Working With a New Marketing Agency: The First 90 Days

Choosing the agency is the part everyone plans for. What happens next rarely gets the same attention, which is a mistake: most agency relationships that fail were already going wrong by week six, and usually for reasons that had nothing to do with the agency's ability. This guide sets out what the first ninety days should look like on both sides.

Before Day One

Two things are worth settling before the contract starts. First, access. Agencies lose the first fortnight chasing logins more often than any other single cause of a slow start. Get these ready:

Google Analytics, Search Console and Tag Manager, with admin rights rather than view-only
Ad accounts (Google, Meta, LinkedIn), shared through a business manager rather than by handing over passwords
Website CMS and hosting, plus whoever actually controls the DNS
Brand assets, existing creative, and any previous agency's reporting
CRM or sales data, if lead quality is going to be judged

Second, a single decision-maker on your side. Agencies work at the speed of your approvals, and committee feedback is the most expensive thing you can give them.

Month One: Discovery and Foundations

Expect a kick-off session that goes well beyond marketing: commercial goals, margins by product or service, sales process, seasonality, and what has already been tried. A good agency asks awkward questions in month one. Then:

An audit of current performance, including tracking, which is broken more often than not
A documented strategy with priorities and a timeline, not just a task list
Agreed KPIs and a reporting format you have actually seen and approved
Quick wins shipped where they exist, alongside the longer work

What you should not expect in month one is results. Anything meaningful in SEO takes longer, and even paid media needs a few weeks of data before optimisation is more than guesswork.

Month Two: Execution

The strategy turns into work: campaigns live, content in production, technical fixes deployed. This is the month where the relationship's rhythm gets set. A weekly or fortnightly call of thirty minutes is usually the right cadence, with a longer monthly review. Early signals worth watching are leading indicators rather than revenue: impressions and rankings moving, cost per click and click-through rates improving, engagement on new content.

Your job this month is responsiveness. Sitting on approvals for a week is the fastest way to waste a retainer you are paying for regardless.

Month Three: The First Honest Review

By the end of the quarter you should be able to answer four questions:

Did they do what they said they would do, on the timeline they set?
Are the leading indicators moving in the right direction?
Do you understand what they are doing and why, or does the reporting obscure it?
Has the account been run by the people who pitched, or handed to someone more junior without discussion?

Judge PPC on early commercial results by month three. Judge SEO on process and leading indicators, since six months is a fairer point for outcomes. Our guide to measuring marketing ROI covers what to hold them to for each channel.

Warning Signs

Reports full of impressions and reach with nothing tied to enquiries or revenue
The senior people from the pitch have quietly disappeared from the calls
Strategy that never arrived, or arrived as a slide deck of generic best practice
Missed deadlines that only get mentioned when you ask
Defensiveness when you question a number

One or two of these is a conversation. Three is a decision. Raise problems formally and in writing before the notice period matters, and give the agency a specific chance to fix them, because switching costs you another ninety days.

Getting the Most From the Relationship

The clients who get the best work share three habits: they give context generously, including bad news; they consolidate feedback into one voice; and they treat the agency as part of the team rather than a supplier to be managed at arm's length. None of that costs anything, and it reliably produces better output than the same fee spent adversarially.

If you are still at the selection stage, start with our guides to choosing an agency and writing a brief, then browse UK agencies by service and location.