Kickoff Session Agenda for a New Agency Relationship: What to Cover in the First Meeting

Sections7

Editorial team Spend Ledger

Set the purpose and boundaries

Agree on the business goal. Describe what the advertising is meant to support, such as qualified enquiries, online sales, or awareness, so the agency can connect its work to a defined business need.
Separate the goal from the measures. Discuss which outcomes matter most and which are useful indicators, because activity or reach alone may not show whether the work is commercially valuable.
Explain the offer and audience. Share what is being promoted, who it is intended for, and any relevant buying or decision process, so proposed campaigns reflect the business rather than assumptions.
List the main constraints. Cover budget boundaries, geographic availability, inventory or service capacity, legal considerations, brand requirements, and internal resources, because these can affect what is feasible.
Identify what is out of scope. State which channels, audiences, claims, or business areas the agency should not work on, so there is less risk of misaligned activity.
Discuss the current account situation. Summarise existing campaigns, previous tests, active restrictions, unresolved policy questions, or earlier agency work, because useful context can prevent repeated mistakes.
Make uncertainty explicit. Note where information is incomplete or where results cannot yet be assessed, so both parties can distinguish known facts from working assumptions.
Record the agreed starting point. Capture the goal, constraints, and open questions in meeting notes, giving both teams a shared reference for later decisions.

Clarify people, roles, and decision rights

Introduce each working contact. Ask participants to explain their responsibilities and subject areas, so requests can reach the person equipped to handle them.
Name the day-to-day lead on each side. Agree who coordinates routine work and gathers responses, because a clear point of contact reduces duplicated instructions.
Identify the business decision-maker. Confirm who can approve strategy, spend, creative direction, and material changes, so the agency knows when a recommendation needs formal sign-off.
Separate advice from approval. Clarify who provides input and who makes the final call, because consultation should not be mistaken for authority to launch or change work.
Agree who handles specialist topics. Assign responsibility for areas such as finance, legal review, analytics, creative production, and customer support, so important dependencies are not left between teams.
Set expectations for availability. Discuss working hours, planned absences, and how urgent matters should be raised, because approval and troubleshooting can depend on timely access to the right person.
Define escalation paths. Agree how unresolved issues move from the working team to senior contacts, so disagreement or operational risk has a known route for attention.
Record role changes when they happen. Decide how updates to contacts and responsibilities will be communicated, keeping access and approvals aligned with the current team.

Agree on account access, ownership, and responsibilities

Describe the account structure in use. Review which business-level account, ad account, pages, data sources, and other assets are involved, so both parties understand where campaign work will take place.
Confirm who owns each asset. Agree which party retains ownership of accounts, audiences, creative files, tracking assets, and billing arrangements, because ownership affects continuity if the relationship changes.
Document the access arrangement. Specify what access the agency needs, what the client retains, and how permissions will be granted through official platform processes, so access is purposeful and accountable.
Discuss any agency-provided account arrangement. If the agency proposes using an account it administers, clarify the legal and operational basis, control of assets, billing, access, and what happens when the engagement ends.
Check that the proposed structure fits platform requirements. Ask the agency to explain how the arrangement complies with applicable account, identity, business, and advertising rules, rather than treating account access as a workaround.
Keep responsibility for truthful information clear. Agree who supplies and verifies business details, payment information, claims, and supporting materials, because inaccurate or outdated information can create compliance and operational problems.
Set a process for access changes. Decide how permissions will be reviewed, updated, or removed when a person’s role changes, so access remains consistent with current responsibilities.
Put the arrangement in writing. Record ownership, access, billing, and exit expectations in the appropriate agreement or meeting record, preventing later ambiguity about control of the work.

Review tracking and measurement readiness

Agree what needs to be measured. Match each business goal with a relevant event or outcome, because reporting is only useful when its measures correspond to the question the business needs answered.
Review the existing tracking set-up. Ask what tags, events, analytics, and conversion records are already in place, so the agency can identify gaps before relying on the data.
Assign implementation responsibility. Decide who configures, tests, and maintains each tracking component, because a measurement plan can fail when ownership is unclear.
Confirm access to relevant data. Identify which systems the agency may view and for what purpose, keeping data handling limited to the agreed work and the organisation’s policies.
Discuss consent and privacy requirements. Confirm who checks applicable notices, consent settings, retention practices, and data-sharing arrangements, because measurement must fit legal and platform obligations.
Set expectations for data quality. Agree how the teams will investigate missing, duplicated, delayed, or inconsistent events, so reporting limitations are recognised rather than mistaken for campaign performance.
Define the source of truth for key outcomes. Decide which records will be used for business decisions when platform reporting and internal records differ, because attribution views may not match accounting or operational records.
Mark unverified measures as provisional. Make clear which tracking elements still need validation, so early reports are interpreted with appropriate caution.

