Onboarding with a trades marketing agency: what the first 30 days look like
The first month with an agency sets the pattern for everything after it. Done well, you finish it with working systems and a clear routine. Done badly, you finish it with a login you have forgotten and a vague sense that something is being built somewhere. Here is what good looks like.
Before day one: the access list
A competent agency will send you an access list before the kick-off call, and it is long. Expect requests for your Google Business Profile, your domain registrar, your website hosting, your Google Analytics and Search Console, any existing ad accounts, and your social pages.
Two rules protect you here. First, grant access rather than handing over passwords. Google, Meta and most hosts let you add a manager without sharing your login. Second, keep yourself as the primary owner of everything. If an agency insists on creating accounts in its own name, ask why.
Have your company details ready too: registered name, trading name, address, VAT number if relevant, insurance and accreditation certificates, and a list of every service you do and do not offer. Agencies lose a week chasing this more often than they lose it to anything else.
- Google Business Profile manager access
- Domain registrar and hosting logins, or manager access
- Google Analytics and Search Console
- Existing Google Ads or Meta ad accounts
- Facebook page and Instagram account roles
- Logo files, brand colours, van and team photos
- Accreditations, insurance certificates, trade body memberships
- A service list and a service area map
Week one: discovery and the audit
The kick-off call should be about your business, not theirs. A good agency asks which jobs make you money, which you turn away, how far you will travel, how many enquiries you can handle in a week and what happens when the phone rings while you are on a roof.
Alongside that conversation, the agency audits what exists: website speed and structure, how your Google profile compares with the three firms above you in the map results, your review count and recency, and what your ad account history shows if there is one.
By the end of week one you should receive a short written summary of findings and a plan for the remaining three weeks. If you receive nothing, ask. The guide to what to send before a quote covers how to make this week faster by preparing in advance.
Week two: building the foundations
This is when visible work starts. Depending on scope, the agency is drafting or rebuilding website pages, cleaning up the Google Business Profile with correct categories, services and photos, and setting up tracking so that every call and form can be attributed.
Expect to be asked for approvals. Page copy, the services list on your profile, and any claims about your work need your sign-off. Turn these around within 48 hours. Agencies cannot move faster than their slowest approval, and the slowest approval is almost always the client.
If review automation is part of the package, week two is when the agency asks for your past customer list. A system that texts previous customers asking for a review can produce more reviews in a fortnight than the business gathered in the previous year, but only if the list is supplied.
Week three: systems go live
The website or new pages should be live or in final review. The profile should be optimised. Call tracking should be in place. If paid ads are in scope, campaigns are built and ready, with a budget agreed and a target cost per enquiry written down.
This is the week to test everything yourself. Ring the tracked number. Submit a form. Send a text to the missed-call system from a friend's phone. Check that the enquiry appears wherever it is supposed to appear and that you get notified the way you asked.
Some agencies build the whole system before the client pays a penny, which pushes most of this work before the contract starts. Where that is the model, your first 30 days are shorter and start closer to this point.
Week four: the first report and the routine
The first monthly report will be thin on results, because nothing meaningful happens to rankings or review counts in four weeks. What it should be rich in is baselines. Where did you rank on day one? How many reviews did you have? How fast was the old site? How many calls came in?
Without baselines, every later report is unprovable. Insist on them.
The other output of week four is the routine: how often you will speak, in what format, and who you contact when something breaks. A monthly call plus a shared dashboard is the common pattern. Founder-led agencies often offer direct access to the owner, which is faster but worth confirming is sustainable as they grow.
| Week | What the agency does | What you do |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Discovery call, audits, written plan | Supply access, documents and photos |
| 2 | Drafts pages, cleans up the profile, sets up tracking | Approve copy within 48 hours, supply customer list |
| 3 | Takes systems live, builds campaigns | Test every channel yourself |
| 4 | First report with baselines, agrees routine | Challenge anything without a baseline |
Five signs onboarding has gone wrong
- You still do not know who your day-to-day contact is by the end of week two
- Assets are being created in the agency's name, not yours
- No written plan or audit arrived after the kick-off call
- Copy went live without your approval, or approval requests sat with you for a fortnight
- The first report contains activity ('we optimised your profile') but no baseline numbers
What a realistic month one delivers
By day 30 you should have a working website or improved pages, a properly set up Google profile, tracking that attributes enquiries, a review process running, and a report you can measure the next eleven against. If ads are included, you should have the first two or three weeks of data and an early sense of cost per enquiry.
What you should not have is a transformed order book. Organic results take months. Paid results take weeks to stabilise. An agency that promises both by day 30 is selling something other than marketing.
If month one looks nothing like this, it is better to raise it in month two than month six. The guide to when to change your marketing agency sets out how to judge that, and the buyer's guide to trades marketing agencies covers choosing better next time.
Frequently asked questions
Should I give my agency my passwords?
No. Grant manager access through Google, Meta and your host instead, and keep yourself as the primary owner of every account.
How quickly should I approve content during onboarding?
Within 48 hours. The agency cannot move faster than your slowest approval, and delays here push every later milestone back.
Should I expect leads in the first month?
Only from paid ads, and even then early data is noisy. Organic and review work takes months. Judge month one on systems and baselines, not enquiries.
What should the first monthly report contain?
Baselines: starting rankings, review count, site speed, call volume. Without them you cannot prove progress later.