From Contract Signed to Ads Live: The Exact Client Onboarding Checklist at a Paid Ads Agency
What actually happens your first two weeks with a paid ads agency. The exact emails, forms, calls, and access steps Creekside sends every new client.
TL;DR: The first two weeks with a paid ads agency involve more logistics than most clients expect. Day one brings an onboarding email with a form, a dedicated communication channel, and a shared drive folder. Work cannot start until the form is complete and you have shared access to four platforms. Two calls happen before a single ad goes live: a kickoff call after the form, and a 10-to-14-day review call where you approve the campaign strategy and ads launch same day.
| Onboarding Step | When |
|---|---|
| Onboarding email (form + channel + Drive folder) | Day 1 after signing |
| Client onboarding form completed | Days 1-5 (required before build starts) |
| Platform access shared (4 platforms) | Days 1-5 (required before build starts) |
| Kickoff call | After form is complete |
| Service agreement signed | Before campaign build begins |
| 10-14 day review call + same-day ad launch | Days 10-14 |
| First performance reports | After a few weeks of live data |
| Ongoing check-in rhythm | Every 2 weeks |
From Contract Signed to Ads Live: The Exact Client Onboarding Checklist at a Paid Ads Agency
Most people who hire a paid ads agency for Google Ads or Meta Ads expect campaigns to go live within days. What actually happens is a structured two-week window of forms, calls, platform access steps, and agreements that have to complete before a single ad gets built. Skipping or rushing any part of it pushes the launch date out by the same amount.
This post walks through exactly what the paid ads agency client onboarding process looks like at Creekside Marketing, step by step, from the day you sign to the day your campaigns go live. It is based on a client onboarding walkthrough Peterson published on the Creekside Marketing YouTube channel: What Our Onboarding Process Looks Like.
What Arrives in Your Inbox the Day You Sign
On day one, you receive an onboarding email. It contains three things: a link to your client onboarding form, instructions for accessing your dedicated client communication channel, and a Google Drive folder where ad creatives, logos, and raw images will be stored and shared throughout the engagement. The communication channel access comes via a separate system email, but it is initiated at the same time. From the moment you sign, there is one designated place for communication and one designated place for creative assets.
The onboarding form is the most critical piece. Work on your campaigns cannot begin until two things are complete: the onboarding form is fully filled out, and you have granted access to all required platforms. “We can’t begin building any of your campaigns until we receive all of the onboarding documents filled out and access to all of the various platforms that we’ll need access to,” Peterson explains in the onboarding walkthrough. That is not a formality. It is the actual starting gate for campaign work.
What the Onboarding Form Asks (and Why Completeness Matters More Than You Think)
The onboarding form is the single most important client deliverable during the first week. It covers everything the team needs to build accurate, relevant ads for your business, and the depth of your answers directly determines the quality of what gets built before the first dollar is spent.
The form requests:
- Basic business information: physical location or service area, contact details, and where to direct ad traffic
- A breakdown of your services or products: everything you want to advertise, with as much detail as possible about what differentiates you from competitors
- Past ad experience: what types of ads you have run, what performed well, and what you want replicated
- What success looks like: how you define results and how you want outcomes tracked
- Ad creative assets: any images, video footage, logos, or raw creative files available for the team to work with
- Preferred ad types and platforms: which ad formats and platforms you are prioritizing
The philosophy behind the form is direct: you know your business better than any agency ever will. “We always say we’d rather you give us too much than too little because this directly has an impact on how good we can create your ads,” Peterson says. “If you don’t give us some information and we don’t know about it, we can’t know to include it in our ads.”
That is not a disclaimer. It is a real production constraint. The onboarding form is how your business knowledge transfers into campaign strategy. Thorough answers reduce back-and-forth during the kickoff call and get campaigns live faster.
Platform Access: Four Platforms, and Why Meta Is the Hard Part
Four platforms require access before campaign work can begin: Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics, Google Ads, and Meta Ads (Facebook and Instagram). The goal is a clean handoff: you share access once, and the team handles setup from start to finish without needing to involve you again. “You can basically just hand it off to us and you never have to touch it again. We can handle setup from start to finish once we get access to all these platforms,” Peterson explains.
For the Google side of things, the onboarding document includes specific step-by-step instructions for sharing each platform. There is no guesswork about where to go or what to grant.
Meta Ads is a different situation, and Peterson is candid about it. “Meta ads is extremely infuriating and you can often run into issues sharing access to these platforms,” he says in the walkthrough. “They just make it difficult. I don’t know why they feel they need to do that but they do.” Because Meta account sharing is genuinely complicated enough to trip up even experienced users, the onboarding documentation includes dedicated video walkthroughs specifically for that step.
If you run into problems with any platform during access sharing, the kickoff call is the right place to resolve it. The team walks through any outstanding access issues live on the call, so you are not on your own trying to decode permission settings inside a platform you may not know well.
The Kickoff Call and the 10-to-14-Day Launch Review: Two Calls, Two Purposes
Two calls happen before ads go live. They serve completely different purposes, and knowing which is which helps you prepare for each one correctly. The kickoff call happens right after the onboarding form is complete and access is shared. The review call happens 10 to 14 days after signing, once campaigns have been fully built. Neither replaces the other.
The kickoff call is a verification call. Its purpose is to review your form answers with the team, confirm that everyone is aligned on what you are trying to accomplish, and work through any platform access issues that are still outstanding. “We use this as a chance to kind of just review all of your answers, make sure that we’re on the same page as to what you’re trying to accomplish with your ads,” Peterson explains. There is no campaign presentation yet. The campaigns have not been built.
