As 2026 approaches, many marketing organizations are asking yourselves this question: “Do WE need a new agency?”.
The market is changing, your target audiences are changing, the way your audiences research and consume content is changing. While Q4 is characteristically “Pitch Season”, we expect this year to be an unseasonably hot pitch season in the midst of all of this change. Now, more than ever, marketers need to know that you have the right agency partner in place to help you navigate this rapidly changing market and reach your growing 2026 goals.
At first glance, finding a new agency seems simple enough, right?
Marketing and Procurement teams have been running agency searches for a long time. You have navigated this complicated process the best you can based on past experiences and leveraging whatever materials you can from research, peers and a simple AI query.
Maybe your previous experience was something like this: You crafted a lengthy questionnaire and send it to a short list of agencies you’ve worked with in the past, found in an online search, or were referred to by a friend. You then invited some of the agencies to pitch meetings, where the agency sales team presented their credentials and a quasi-relevant case study. From there, you picked an agency, worked through contracts loosely and kicked off the partnership.
If you’ve been through that process, we suspect you were left disappointed and stuck in a relationship with an agency that is not right for you.
It doesn’t have to be this way. There’s help.
Here’s why you need an agency search consultancy to run your next agency search:
Team & Scope Alignment: Unfortunately, too many marketing teams go searching for an agency when you don’t truly know what you’re looking for. This causes many tough downstream effects: frustrated teams, failed relationships, wasted money and missed goals.
How can you possibly find the right agency when the criteria is not defined, there’s conflicting priorities and unaligned teams?
Tenx4 has fixed this. We help your team (across teams, regions, business units, etc.) understand what you’re actually solving for across service requirements, global nuances and needs, budgets, goals, etc. This way, everyone is aligned, priorities are not competing and your actual needs are clear.
Agency Shortlisting: According to ChatGPT, there’s just shy of 100,000 advertising agencies. This massive agency landscape is constantly evolving with mergers, acquisitions, layoffs, quitting, etc. The agency you worked with 6-months ago, a year ago or 5 years ago is likely not the same agency you once knew. Also, having a deep understanding of what an agency actually does or does not do is, well, complicated.
Tenx4 has a proprietary database of vetted agencies (who don’t pay to be part of our database), we keep a pulse on the evolving agency landscape and we vet new-to-us agencies regularly. For every agency search, we vet a curated custom list of agencies based on your specific agency requirements. This way, you are only considering agencies who are fundamentally the right fit for your team.
This means that all of the agencies you and your team are taking the time to get to know are the right type of agency for your business. You are not wasting time and energy with agencies who lack needed services, can’t support a region or are too expensive.
Documentation: Running an RFP requires lots of documents (when done correctly). You’ll need a comprehensive RFP Brief that provides insight into your business and asks the right questions, Pricing Documents for apples-to-apples price comparisons among the agencies, a custom Pitch Assignments to create the right pitch meetings, Timeline Document to keep everyone on track, internal Presentations to outline scoring, the process, etc. The list goes on.
We create all of that custom for you (with your input and help).
Partner with Procurement: You have a skilled procurement team, right? We love procurement leads. Some marketers think they don’t need Tenx4 because you have a procurement team. But, procurement should not be leading your agency search. Procurement led RFPs focus on the nuts and bults of the relationship, but miss the guts. In other words, they focus on pricing and process, but don’t know how to truly support the evaluation of a service-based partnership.
We partner with procurement, while leading the RFP focused on finding you right agency partner. This way, we meet of the procurement related requirements for your organization and find your team an agency that meets your needs too.
Time Savings: A thorough agency search takes a ton of time (like hundreds of hours for your team across many months). You have your actual job to do, an already full life and tons of responsibilities. Do you have the extra time to create global and cross team stakeholder alignment, vet potential agencies, write all of the documents we mentioned above, work closely with procurement to understand requirements, do pricing evaluations, etc.? No?
That’s ok. That’s what we are here for. We do all of that, so you don’t have to. We save you time, while running a more efficient and thorough review process.
Cost Savings: Working with an agency is a serious financial investment. But, how do you know if you are getting a fair deal? Agency fees are complicated and lack transparency. Contracts are written in ambiguous and vague language, easily misinterpreted and misunderstood – creating tons of frustration for your team, failed expectations and a partnership that cannot possibly meet your needs.
Tenx4 saves you money, leading price and contracts negotiations. We leverage our proprietary industry pricing knowledge and our pricing analysis process to identify price efficiencies for you. We also create SOW transparency – making sure the contract is clear, transparent and easily understandable by everyone. We turn SOWs into operating manuals for your relationship so that your partnership is set up to meet your expectations, building financially viable partnerships for both you and your selected agency partner.
The truth is, when run correctly, an agency search process is much more intricate process than most assume. It requires a ton of time, energy and effort – coordination across teams, priorities and time zones.
In order to achieve long-term success, you need the help of a knowledgeable expert.
Make no mistake, achieving success in this process is vital, now more than ever. Few things are more disruptive to a company than choosing the wrong agency partner. The cost is too great, the stakes are too high.
That’s why you hire us. We make sure that you get the partnership right. And, we save you time, energy and money in doing so.