When you’re considering working with a creative agency, it’s important to understand what happens between signing on the dotted line and reaching the point where your agency really gets you. At TwoTone, we think of that window as your first 100 days.
Before you start picturing 100 days of kickoff meetings, questionnaires, and asking IT for passwords, let us clear something up: You do not have to wait 100 days for us to start doing your marketing. The work starts right away, and the client onboarding phases happen alongside it.
During those first 100 days, we're learning how your organization operates, who you’re trying to reach, and how your team communicates. We want to see what you’ve tried before and where we see opportunities ahead. The goal is to get to the point where you don’t have to explain everything before we can get to work.
Key Takeaways:
- The work starts right away. We learn and execute at the same time.
- Your involvement is highest upfront. As we learn your organization, we need less direction.
- By day 100, we’re more proactive. We know your priorities, processes, and preferences well enough to take more off your plate.
What Are the First 100 Days For?
There are three big things we want to accomplish during this phase:
- Learn your organization, audience, and goals.
- Review your existing marketing and establish how we'll work together.
- Build the foundation for a long-term partnership.
If you hire an agency for one defined project, they can learn what they need to know, complete the project, and send you on your way. An ongoing full-service marketing partnership, however, works differently.
We’re not just learning enough to complete this email, this campaign, or this website update. We’re building institutional knowledge that makes the next email, the next campaign, or the next website update better. The more context we have, the more confidently we can make recommendations.
What Are the Client Onboarding Phases During Your First 100 Days?
Every organization is different, so our first 100 days onboarding roadmap isn’t a rigid checklist. Sometimes, clients come in with urgent projects that need immediate attention, and other times, they need more foundational strategy before it makes sense to launch something new. Regardless, across those first 100 days, there is a clear progression.
Get oriented → Start building → Gain momentum → Get smarter → Become more proactive
The purpose is to move from being the new agency asking lots of questions to a marketing partner who understands how your organization works. Unfortunately, that takes more than one kickoff meeting. Your brand guide gives us the basics, but it can’t tell us your team’s preferences, common customer questions, or busiest seasons. That’s the context we’re building.
1. Get Oriented: Understand Your Organization, Priorities, and People
The first of our creative agency onboarding milestones is pretty straightforward: we need to get to know you.
Early in the partnership, expect questions (probably a lot of them). We want to understand your goals, audience, brand, priorities, team, and what success looks like. We’ll also want to know the less formal stuff, like what frustrates your team, what keeps getting pushed to “later,” and what you never want us to do again.
We’ll also figure out who is who:
→ Who is our primary contact?
→ Who needs to approve a major campaign?
→ Who knows absolutely everything about that one service?
→ Who should we talk to when we need a technical answer?
At the same time, we’ll establish how we work together: projects, feedback, meetings, approvals, and communication.
For ongoing partnerships, your dedicated account, project management, and marketing team keeps it all moving. You don’t need to figure out who at TwoTone handles what. Bring it to us, and we’ll take it from there.
2. Build Context: Learn What Works, What Doesn’t, and Where Opportunities Exist
Once we understand the basics, we start digging deeper.
→ What’s working and what isn’t?
→ What have you already tried?
→ Where is time and money getting wasted?
→ What opportunities are being missed?
This is where we shift from gathering information to making sense of it. Sometimes, the smartest recommendation is, “keep doing that” (we don’t believe in changing things simply to prove we’re doing something). Other times, we’ll spot an opportunity your team hasn’t had the time or capacity to tackle.
This is where strategy and consulting become important. We connect your goals, audience, channels, and priorities so we’re not just adding more marketing to your plate. We’re figuring out which marketing is actually worth doing.
3. Gain Momentum: Put Early Priorities and Projects Into Motion
Here’s the part people sometimes misunderstand about a 100-day onboarding period: We are not spending 100 days studying you before we touch your marketing. The work starts much sooner.
While we’re learning, we’re also moving priorities forward, planning campaigns, and starting recurring work. Strategy and execution happen together. However, that doesn’t mean we rush everything, either. Good marketing requires context. We’ll move quickly where we can and take the time to think where it matters.
4. Get Smarter: Use Feedback and Results to Sharpen Our Approach
Our first project together will teach us a lot. Our fiftieth will teach us even more. That’s how the partnership gets smarter.
Every round of feedback and every result gives us more context. We learn what resonates with your audience, what your leadership prefers, and which projects need more runway. For digital marketing, the data adds another layer. We use performance to refine messaging, targeting, and future recommendations.
Each project makes the next one better. The more we learn, the less guesswork there is.