Agree on budget, testing, and commercial assumptions

Clarify the approved spend boundary. State what budget the agency may manage and what requires additional approval, because campaign changes can affect cash flow and business exposure.
Separate media spend from agency fees and other costs. Review how each cost is described and billed, so the business can assess the full cost of the work rather than looking at media alone.
Discuss the purpose of initial tests. Agree what uncertainty a test is meant to reduce, because testing without a decision question can consume budget without producing useful learning.
Set rules for budget movement. Decide whether the agency may shift spend between campaigns or objectives and when approval is required, keeping adjustments within agreed boundaries.
Review the economics behind the target. Discuss expected value, margins, fulfilment costs, and the actions that count as commercially useful, because a reported conversion is not necessarily a profitable outcome.
Treat forecasts as assumptions. Ask the agency to label inputs such as conversion rates, average order values, or lead quality expectations as assumptions when they are not verified, so projections are not presented as established facts.
Agree how performance will be judged. Identify the measures that will inform continuation, revision, or pause decisions, because the teams need a shared basis for evaluating work.
Explain the process for spending concerns. Decide how either party should raise unexpected costs, billing discrepancies, or material changes, so financial issues are addressed through an agreed route.

Set approval steps and working practices

Map the approval path. Identify who reviews copy, creative, targeting, landing pages, budgets, and launches, so work does not proceed on an unclear assumption of consent.
Agree what counts as approval. Decide how approvals are recorded and whether comments indicate a request for changes or permission to proceed, reducing the chance of misreading informal feedback.
Define the agency’s authority between approvals. Clarify which routine optimisations are within the agreed remit and which changes need explicit client confirmation, so the team can work efficiently without exceeding its mandate.
Set a process for urgent changes. Agree how time-sensitive issues are communicated and who can authorise action, while preserving the requirement to follow platform rules and internal controls.
Review brand and claims requirements. Share approved terminology, substantiation expectations, prohibited claims, and any mandatory disclosures, so creative work can be checked against the organisation’s standards.
Agree how policy concerns are handled. Decide who reviews a disapproval, limitation, or account notice and how the team will respond through official channels, because a concern needs diagnosis and correction rather than an attempt to bypass a rule.
Keep a record of material decisions. Choose a shared method for noting approvals, scope changes, and agreed exceptions, because a reliable record supports accountability when team members change.
Explain the revision process. Discuss how feedback is consolidated and how conflicting instructions are resolved, helping the agency avoid acting on incomplete or contradictory direction.

Establish communication, reporting, and the first review

Choose the main communication channels. Agree where routine questions, files, approvals, and urgent issues should be handled, so information is not scattered across untracked conversations.
Set a reporting rhythm. Decide how often the agency will provide updates and what each update should contain, because a consistent cadence makes it easier to spot questions and act on them.
Define the report contents. Include spend, delivery, relevant outcomes, tracking caveats, changes made, and decisions needed, so reports support action rather than simply presenting activity.
Agree how quickly issues should be raised. Set expectations for communicating material delivery problems, policy notices, tracking failures, or unexpected spend, because prompt visibility helps the business decide what to do.
Clarify who receives reports. Identify the people who need operational detail and those who need a higher-level summary, so information reaches decision-makers in a useful form.
Choose the first review date. Put a review meeting on both teams’ calendars after the initial work has had time to produce something worth assessing, using the date as a checkpoint rather than a promise of results.
Set the review questions. Plan to examine whether tracking is functioning, whether work stayed within scope, what has been learned, and what decisions are needed next, so the meeting can lead to practical actions.
Close with a written action list. Record each task, its owner, any dependency, and the next point for discussion, giving the relationship a clear start and a way to revisit unresolved items.