exist right there and then also on the cover page sometimes I would actually put strategic partner logos so for example we were a Microsoft Gold Partner and if we were going after a client for Microsoft technology and we wanted to show that we were the right people for the job we would actually put the Microsoft Certified Partner there or the Gold Partner all right step number three it's creating an executive summary this is where you can get and let them know what they're going to be getting into in the proposal you know in the cover letter we just gave them a real quick snapshot of this is their problem and this is the quick solution now we're actually starting to say what are we going to be focused on and you can kind of see where I have the highlighted yellow in here this is this is kind of part of a template so as you see we're building out this template and I want to highlight the areas in here that I'm going to come back and I'm going to frequently change and so if this was a proposal for social media website and etc I would list all those out there and then at the very end of the executive summary I would actually put in this is how long I think the engagement will be all right the next step is identifying the critical factors to success right so this basically lets them know how you're going to work and how you're thinking and you want to let them know you'll in working with them these are the things that I'm actually going to be going over with you right so I want to know your objective of this project so then we can focus totally on how do we want to position you how do you want your clients to engage on usability are people going to be coming to this website or a mobile app just so we can adjust that or accessibility what you know what tools are you using in order to drive people there and just let them know that this is part of the questions just so they can start to see your thinking so you can say I'm more of a consultant than just an order-taker step number five is really starting to get into the meat and potatoes of the proposal right so this is where you actually start mean to list out all the services that you're doing what I always would like to do is kind of categorize the major services together so I would group all the creative services together I would group all the technology as well as the marketing or social or however you see fit so it basically breaks it up for the client so it's easy to understand then also you can also see one of the tips that we always use in order to create this proposal very quickly is we would always have this bracket and uppercase client so then white when I open up the proposal I could actually do a fine and replace for this particular phrase and put in the client name and that adds personalization to the proposal so that was always a good hit I would always be very descriptive on each of these if you're talking about Web Design talk about the methodology so they understand the process tell them you know the different deliverables that's going to be involved tell them how you're actually going to go through this so you can actually see under the web design services we actually started going through the methodology this is how we go through the strategy this is how we go through the goals the architecture we understand the technology functionality and then we also start talking about the strategy sessions that we're going to have we had a unique proposition where we'd actually go through and do mind mapping with them which would identify kind of the goals and the challenges for their company as well as the audience and really connect the dots and it was a very unique thing and possibly I might do a program I'll miss later all and if if I have enough interest from you guys so let me know about moving on then I actually go into kind of the strategy document or what we called the mission plan this is the document that we would actually go through with the client in order to get a better understanding of their goals what they wanted to understand their audience their branding guidelines all of this so it was it was more than a creative brief I know a lot of you guys use a creative brief it all goes back to and you guys have all had clients like this where they know what they want after they see it but they can't tell you what they want and so our mission plan strategy document that we created was basically interpret in interpreter really to make sure that we're all on the same page so this basically talks a little bit about that all right then also on each phase I would actually list out the deliverables of what the client could expect so this really took the assumptions out so literally on phase one you can see one of the deliverables would be the website strategy the mission plan the goals and challenge mapping as well as the wireframes and then all that would be signed off and approved on and then we would actually go on to Phase two the design and then we would talk about the design process you know how many hours would we put into there what different concepts would we get to them and so on what deliverables per section right then we would actually go into the website build and we talked about how do we build for this example this website was going to be built on site Finity it's a content management system you guys might be aware of and we would talk about the process for there it would also list out the deliverables per that phase and then lastly we would top it off with kind of the usability and the testing we would do as well as the launch of the program and then also go through the deliverables just so they had a good understanding of what we're doing some of the things that people actually leave off on their proposals that actually benefit us greatly and pay close attention to this is list out the additional web services that they may have not asked for but that could benefit them based on their requirements and their challenges and their goals that they have so we would list out copywriting services a multilingual site a mobile mobile version so but you'll be surprised how many people will be like yeah I want that can you add that to the proposal and that's that's the best that's the best case scenario the worst case scenario they'll just say no I don't want it and that's okay all right so it's already built into the proposal template so we didn't spend any more time and then lastly on each particular major section I would actually go through a time frame and I would deliver it to them kind of in the phases so you can see discovery phase design development deploy right and then I would estimate out the time just so they have a good snapshot of what was going on right then we would actually get into the technology section if there was and so we would talk about kind of the project discovery the scope how do we do that we'd also put a timeline on there just so you can kind of see us building the proposal we list out the e-commerce if there was a ecommerce cart the features you know are we putting an SSL certificate this is a