Marketing onboarding checklist: for a new client and for a new hire, with the first thirty days

A marketing onboarding checklist is the list of things that must happen in the first days of a new relationship so that the work can start properly. The relationship is either a new client joining an agency or freelancer, or a new marketer joining a company. Both need the same four things in the first week: access to every account, a written goal with a number, a baseline of current performance and a clear route for communication. Everything else follows from those. A team that skips them spends month two discovering that nobody knows who owns the domain.

This page gives one checklist for each case, a thirty day plan for the first month, and the mistakes that cause the most rework. Use the section that matches your situation, or both if you run a team that hires and takes on clients.

Part one: onboarding a new marketing client

This is the checklist for an agency, consultant or freelancer. The client can use it too, as a list of what to prepare.

Before the kickoff

• Signed agreement with scope, term, fees, reporting and how either side can end it.
• A named contact on each side, with a deputy who can decide in their absence.
• A short intake form: business, customers, products, competitors, past campaigns, what has failed.
• Payment set up and the first invoice date agreed.

Access and ownership

Get access in the client's name, never the agency's name, to every account the work touches. The client should own each one, with the agency invited as a user.

Account	Access needed	Who owns it
Domain and hosting	Read access to DNS, and a developer contact	Client
Website CMS	An editor login, not the owner login	Client
Google Analytics and Search Console	Standard or restricted user	Client
Google Ads and Meta ads	Standard access through the client's manager account	Client
Google Business Profile	Manager role	Client
Email platform and CRM	A user seat with a defined role	Client
Social accounts	Admin or editor role	Client
Brand assets	Logo files, fonts, colours, photographs, brand guide	Client

Writing ownership into the agreement on day one avoids the most painful dispute in the industry, which is a client who cannot access their own ad account after the relationship ends. If the client has no brand guide, the brand guidelines template lists what to collect.

Goals and baseline

• One primary goal with a number and a date, such as leads per month or revenue from a channel.
• Two or three supporting measures.
• A baseline for each, taken from the last twelve months, with the source named.
• Tracking confirmed to be working: forms, calls and purchases are recorded and the numbers match the client's own records.
• The size of the budget and who can approve extra spend.

Working agreements

• The meeting rhythm: weekly short call, monthly review.
• The report format and the date it arrives. The five part client report is a structure clients read.
• Response times on both sides.
• An approval path for content, with a named approver and a deadline for feedback.
• One shared place for files and decisions.

Part two: onboarding a new marketing hire

For a company bringing in a marketer, the list changes from access and baseline to context and early wins.

When	Focus	Checklist
Before day one	Be ready	Laptop, logins requested, calendar invites, a buddy named, the first week mapped out
Week one	Learn the business	Meet sales, support and the founder; listen to recorded customer calls; read the last four quarters of results; get access to every marketing account
Week two	Learn the customer	Read reviews and support tickets; sit in on three sales calls; review the current personas and the brand guide
Week three	Learn the numbers	Walk through the dashboards with the person who built them; confirm what each metric means; list the gaps
Week four	Propose	Present the findings, a ninety day plan and one small experiment to start immediately

The ninety day plan should be specific. The page on turning the plan into a ninety day launch shows how to break one into weeks.

The first thirty days at a glance

1. Days 1 to 3. Kickoff, access, intake form, goal written down.
2. Days 4 to 7. Audit of the website, tracking, accounts and existing content. Write down what you found without recommending anything yet.
3. Days 8 to 14. Record the baseline. Interview the sales team or the customers. Agree the priorities.
4. Days 15 to 21. Deliver the first quick win: a fixed tracking tag, a corrected listing, a rewritten landing page.
5. Days 22 to 30. Present the plan, the first report and the next month's calendar.

Mistakes that cause rework

• Starting work before tracking is verified. A month of results that cannot be trusted is a month lost.
• Several goals with no order. If everything is a priority, the weekly call becomes an argument.
• Agency owned accounts. It delays handover and hurts trust.
• No single decision maker. Feedback from five people on one draft takes two weeks.
• Skipping the customer conversation. Interviews with five buyers beat a week of desk research.
• A report with no actions. Each report should end with three decisions for the next month.

Questions about marketing onboarding

What should a marketing client onboarding checklist include?

A signed agreement, named contacts, access to every account in the client's name, a written goal with a baseline, working agreements and a thirty day plan.

How long should marketing onboarding take?

Access and goals should be settled in the first week. The full onboarding, through to the first report, takes about a month.

What do I need from a client to start?

Account access, brand assets, a list of products or services, details of past work, the goal and the budget.

What should a new marketing hire do in the first week?

Meet the people who sell and support the product, get access to the accounts and read recent results. Hold off on changes until week three.

Who should own the ad and analytics accounts?

The client or employer. Agencies and freelancers should work as invited users.

Onboarding is the moment to record what the assistants say

Your baseline lists traffic, leads and cost. It rarely lists what an assistant tells a buyer about the client in the first place. That gap matters on day one, because it is the only moment when you can record the starting point before your own work changes it. Ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity the questions the client's buyers ask, write down which businesses are named and what is said about the client, and keep the record with the other baselines. AI Knows Us does this across the assistants and keeps the results from each run, so month three can be compared with week one.