The review call 10 to 14 days after signing is where the actual campaign strategy gets presented. By that point, the team has built the campaigns and is ready to walk through the full setup, the creative direction, and the 90-day plan for your goals. “We use this as a chance to essentially go through the entire setup with you from start to finish, showing you exactly what our plan is over the next 90 days to help you accomplish your business goals,” Peterson says. If you have notes or adjustments after seeing the campaigns, this is the time to raise them. “We’ll go in and we make those changes same day typically so we can get the ads launched pretty much as soon as we hop off that final call.”
Before campaign building starts, a service agreement gets sent. It confirms pricing and confirms that the engagement is month-to-month with no long-term contract lock-in. “Our services are month-to-month,” Peterson explains. That agreement needs to be completed before build work begins.
Reporting, Billing, and What to Expect After the Campaigns Go Live
Once campaigns are live, the reporting and check-in rhythm starts. Performance reports go out every two weeks. You also have direct access to your Google Ads and Meta Ads accounts at all times, so checking in on performance is always an option on your own schedule, independent of the formal report cadence.
There is a meaningful difference between the two platforms when it comes to reporting. Google Ads reports update live inside the platform, so the numbers you see when you log in reflect current performance. Meta Ads is less predictable. “Facebook ads is a little bit more finicky,” Peterson explains, “so you will receive updates on the performance every two weeks as to how those are performing, but you’ll always have access to the Facebook account.” Having direct account access for both platforms means you are never waiting on the agency to see what is happening in your own campaigns.
On billing: invoices come once a month, on the specific date you signed. If you signed on the 18th, that is your billing date each month, not the first. “At the beginning of the month of when you signed with us, not necessarily the first of the month,” Peterson clarifies. Knowing this in advance prevents confusion about when charges appear.
Reports start after a few weeks of live campaign data. The first weeks after launch are data collection, not reporting. The first biweekly report comes when there is enough real signal to analyze.
The Real Bottleneck: Why the Onboarding Form Controls the Launch Date
The single biggest variable in how quickly new client campaigns go live is how quickly the onboarding form gets completed and platform access gets shared. This is not a scheduling constraint on the agency side. It is an information flow constraint, and it shows up in every client engagement.
The sequence is strictly dependent: the form has to complete before the kickoff call can happen. Access has to be shared before the build can start. The build has to finish before the review call can happen. The review call has to happen before ads go live. Each step gates the next.
Creekside’s onboarding documentation exists specifically to reduce friction on the client side of that chain. The step-by-step platform instructions, the dedicated video walkthroughs for Meta access sharing, and the kickoff call itself (which handles any remaining access issues) are all built to keep the timeline moving without requiring clients to figure out complicated platform mechanics on their own. “It’s what you’ve hired us for,” Peterson says, referring to the kickoff call’s role in resolving access problems. “So we’ll do that during that call.”
In practice, clients who complete the form in the first two or three days and share platform access within the same week are live with campaigns in the 10-to-14-day window the process is designed for. Delays extend the timeline by exactly how long they take.
Five Questions to Ask Any Paid Ads Agency Before You Sign
Before the onboarding process starts, the conversations you have during the proposal phase tell you whether you are dealing with a structured agency or a generalist with no repeatable system. Generic answers during the sales process predict vague handoffs during execution. These five questions cut through generic positioning and get to specifics:
What do I need to provide before you start building, and what happens if I am slow to get it to you? A structured agency will explain the form, the platform access requirements, and the timeline impact of delays. A non-answer means there is no real intake process.
How long does it typically take from signing to live campaigns? Know the realistic expectation. Ten to fourteen days is a reasonable benchmark for a structured engagement. Faster timelines usually mean less upfront diagnostic work.
Will I always have direct access to my own accounts? The answer should be an unqualified yes. Any hesitation is a serious flag. You own your ad accounts, and an agency should never be the gatekeeper to your own performance data.
What is your reporting cadence and what does a report actually include? Biweekly updates with account-level performance data is a reasonable baseline. A monthly summary with no in-between platform access is not.
What are your contract terms? Month-to-month terms protect you. Long-term commitments from an agency should come with a clear and specific rationale.
FAQ
How long does paid ads agency client onboarding take from signing to live campaigns?
The standard window is 10 to 14 days. That assumes the onboarding form is completed within the first few days and platform access is shared within the same week. Delays on either push the launch date out by the same amount.
What platforms do I need to share access to during onboarding?
Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics, Google Ads, and Meta Ads. The onboarding documentation includes step-by-step instructions for each, plus dedicated video walkthroughs for Meta, which has a more complicated access-sharing process than the Google platforms.
When do performance reports start?
Reports start after a few weeks of live data, once there is enough signal to report on meaningfully. The first biweekly report comes after that threshold, not on day one of launch.
Is the engagement month-to-month?
Yes. The service agreement confirms month-to-month terms. There is no long-term lock-in.
When does billing start, and what day of the month is it?
Billing starts the month you sign and runs on the specific date you signed each month, not the first. If you sign on the 22nd, billing happens on the 22nd each month going forward.
If you want to see what a structured audit of your current Google or Meta Ads account looks like before committing to anything, the Creekside 10K Profit Audit runs through the same kind of diagnostic the team uses at the start of every new client engagement. No cost, no obligation.
Author: Peterson Rainey Peterson Rainey is the founder of Creekside Marketing. He is a mechanical engineer who moved into paid advertising because of a talent for finding meaningful signal in complex data. He manages Google Ads campaigns for business owners and white-label agency partners, and has audited more than $20M in ad spend across 200+ accounts. He partners with Cade, an MBA-trained Meta Ads specialist, to run dedicated specialist campaigns for clients across multiple industries.