5. Become Proactive: Anticipate Needs and Rely Less on Your Team for Direction
This is where we want to be by the end of the first 100 days. Anyone can take an order, but a strong marketing partner should spot opportunities, flag problems, connect the dots, and make recommendations without waiting for your next assignment. For example:
→ We plan for what’s coming before you have to ask.
→ We connect campaigns across channels instead of treating them as separate tasks.
→ When priorities shift, we adjust without you managing every detail.
That’s when TwoTone starts feeling less like an outside vendor and more like an extension of your team.
Are We Really Onboarding for 100 Days?
Yes—but probably not in the way you’re imagining. As we previously mentioned, onboarding and execution happen together. Those 100 days are designed to build context, not delay progress, and urgent work absolutely does not have to wait.
Think of the agency client onboarding timeline less like a 100-day orientation and more like a ramp. At the beginning, we need more input because we have more to learn. As we gain context, we can move faster with less explanation.
We’ll still ask questions after day 100, and we’ll still learn new things about your organization years into the relationship. Your goals, your audience, your team—they will all change. Day 100 isn’t a magical moment when we suddenly know everything, but it is a useful benchmark for what a healthy partnership should be becoming.
How Do You Help Us Get Up to Speed?
You don’t need to write us a novel, but a little insider knowledge goes a long way.
- Tell us what Google can’t.
→ We can research your industry and study your website, but your team knows the history, customer conversations, and oddly specific details that make your organization different. Tell us those things. - Give us a heads-up of what's coming.
→ Big event coming? Priorities shifting? Sales hearing something new? Loop us in early. We’re much better at planning ahead than performing marketing miracles at the last minute (even though we totally can do that). The earlier we understand what’s ahead, the more strategically we can support it. - Share brutally honest feedback.
→ Please don’t approve something you don’t like because you’re trying to be nice. We promise you, our feelings will survive. Specific feedback helps us learn faster, and the faster we understand your preferences and priorities, the less explanation you’ll have to give next time.
What Happens After Day 100?
No graduation ceremony. No diploma. Probably no cake. We just keep going. The difference is, by now, we’ve found our rhythm.
We keep executing, reviewing results, refining strategy, and spotting what’s next. Your team stays involved where your expertise matters, without having to manage every piece of the process.
Depending on the partnership, that rhythm might include daily creative work, regular updates, recurring meetings, KPI reviews, annual planning, or some combination built around what your organization needs.
The goal is simple: A good agency partnership should get easier over time. The more context we have, the more confidently we can act and the less marketing management lands back on your plate.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the typical client onboarding phases at a creative agency?
Every agency is different. At TwoTone, we get oriented, build context, gain momentum, get smarter, and become proactive (and yes, those phases overlap…marketing rarely waits its turn).
Why does TwoTone use a first 100 days onboarding roadmap instead of 30 or 90 days?
Getting to know an organization takes more than a kickoff meeting. The first 100 days give us time to learn while doing real work. Day 100 isn’t a finish line, but it is when the partnership should start feeling much more established.
Does marketing start before day 100?
Absolutely. Onboarding and execution happen at the same time. We start moving early priorities while continuing to learn. Your marketing does not sit in a waiting room for 100 days.
What creative agency onboarding milestones should we expect?
By day 100, priorities should be clear, work should be moving, and we should know your brand, audience, goals, and processes well enough to need a lot less hand-holding.
How involved does our team need to be during the agency client onboarding timeline?
More upfront; less over time. We need your expertise early so we can eventually run with it. For the full breakdown, read Client Onboarding Expectations: How Much Heavy Lifting Is Needed From Your Team?
What if we have an urgent marketing project during onboarding?
Tell us. Deadlines don’t politely wait for onboarding to end. We’ll figure out what’s needed, adjust priorities, and keep things moving.
What if we already have an internal marketing team?
Great! We can fill gaps, bring specialized expertise, or own larger pieces of strategy and execution. We fit into your team, not the other way around.
Will everything be figured out by Day 100?
Probably not, and we’d be suspicious of anyone who promised that. Your organization will keep changing, and we’ll keep learning. By day 100, we should simply have enough context to work together much more efficiently.
The First 100 Days Are Just the Beginning
Hiring a marketing agency shouldn’t mean signing an agreement and then wondering when the marketing starts. Your first 100 days are about building context while building momentum. We learn your organization, get work moving, and eventually, stop needing the backstory every time.
Better yet, we start seeing what’s coming before you have to ask. That’s the goal: less managing your marketing agency and more trusting your marketing team.
Need more capacity, clearer strategy, or a team that can take marketing off your plate? Start with a 30-minute Discovery Call. We’ll talk about what’s working, what’s not, and where TwoTone could fit in.
