Marketing and creative agencies

The process that only lives in one account manager's head

An agency's actual process, how a campaign gets set up in each ad platform, how a client gets onboarded, how a report gets assembled, usually exists as tribal knowledge held by whoever has been there longest. It gets taught by sitting someone next to them, which does not scale past a handful of people and does not survive that person leaving.

Where this actually shows up

Every account manager runs client onboarding slightly differently, so quality and cost depend on who is assigned
Platform-specific setup steps (ad accounts, tracking, billing) live in someone's memory and get re-figured-out each time
A client offboarding without a real access-removal checklist leaves a former client's team, or a former employee, with live access
New hires take weeks to become useful because there is no written version of "how we actually do this here"

Processes worth documenting first

New client onboarding, from signed contract to first deliverable
Campaign and ad account setup per platform
Client reporting and review cadence
Client and employee offboarding and access removal
Proposal and contract approval for non-standard terms

The best way in

Recommended method

Screen recording to SOP

Agency process is overwhelmingly software walkthroughs: setting up a campaign in an ad platform, configuring tracking, building a report template. Clicking through it once with the browser extension captures the exact screens and settings, which a typed description of "go into the ads manager and set it up" cannot.

See how it works

Generate a SOP free, no signup See pricing

No account neededNo credit cardSee the whole SOP before you sign up

Free templates for marketing and creative agencies

New client onboarding for an agency or consultancyClient onboarding is where most agencies leak margin. The work starts before the paperwork is done, the scope was never confirmed in writing, and the first invoice is delayed because nobody collected billing details. Each of those is a documented step away from being solved.Employee offboarding and access removalThis is the procedure most often requested in diligence and most often missing. An ex-employee who still has access to a customer database three months after leaving is both a security incident waiting to happen and an immediate finding in any audit. It is also cheap to document and easy to evidence, which makes it the best place to start.

Where this is not the right fit

Your process changes on every single account with no repeatable core. Documentation earns its keep on the parts that recur, not on genuinely bespoke one-off work.
You need client-facing, white-labelled documentation as the primary output rather than internal process. That is supported (client portal, white-label export), but the point of this page is the internal process work that makes delivery consistent in the first place.

Questions

We run client work differently for every account. Is this still useful?

Document the parts that actually repeat: onboarding, platform setup, reporting cadence, offboarding. Genuinely bespoke creative work does not need a procedure. Most agencies find more of their process repeats than they expected once someone looks for it.

Can we use this to hand off client work to a new account manager?

Yes. Record the outgoing person walking through their accounts on screen, or have them describe the non-obvious parts out loud, and turn that into documentation the incoming person actually reads instead of a rushed handover call. The free offboarding and access-removal template covers what has to happen to accounts and access at the same time.

Does this replace our project management tool?

No. It documents the repeatable procedure, not individual project tasks or timelines. The two work together: the procedure defines how a type of work gets done, the project tool tracks a specific instance of doing it.