What to collect before the work starts

Onboarding gets treated as administration, which is why it is usually done badly. It is not administration. It is the only point at which the client is motivated, attentive and willing to do paperwork, and everything you fail to collect during that window you will spend the next three months chasing.

Access, and how to get it properly

This is the part most agencies get wrong, and the wrongness is invisible until it is expensive. The wrong way is to ask for usernames and passwords. It feels faster and it creates four separate problems: you are now storing credentials you have no safe way to protect, the access breaks the moment the client enables two-factor authentication, you cannot tell which of your staff used it, and offboarding means asking a client to change their password rather than clicking revoke.

The right way is delegated access — you are granted permission on your own account, scoped to what you need. Every major platform supports it, the client can see exactly what you have, and either side can revoke without breaking anything else.

• Google Business Profile — manager access, not the owner login. Never accept ownership transfer unless the client explicitly wants that.
• Google Analytics — property-level access at the permission level the work needs, which is usually not administrator.
• Google Search Console — delegated user, full or restricted depending on whether you need to submit changes.
• Google Ads — linked through a manager account rather than a shared login.
• Meta assets — through Business Manager, with the client's business as the asset owner and your agency as a partner.
• Website — a user account of your own on the CMS, and hosting or DNS access only if you genuinely need it.

One caution worth stating plainly: never take ownership of a client's Business Profile, ad account, or domain as a convenience. It creates a hostage situation you did not intend, and it is the single most common reason agency relationships end in a legal letter rather than an email.

The business facts you will need later

Collect these once, in writing, and store them where the whole team can see them. Every one of these is something an account manager will otherwise ask the client about twice.

• Exact legal name, trading name, and the name as it should appear publicly — these are frequently three different things.
• Address as it appears on the Business Profile, and whether the business serves customers at that address or travels to them.
• Service area: the actual one, in the client's words, not the aspirational one on their website.
• Opening hours including holidays, and who updates them.
• Phone numbers, including whether a tracking number may be used and on what.
• The services they want more of, and — more useful — the ones they want less of.
• Their three real competitors, named by them. This is more accurate than anything you will find yourself.

The things nobody asks and everybody needs

1. 1

   Who decides

   Name the person who can approve work and the person who can stop it. In a small business these are usually the same person; in a slightly larger one, assuming so costs you a month.

2. 2

   How they want to be contacted

   Ask, and then use it. An owner who reads texts and ignores email is not being difficult, and discovering it in month three is your fault, not theirs.

3. 3

   What success looks like to them

   Get a sentence in their words. "More calls from the east side" is a brief. "Improve our SEO" is not, and if that is all you have, keep asking.

4. 4

   What went wrong last time

   Most clients have hired someone before. Ten minutes on what they hated is the most efficient research you will ever do.

5. 5

   Their worst month and their busiest month

   Seasonality changes what a chart means. Without it you will report a bad August as a failure.

6. 6

   Anything they cannot say publicly

   Pending litigation, a bad review they are contesting, a location about to close. Ask directly; it is less awkward now than in a published post.

Assets and permissions

Logos in a vector format, photographs they own, and — critically — written confirmation that they have the right to use the images they are giving you. Stock photography someone downloaded years ago is a recurring and genuinely expensive problem.

If you will be writing or posting as the business, agree the tone and the boundaries now. A single page covering what the business does and does not say is worth more than any style guide.

Make it one step for the client

The checklist above is long, which is the problem. Delivered as six emails over three weeks it will not be completed. Delivered as one link with everything on it, it usually is — because the client does it once, while they are still excited about having hired you.

That is the entire argument for onboarding links: not that they are clever, but that they compress a three-week chase into a single sitting while motivation is at its peak.