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The first 90 days of a marketing engagement, week by week

A good engagement spends its first fortnight on access and tracking, its first month on fixes, its second on campaigns, and its third on a fair verdict. Here is what you should see at each stage.

Written by Ali Sedighi, MBAPublished: Last updated:

The first 90 days of a marketing engagement decide whether the rest of it works. A good one follows a predictable order: access and tracking in the first two weeks, fixes in the first month, campaigns in the second, and a fair, numbers-based verdict in the third. This guide sets out what should happen in each stage, what you should see, and the warning signs that something is going wrong. Use it to judge any engagement, including one with us.

Before day one: the agreement

Before any work starts, you should have a short written agreement that states the scope, the monthly price, the notice period and who owns what. If any of those is vague, ask for it in writing.

Four things should be explicit:

  • Scope: which services, which towns, which job types.
  • Price: the management fee, and the fact that ad spend is separate.
  • Notice: how to end the engagement. With us, it is 30 days on a month-to-month plan.
  • Ownership: that every account and asset is registered to your business.

Our pricing page sets out our own terms, and our guide to vetting a marketing agency covers what to look for in anyone else's.

Weeks 1–2: access and tracking

The first fortnight is about seeing clearly. Nothing should be changed until it can be measured.

What should happen:

  1. Access in your name. Admin access to your website, Google Business Profile, Google Ads, analytics and any other accounts, with you as the owner.
  2. Call and text tracking. Every call, text and email from each source counted, so you can later see what each channel produced.
  3. Baseline. A record of where things stand: calls per week, profile views, website visitors, ad spend and, if you share it, booked jobs.
  4. A short audit. A list of the problems found, ranked by how much they are likely to cost you.

What you should see by day 14: a written baseline and a ranked list of problems. Warning sign: campaigns launched before tracking is in place. Without tracking, nobody will ever know what worked.

Weeks 3–4: fixes

The second fortnight goes to fixing leaks, because fixing a leak is almost always cheaper than buying more traffic.

Typical fixes for a trades business:

  • correcting the Google Business Profile's categories, service area, hours and services
  • making the phone number visible and tappable on every page of the website
  • speeding up slow pages on mobile
  • setting up a fast text-back for missed calls
  • starting a simple routine for asking customers for reviews

A worked example, with placeholder figures: a plumbing company misses 8 of 50 weekly calls. If it books 4 in 10 callers at $300 gross profit per job, those 8 missed calls are worth about $960 a week. A text-back that recovers half of them adds roughly $480 a week of gross profit, before a single new ad is bought. That is the sort of fix that belongs in weeks three and four.

What you should see by day 30: a list of fixes completed, and early signs in the numbers. Warning sign: a month of activity reports with no fixes you can point to.

Weeks 5–8: campaigns and content

The second month is when new work starts bringing in traffic. With tracking and fixes in place, every dollar can now be measured.

Depending on the plan, this stage includes:

  • Paid search. Google Ads or Local Services Ads aimed at the jobs and towns you want, during hours someone can answer.
  • Local search. Service and town pages that back up your profile, and a steady flow of reviews. See local search.
  • Website changes. Bigger improvements, or a rebuild if the audit showed the current site costs you calls.

Paid campaigns go through a learning period of several weeks. Results will be uneven at first. That is normal, as long as wasted searches are being cut each week and budget is moving towards what produces calls.

What you should see by day 60: campaigns live, wasted spend falling, and the first useful cost-per-call figures. Warning sign: reports full of impressions and clicks, but no mention of calls or booked jobs.

Weeks 9–12: the first fair verdict

By the end of the third month there is usually enough data to judge whether the plan is working. This is when you should get a frank review, not just another report.

A good 90-day review answers four questions:

  1. What changed? Calls, texts and booked jobs compared with the baseline from week one.
  2. What did it cost? Platform spend plus fees, and cost per booked job by channel.
  3. What worked and what didn't? With the honest conclusion about channels that should stop.
  4. What next? A plan for the following three months, with any budget changes justified by the numbers.

Some work, especially organic search, will still be building at day 90. A good review says so plainly and shows the early signs, such as rising profile views or new pages beginning to rank, rather than claiming success too early.

What the owner's side looks like

An engagement is a partnership, and the owner's habits matter as much as the agency's. In the first 90 days, the most useful things you can do are:

  • Answer the phone, or make sure someone does. Paid leads that reach voicemail are wasted.
  • Share outcomes. Tell your strategist which leads became jobs, even roughly. It turns cost per lead into cost per job.
  • Send photos. Real job photos make profiles and pages far more convincing than stock images.
  • Ask for reviews. A text to each happy customer right after the job is the simplest habit there is.

Warning signs to act on

Raise these with your agency straight away, and leave if they aren't fixed:

  • accounts set up in the agency's name instead of yours
  • no tracking, or tracking you can't see
  • ad spend mixed into the fee so you can't tell what Google was paid
  • reports that never mention calls or booked jobs
  • a strategist you can't reach directly

If you are already in an engagement showing several of these, our page on switching agencies cleanly explains how to move without losing your accounts. Or start with the free consultation and we will look at where your current engagement stands.

Frequently asked questions

When should I expect more calls?

Paid campaigns can produce calls in the first few weeks. Fixes to your profile and website often show within a month or two. Organic search work usually needs three to six months to show its full effect.

What should I be doing during the first 90 days?

Answering the phone, sharing which leads became jobs, sending photos of real work, and asking happy customers for reviews. Those four habits affect results as much as anything the agency does.

What if nothing has improved by day 90?

You should get a frank explanation of why and a clear choice: change the plan, change the budget, or stop. On a month-to-month plan, stopping is always an option.

Is the first month mostly setup?

Yes, and it should be. A month spent fixing tracking and foundations is what makes every later month measurable.