section for the marketing so then we start talking about the search and marketing how do we go about that you know the Google page ranks the number pages index the challenges that we would face as well as give them kind of a current snapshot of where they're running by pulling some of the reports earlier and then this is just some more of kind of our methodology letting them know kind of this is what we actually go through on the SEO strategy that we would develop right so we would actually go into pay-per-click and as you can see I'm just listing out all these services so basically what you're doing just like you're listing everything out you have so you have this you may have this document that is let's say on the screen 26 pages but depending on the client's needs you're going to be taking a lot of this stuff out so if someone just wanted a web site and hosting our website in SEO literally you're going to take everything else out and then your proposal maybe only 12 pages but what you want to get away from is being able to have to type all this out every every time and a lot of you guys are doing that or you're going to old proposals and kind of piecemealing it together so this is starting to make that template for you guys alright so basically this is showing you listing all the services out so let's get to the next oh one of the things too I would do that would be benefit beneficial to you guys it's kind of a little off topic but I would offer two kinds of support right so some people I actually have a bad taste in their mouth from support retainers so I would lead with that and say look if you need a support after this proposal we can do that we can do a spore retainer so 100 hours $13,000 a month some people like now you know I don't want to guarantee that all the time I said no problem we can do website maintenance on the very bottom here and basically what this was is a block of ours that you're pre selling to your clients a shocker most the clients don't actually use this but they actually prepay for it and then they just have credit with you so next step is the project summary step number six and this was important because now you've just listed out ton of services out there and I took out a lot but I also left it a lot just to show you how you can actually take things in and out but on the project summary this is actually one of them I would probably say the third most important part of the proposal because now you kind of told them everything that you're going to do you told them you understand their challenges here's a solution you presented the solution you prevented the process the methodology now you just need to summarize it make it very easy for them to understand be like okay alright in the same way we categorize the website into Creative Technology and marketing you're going to do this on the project summary and then you're going to take it a step further which I'll tell you in a second but starting off the top I would go and creative I say Web Design 30 grand then I'd go into the technology and also if there was any more of the creative I would actually add in there so if I was doing a banner advertisement creation or mobile app design I would actually put that in there in that section so you can see how that's categorized then I would actually go into the technology list all that out from the content management the application scope ecommerce on-site training whatever they needed I would add that in there with the totals to the right go into the hosting the marketing as well as the web maintenance and you can kind of see on this table right up here this is all the one-time set-up cost right so I categorize that so then you actually get into the monthly charges so this was important to separate because a lot of customers you don't want them to do arithmetic and start adding and getting their calculators out you want to do that all for them you want to keep it very simple so they know that you have all your eyes dotted and your t's crossed right so I would actually separate the monthly charges out and and then let's say you have Holly's built out if you want to take some in and out you just highlight that column and delete that column you don't want to leave anything in there that is not going to be on the project alright so just don't have a huge list there and then leave it on there because then it's going to confuse the heck out of the clients all right then at the very end I would talk about kind of payment schedule right so we always did a 50% upfront deposit halfway through I would do when they would actually approve the concepts or at a certain date I would get them to pay the second payment and then final payment upon completion all right now the next page on step seven it's really starting to tell them about your company you're going to tell them about your experience why you exist the awards that you've gotten and really start letting them know who you are so you can kind of see we you know had a fun little title defenders of truth just as an effective marketing the you know and really start getting into it letting them know who we are because they're going to be working alongside with us then I would actually get into and list out the team members and we had you know crazy titles so you guys may have crazy titles as well but you know we have strategic commander mission controller which was the project manager VP of production and graphic specialist we're graphic designers and web designers and basically listing out all the people so they can know wow you know and really separating you from others now if you're one man or two man shop or a very small team you may not want to list this page just because then it's going to show that you're a small team unless they already know that so I'll leave that up to discretion for you but if you're a team of at least 10 people I would list it out and then also - I would also let them know depending on when they engage on the project their team members may change right so you're not contracted to make them use the next step is really putting in and this is where the contract actually goes so I actually took it out just because I'm not a lawyer I can't give you advice but this is where you actually put in your contract and your terms your conditions your NDA is all that good stuff basically just copy and paste it into there and then you actually have where they can actually sign this document a lot of people actually separate kind of like a master service agreement and the proposal and then there's two documents I always like to come on into one I believe in making things simple so I always put that there and then the last page is really client information to kind of recap you're creating this huge document that you can use and and this documents a living breathing thing so as you're fine-tuning it and you're finding out what works you're going to add this to the proposal as well as you know as you're adding new services right so as you add a new service that comes into our industry you're going to be adding this in there