What to Give a New Marketing Agency in Week One

Slow starts are usually the client's fault

Nobody says this out loud because it does not sell. But the pattern is consistent: the engagements that produce results early are the ones where the agency was given real context in week one, and the ones that drift are the ones where information arrived in fragments over two months.

You are not being demanding by preparing this. You are protecting the money you just committed.

Access, on day one

Add them as a user to each of these. Do not transfer ownership, and do not send passwords over chat.

• Website admin and hosting
• Domain and DNS
• Google Analytics and Search Console
• Ad accounts and business manager
• Email marketing platform
• Social profiles
• Any CRM or booking system

Everything stays in your name, per the account ownership rule. Missing access is the most common reason week one turns into week three.

Brand assets, in editable form

Logos as vectors, not a screenshot from a website. Fonts and licences. Colour values. Any existing brand guide. Photography and video you own, with a note on what you may and may not use. Templates you already like.

If none of this exists in one place, say so plainly. It is a normal starting point and it changes the first month's plan, per the brand identity guide.

The commercial context nobody hands over

This is the part that actually separates good work from generic work.

What you sell, and what it costs. Including the margin, if you can share it. A team that does not know what a customer is worth cannot judge whether a campaign worked.

Who buys, in real words. Not a persona document with a stock photo. The last five customers: what they do, what triggered the purchase, what they nearly bought instead.

What has already been tried. Especially the failures. Agencies repeat your last agency's mistakes when nobody tells them.

Who says yes. One named approver. Committee approval by four people with different taste is how work gets averaged into nothing.

What must never happen. Claims you cannot make, competitors you will not name, regulatory limits, words you hate.

The numbers to agree before work starts

What success looks like in ninety days, stated as a number you both accept. Where the baseline sits today. Which metric decides renewal.

Do this in writing at kickoff, not at the first review, and use outcomes rather than activity, per the six numbers that matter. Agreeing the target after seeing the results is how both sides end up arguing about whether it worked.

The kickoff call itself

Ninety minutes, with the decision maker present. Walk through the product as if selling it. Answer the commercial questions above. Agree the reporting rhythm, the approval path, and the overlap window if the team is in another time zone, per working across time zones.

Then leave them alone to work.

Frequently asked

How long should onboarding take? A week if the material exists. Two if it needs assembling. Longer than a month usually means nobody owns it on your side.

What if we do not have most of this? Say so early. A good partner will build it with you and price that honestly rather than pretending the gaps do not exist.

What does Fixora ask for? A one page access list, your brand files, and a ninety minute kickoff. We send the checklist before the first invoice. Start here and we will scope it within 48 hours.