Playbook, marketing agency
What happens between signing and the first campaign going live
The first month of a retainer produces less visible output than any month after it, and clients who were not warned spend it wondering whether they picked wrong. Most of the work is access, assets and measurement: getting seats on accounts the client owns, collecting brand material that lives in four people's inboxes, and checking that what is already being recorded can be trusted.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for setup and onboarding holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- Onboarding runs in the opposite direction to most services. The client is granting the agency access to its own advertising and analytics accounts, not the other way round, and until those seats exist there is nothing for anybody to work on.
- Delivery usually passes through freelancers or subcontractors, so the data agreement signed at the start has to allow for them by name or by category, and a client who discovers that in month three treats it as something that was hidden.
- The measurement check comes before any creative work, because a campaign launched over a tracking setup nobody verified produces numbers that will be argued about for the rest of the engagement.
- The statement of work sets the first month's deliverables, and they are usually audits, plans and access rather than anything a client can show a board, which is worth saying out loud before the first invoice arrives.
How it arrives
- what do you need from us before you can start
- how long until the first campaign is live
- do we have to give you access to our accounts
- who else at your end will be working on this
- when do we get the kick off
- what actually happens in the first month of a retainer
What has to be indexed for this to work
| The access list, written as a checklist | Every account seat, brand asset and login the agency needs, who at the client usually grants each one, and the level requested. Onboarding stalls here because nobody told the client which of four people in the business holds what. |
|---|---|
| The onboarding sequence with its stages named | Kick off, audit, measurement check, plan, first build, launch. Publishing the order kills the month one question, because the frustration is nearly always somebody waiting through a stage they did not know existed. |
| Who works on the account, including anybody outside the agency | Whether delivery involves freelancers or subcontractors, in what roles, and how the data agreement covers them. Saying it at the start costs a sentence. Saying it later costs trust. |
| What the first month produces, listed as artefacts | The audit, the measurement note, the plan document, the account structure. Name the things that arrive, so the first invoice lands against something the client can point at. |
The reply
Before anything can run we need seats on the advertising and analytics accounts you own, the brand assets, and enough access to the site to check what is being recorded. The onboarding page lists all of it as a checklist with who normally grants each one [1]. The first month is an audit, a measurement check and a plan rather than live campaigns, and that sequence is on the same page [2]. I cannot create anything or request access from here, so leave your name and an email and the account team will send the checklist across.
It leads with what the client has to do, because onboarding stalls on their side far more often than on the agency's. Naming the first month's output as documents rather than campaigns resets an expectation before it turns into a complaint. And it does not pretend to have started anything, since a client who thinks onboarding has begun will simply wait.
Where it stops
The trigger. The client asks when their own project starts, wants access granted or revoked, or asks for a person to be assigned.
Setting an account up is done by people rather than in this chat, and I cannot see whether anything has been started for you. Leave your name and an email and the account team will confirm where you are in the sequence.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never say when a campaign will go live, because that depends on access the client has not yet granted.
- Never ask for a password, a login or a verification code in the chat, whatever the visitor offers.
- Never name the individual people who will work on an account, since that is a staffing decision that changes.
- Never say a subcontractor is or is not involved unless your published position says so, because it is a data protection statement as much as a delivery one.
Questions
- Should the access list really be public?
- The list of what you need, yes. It shortens onboarding by a fortnight because the client can start gathering before the kick off. The credentials themselves never go near a chat, and the assistant should refuse them when they are offered.
- Can it set an account up or send an invite?
- No. It reads documents and cites them, and it writes nowhere, so every step that changes something ends with a name and an email reaching your team. The value is that the client arrives at that step already knowing what is wanted.
- Prospects ask who actually does the work. How honest should we be?
- As honest as the data agreement requires. If freelancers sit in the delivery chain, the position has to be published for the agreement to work at all, and an assistant quoting it reads far better than a pause on a call.
Keep reading
- Everything for a marketing agencyService definitions and engagement terms convert. A price quoted for work nobody has scoped is the trap on an agency site.
- Handling setup and onboarding in generalMost product material is written for somebody who already understands it. A first run guide has to be ordered, not merely complete.
- Delete my data, sent to a company the sender has never heard ofThe stranger writing to an agency is usually in a client's list rather than the agency's, and the assistant cannot even say whose.
- Sorting an agency complaint before anybody answers itA late report is a service complaint. A campaign that overspent a client budget is not, and the assistant has to handle the second differently.
- Two pots of money, and the client wants one of them backThe fee bought hours that are already spent. The budget left for a platform. Only one of the two is a conversation about a refund.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.