Depending on who you speak to, marketing automation is either the greatest thing since sliced bread or a really scary concept. But there’s a reason so many people are jumping on the bandwagon: automation can save businesses hours and even days when building out a sales and marketing process.

As an agency with a multifaceted skill set, you are uniquely qualified to help those marketing automation newbies get a head start – and to potentially add recurring revenue in the process.

A marketing automation proposal template can help you develop a game plan for your clients in a jiff – saving you time and maximizing your profit.

Let’s break down the elements you’ll need for a marketing automation proposal that’s sure to win you business every time.

Objectives + Value Proposition

This section of the proposal should be customized as much as possible. You should identify parts of the potential client’s sales and marketing process that should be automated along with what this automation will accomplish in the long-term.

Most importantly, build value. Show the prospect what’s in it for them – How will marketing automation create efficiencies in their business and add to their bottom line? Why should they want to partner with your agency? How is your agency uniquely-suited to meet their needs?

Depending on the project and the client, my agency changes this section up. For example, here’s a screenshot of the “Objective” and “Client Needs” sections from Mod Girl’s $10K Audit and Strategy Proposal template:

Pro tip: if you want to snag my entire $10K proposal template for landing your next big project, I made it available for download for free here: www.modgirl.agency

Scope of Work

This portion of your proposal is crucial. It’s where you list out exactly what you’re planning to do for the client. However, you have to walk a fine line when you’re listing out recommended services in your marketing proposal.

You don’t want to overwhelm the prospect by listing out every single minute detail – but you also don’t want to cause confusion because you didn’t give them enough information about the services you plan to provide.

For a marketing automation proposal, you’ll want to go fairly in-depth with your scope of work. You’ll need to outline exactly what you plan to automate, any content you’ll be involved with creating, the tools you’ll be using for automation and so on.

But don’t go overboard here. You don’t need to walk through every single form you’ll be creating or landing page you’ll be building.

It’s vital that the scope of work outlines what you’ll be doing and what benefits the prospect will gain by working with you. At the same time, your prospect doesn’t want or need a 1,000 page document explaining exactly what you’ll be doing every minute and hour you’re working for them. Your scope of work should focus on the big picture.

Timeline

Here’s where you lay out proper expectations. While timelines change and depend on many factors, you need to provide the prospect with project milestones and deadlines. Many deadlines might be dependant upon client approval so you need to make that very clear when laying out campaign timeframes.

Here’s an example of what a campaign timeline might look for at Mod Girl Marketing:

Investment

A question every prospect will almost immediately ask is: “how much is this going to cost me?”

In the investment section you should list out, very clearly, how much your services will cost your prospect.

Avoid overcomplicating it. Make it as easy as possible for them to understand.

And make sure the payment terms are transparent. For example, if you require a 25% deposit before beginning work and the remaining 75% within 30 days of work completion, make sure that is clearly outlined in this section.

For agencies quoting multiple services, make sure you itemize everything. Unless you’re only quoting one service, you should never group all costs into one line.

By bundling multiple services into one line, not only do your services appear more expensive to the prospect, but you increase the opportunity for scope creep – every agency’s worst nightmare!

With that in mind, it’s also important to add an asterisk to your “Investment” section that states your standard hourly rate for any tasks that fall outside the outlined scope of work.

Here’s how we do this at Mod Girl:

Next Steps

To wrap up your proposal, tell the prospect what they should expect next, but keep it simple!

At Mod Girl Marketing, we say the following:

Official agreement will be provided and digitally signed upon acceptance.

Please let me know if you need any additional information or have any more questions. We look forward to working with you soon to help you automate your sales and marketing process more efficiently.

Then I wrap up the proposal with my byline and headshot. I list my contact information (phone number and email) and any related press mentions.

Here’s a byline I used recently for marketing proposals for healthcare clients:

Agreement

I always recommend going over prospect proposals over the phone. This makes the experience more personal and avoids any confusion. Once your prospect agrees to the terms outlined in your proposal, you’ll need to send an agreement. This agreement should include an NDA and early termination clauses to protect you and your client.

To reduce confusion, send this after the client says yes to the proposal. Since you’ll review the proposal with them on the phone, you can easily include this as part of your follow-up email after the review call.

Conclusion

Marketing proposals can be an incredibly effective way to attract and win new agency business. And they’re even more valuable when you’ve got a template to quickly build off of.

When building out a marketing automation proposal, be sure to outline every step of the process clearly and transparently so your prospective client knows what to expect and you set your future relationship up for success.

Author Bio

Mandy McEwen is Founder & CEO of Mod Girl Marketing, a digital marketing agency based in California. She is the creator of 8+ digital marketing courses where she helps marketing consultants and startup agencies scale faster. She was listed by Search Engine Journal as a top 12 SEO expert and was named a top 10 agency growth coach by BloggerLocal. Mandy’s Facebook group, Mod Agency Insiders, was named a top marketing group to join by Inc.