Been referred to a $100mil+/year company any advice?

law of scarcity:
setup the first meeting and then dont show up. when they call asking where you are, tell them that you didnt have time for them and reschedule for next week.
 


1. Find out what the other agency was doing and not doing, exact deliverable's beyond just managing the website.
2. Get a lawyer, your going to need some legal work
3. Get more people, outsource carefully if your even allowed
4. Have a rate card, better know what each service costs

The rate card is the most difficult because it's a negotiable. Development, SEO, PPC, Graphics, project management, and other stuff all has to be thought out. Your going to have costs that need be factored in with 3rd party tools, people, services, etc, so you don't want to undercut your hourly rates. Billing is a huge issue, especially when dealing with PPC and who is funding the campaigns. Have a game plan for anything they need today and tomorrow. Obviously communication is key as already mentioned.
 
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onlinemoniez said:
I've managed fortune 1000 campaigns.

Charge what they can afford. Period.

I'd say no less than 10-20K a month.

Another thing to keep in mind, is that the communication is going to be far more consistent (obviously).

When I was managing a large, corporate account, communication was almost daily, and we had weekly calls every Friday.

Depending on how savvy they are, they're going to want a publishing schedule. They may also require everything you publish to be ran past their PR team, if they have one.

Then again, you'll be working with a manufacturer- I was working with a marketing company. They may be clueless, and your communication may be minimal. I have no clue. But that would be sweet.

In short, don't be afraid to quote them a substantial number. If you don't, they won't take you seriously.

GL bro.
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Repeat these words out loud now... JACKPOT!

When I first scored a referral client in the defense industry, for the covert PR stuff, I billed them at what I considered "nearly pushing it" at around $250k for one campaign. Interestingly enough, they laughed at me about it and I felt like the noobie on the block. Some of these companies expect incredibly high fees to be tossed their way, because that's just how corporate budgeting works. So, take advantage of it. As much as you can. You can also start it off with a higher than typical price, and if they want more from you, just do what everyone else does... increase that budget for whatever bunch of "reasons" they say. Also.. important to know, that you don't have to try as hard to prove your value or worth to them. The fact you know how to list a site on a search engine in 20 mins is fucking magic in their eyes.

Also:

Use lots of buzz words that we'd typically laugh at and consider "simple". They go nuts for that shit.

Use plenty of graphs with lots of deep and bright colors, if you animate them, they will think you are totally worth the money and more...

Charge them for everything. This includes transportation, food, conference calls, entertainment when you're with them or doing something related to their account.

I'm pretty sure you'll get the swing of things soon enough, so enjoy that moment when "ignorance is bliss" starts rolling around your head. :)

...and use everything Stefanie said, she knows her shit when it comes to these corp stuffs.
 
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Jon said:
Repeat these words out loud now... JACKPOT!

When I first scored a referral client in the defense industry, for the covert PR stuff, I billed them at what I considered "nearly pushing it" at around $250k for one campaign. Interestingly enough, they laughed at me about it and I felt like the noobie on the block. Some of these companies expect incredibly high fees to be tossed their way, because that's just how corporate budgeting works. So, take advantage of it. As much as you can. You can also start it off with a higher than typical price, and if they want more from you, just do what everyone else does... increase that budget for whatever bunch of "reasons" they say. Also.. important to know, that you don't have to try as hard to prove your value or worth to them. The fact you know how to list a site on a search engine in 20 mins is fucking magic in their eyes.
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if you are talking about the government as your client then that is totally different from the private sector.

in the past, the government had a "use it or loose it" budget so yeah thats why you had that one episode on american greed where the contractor was charging the us govt. $8000 for a nut-n-bolt, 30 million dollars later the govt officer decided to actually boot up his computer one day instead of sleeping and he noticed the discrepancy.


big businesses do expect high prices but you surely cant get away with it in private like you could in govt.
 
JoseArmando said:
They're a manufacturing company and need an agency that will manage their online presence as far as the main website goes and probably do some online advertising - I'll get the details after I talk to one of the directors this week.

I've worked with smaller clients but this is a whole different game and I'm curious if any of you have any insight how to structure pricing and what to be aware of when dealing with bigger clients.
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For their website, take what you think it will cost and quadruple it (not joking). We have started taking on larger clients over the past few months and it's a lot different than the smaller ones. We just did a full corporate site, including a simple member login/ tee time scheduling system, for a country club and I am pretty sure with all of the time it ended up taking with revisions, adding stuff beyond what was originally discussed, etc. that we ended up losing money. We charged them $18k. Make sure you contract in a max # of revisions before charges come into effect and that you include a detailed list of what you agree to produce in the contract. That is where we messed up on this project. Luckily, they do a lot of other stuff with us, so it's not a total loss. =)

For their online marketing I would suggest getting separate budgets for each traffic type/ agenda. When we manage PPC and media buys for our clients, we simply charge a management fee on top of the spend. The rate varies depending on the amount you spend. When we do SEO and reputation management, we have a set monthly fee with a 6 - 12 month minimum commitment depending on the project.

If the company is big, they have a large budget. We have clients that we charge low/mid-five figures a month on just for reputation management. Hopefully that will give you an idea of what to shoot for. =)

Just don't sell yourself short. You can always bring the price down and if they are good business people they will definitely negotiate your original pricing. Also, don't be scared to walk away from a lot of money if the deal doesn't make sense for you financially... a six figure check is only worth what your profit nets out to be.

Hope that helps! If you have specific questions, feel free to PM me.
 
I think it's all been said in here, but the only other thing I'd recommend is talking about ROI rather than keywords. If you get into a pitch about rankings, backlinks, etc you might lose them in a bunch of terminology they're not familiar with. If you talk to them about return on investment, exposure, branding, competition, etc they'll understand your language and you'll keep their attention. On the other hand if they start using words like backlinks and from context you can tell they know what they're talking about, use the same language they use.
 
Step 1: work for them for 6 months
Step 2: Steal company insider information
Step 3: Outsource manufacturing to China
Step 4: Profit?
 
OK since this got bumped I'll update what happened.

After I got referred an upper level manager that's directly under the CEO contacted me and the email was basically "we want to work with you but there's another company in the picture that's been working for us for some time and once we see what kind of contracts we have in place with them we'll meet".

Apparently (I learned this from the person that told them about us) what happened after that was the manager that wanted to bring us in had no idea what the actual situation was concerning the company they're contracting online advertising to at the moment.

I have no idea if that's the real reason or if someone else got in before we could even set up a meeting. I guess this is just another part of the game when you're dealing with companies like this.

Thanks for all the help I got here and on Skype, I'll definitely use this sometime in the near future.
 
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