You can call an agency with nothing but a hunch.
But if you bring a few things with you, we can skip a month of chasing them down.
If you show up with logins and a real goal, we can write a proposal about your business. If all we hear is "we need to do more social," we're guessing, and our guesses look like a services menu. Here's what we'd pull together if we were on your side of the call.
A goal with a number on it
Something like "get email to 25% of online revenue by next summer" or "sell out the holiday drop" gives us something to plan against. "Grow the brand" doesn't give us much to work with. In the BetterBriefs research, 61% of marketers and 71% of agencies ranked objectives as the most important part of a brief (mi-3).
No number yet? Tell us what you want to be true a year from now and we'll figure out the number with you.
Where you're starting from
The last 12 months of revenue by channel if you have it, plus whatever you can grab easily: site conversion rate, email list size and revenue, social followers and engagement, ad spend and return. Screenshots are fine.
Add what you've already tried while you're at it. What worked, what flopped, which agencies or freelancers you've worked with and why it ended, so we don't walk in pitching the exact thing you already tried.
A budget range
People skip this because it feels like showing your hand in a negotiation. We can build a good program at a lot of different budget levels. We just have to know which one we're building for, and without a range you'll probably get our dream version and then we spend the next call cutting it back.
Brand assets in one place
Logo files, fonts, color codes, any brand guidelines, your best product photos and anything you've made that you love. Throw it all in one shared folder. If your brand guidelines are old and nobody really uses them, just say so.
Logins, or a list of who has them
Shopify, Klaviyo, Meta Business Manager, Google Analytics and your social accounts. You don't have to hand anything over before you sign, but know where they live and who owns them. The classic one is the ad account a past freelancer set up under their own login, and now nobody's sure who the admin is. That can stall a kickoff while everyone hunts down the person who has access, so it's worth sorting before the project starts.
Who decides
Who signs off on creative, who signs off on spend and who can kill something at the last minute. If the founder will see everything before it goes live, put the founder on the first call. Otherwise the first time they see the work might be final review, and that's a rough time to find out they hate the color.
A few brands you love and one you don't
They don't have to be competitors. Brands whose feed, emails or site make you a little jealous, plus one you'd never want to look like. Showing us is so much easier than trying to describe a vibe in words.
Ask us stuff too
Who will actually do the work? Can I see something you made for a brand like mine? What happens if a campaign doesn't land? If an agency can't show you something real for a brand like yours, that tells you a lot.
Booking a call with us
sound like you?
Got your list together?
At Beyond Bright the first call is mostly us asking questions, a lot of them about the stuff above. You don't need all of this to book. Whatever you can bring just helps us get specific faster. Start a project when you're ready.
Start a project
Written by
Hana Brenner-Katz is the founder and creative director of Beyond Bright Creative. She started her own design studio in 2018 and turned it into a full-service agency in 2023.
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