Clients
Working with us · Overview

How a month with us runs, and what we need from you.

Six short pages. Each one answers the questions we get asked most by email. Read the one you need, or read this page once and you will know the shape of the whole engagement in five minutes.

The six pages How a month runs Between signing and launch For your sales team When you are stuck

The six pages

Scope

What your retainer covers

Answers: is this included, and what happens when I ask for something that is not?
Requests

How to send a brief or files

Answers: what do you need from me so this gets done first time, and how do I send footage?
Approvals

Approving creatives and launch plans

Answers: how do I approve, how do I ask for changes, and what happens if I do not reply?
Reports

Reading your monthly report

Answers: what am I looking at, what do CPL and ROAS mean, and why do two tools disagree?
Billing

Invoices, subscriptions and VAT

Answers: where is my invoice, when does the clock start, and who pays for ad spend?
Contact

Who you hear from, and pausing or ending

Answers: which channel for what, how fast we reply, and what you get back at the end?

How a month runs

Every retainer month follows the same pattern. Dates move with your agreement and the calendar, the order does not.

  1. Plan and brief, before the month starts. We send the launch plan for the coming month as a PDF on the thread: what runs, where, with which creatives. If you have a brief for us (an event, a new offer, a seasonal push), it needs to be in before this date so it makes the plan. See Requests.
  2. Creatives to approve. Ad creatives and posts arrive with a review page link and a PDF. You approve in one line or send one numbered list of changes. See Approvals.
  3. Launch. Approved work is scheduled and goes live on the dates in the plan. The first days after a launch or a big change are a learning phase, so early cost numbers move around before they settle.
  4. Weekly check-in. A short written update on the thread: what is live, what we changed, anything we need from you. Written first, so you can read it in two minutes and reply only if something needs a decision.
  5. Monthly report and review call. The report for the previous month arrives in the first week. Reply on the thread with questions, and if you want to talk it through, Stephen books a 30 to 45 minute call. See Reports.
One thread per topic. The launch plan, the creatives, the report and any brief each live on their own email thread. Reply on the thread the thing arrived on and nothing gets lost.

Between signing and launch

This is for paid media, creative and website work. If you are on the Decision Maker Pipeline, your six onboarding steps are at Onboarding. Two tracks run in parallel from the day the agreement is signed. Yours is short. Ours cannot start until yours is done.

Your track

Five things only you can do

  • Access. Partner access on Meta, Google Ads, Analytics, your website and anything else we will touch. Every grant has its own page under Access. This is the item that most often costs weeks, so do it on day one.
  • Footage and assets. Logos, brand files, product photos, raw video, as original files in a shared folder. See how to send files.
  • Approvals. Offer, copy, creatives and the landing page all need your written sign-off. Nothing goes live without it.
  • Card on the ad account. Ad spend is paid by you to Meta or Google on your own card, inside your own account. Add it before launch week, not on launch day. See ad spend.
  • Legal footer. Company registration number, registered address, a business email and phone, a privacy policy URL and a terms URL. A page that collects a name and phone number cannot take paid traffic without them.
Our track

What we build while you do that

  • Tracking. Pixel, conversion events, analytics and the CRM connection, tested end to end before a euro is spent.
  • Creative. Scripts, edits, statics and copy, sent to you for approval.
  • Build. Landing pages, forms, automations, audiences and the campaign itself, built and left paused.
  • Test. A real lead submitted through the full flow, alerts checked on your phone and inbox.
  • Launch. Ads switched on, with a date confirmed on the thread. "Built but paused" means everything is ready and we are waiting on one of the items in your track.
After launch, expect a learning phase. The platforms need a run of results before they settle on who to show your ads to. For roughly the first week after launch, or after any change of page, audience or objective, cost per lead moves around. That is normal. We do not judge a campaign on its first few days and we ask you not to either.

For your sales team: two things, every lead

Print this section and put it next to whoever answers enquiries. Everything we can report or improve on your account depends on these two habits.

  1. Call every lead within five minutes. Every enquiry gets an automated personal reply within a minute, day or night, then an alert lands on your phone and inbox. From there it is a human job. Leads called inside the first hour convert many times better than leads called the next day. If you cannot call, send a WhatsApp or an email the same hour.
  2. Mark the outcome in the CRM, with a value. When a deal closes, open the opportunity, add the deal value and drag it to Closed Won. When it is dead, mark it Lost with a one-line reason. Without this we cannot tell you your cost per sale, we cannot see which ads bring buyers rather than browsers, and we cannot make the case to scale. Automated follow-ups keep going until a lead is marked Won or Lost, so leaving a closed deal in an open stage also means the customer keeps getting chased.
If you do not use our CRM, the same two things apply: reply within the hour, and send us the month's closed count and value with one line per lead at month end. Detail on how that feeds the report is on Reports.

When you are stuck, one rule

Reply to the thread with a screenshot of the whole window and put the word BLOCKED in the subject line. Not a crop, not a description, the whole window with the address bar showing. BLOCKED emails are handled the same working day.

BLOCKED:

Do not work around the blocker. Do not create a second account, delete anything or try the same failing action repeatedly. Most of the slow, expensive problems we have seen started as a workaround for a one-line fix. If in doubt, stop and send the screenshot.

Common questions on this page

What happens next while we get the videos or access ready?

Our track keeps moving: tracking, build, automations and creative all progress in the background. The one thing that cannot happen without your track is the launch itself. If you tell us which item is taking longest, we reorder our side so nothing waits that does not have to.

How long does it take from signing to launch?

It depends almost entirely on your track. When access, assets, approvals and the card are done in the first week, the build follows within a couple of weeks. Every day an access grant or an approval waits moves the launch date by a day, and we say so on the thread rather than absorb it quietly.

Do we have to use email? We prefer WhatsApp or a call.

Anything you want actioned goes by email, because it is the record we work from and the thread is what our team picks up when Stephen is out. WhatsApp is for the same-day urgent case. Calls are booked, not walked into. See Contact.

Why did I get sent to the onboarding steps when I am not a Decision Maker Pipeline client?

Some of the procedures are identical, especially the Meta partner grant in Step 2. If a link takes you to a page that mentions the CRM and you do not have one, follow only the part you were pointed at and ignore the rest.

Stuck? Email stephen@thegrowthbully.com with a screenshot of the whole window.