What Information Does Your Marketing Agency Need From You?
Your agency needs enough information to understand the business problem, make recommendations and perform its agreed work. That usually includes customer evidence, relevant economics, operational constraints, previous activity and access to the necessary systems. The precise requirements depend on the assignment.
Download the editable worksheet (Markdown). Replace the bracketed prompts with your own details.
Ask the agency to explain why it needs each item, how it will use it and what can proceed while an item is unavailable. Sending an entire company drive creates unnecessary risk and can make the important information harder to find.
Start with the business decision.
Tell the agency what the company is trying to improve and why it matters now. Explain the decisions its work is expected to support.
Useful context can include a product launch, a changing customer mix, a capacity problem or a revenue target. Distinguish the organization's goal from the agency's specific responsibility.
Share the constraints that would change a recommendation. An agency planning customer acquisition needs to know if the sales team is already overwhelmed or if the promoted product has a long fulfillment delay.
Supply customer evidence with its limitations.
Provide research, sales questions, objections and reasons customers choose or leave the business. Include the original wording where permission and confidentiality allow.
Tell the agency how the evidence was collected. Feedback from a handful of enthusiastic customers should not be presented as representative of every buyer. Sales anecdotes can be useful clues without becoming market statistics.
Explain which customers are commercially desirable and why. Revenue alone may conceal differences in servicing cost, retention or suitability. Where detailed financial records are unnecessary, give the agency an approved summary that still supports the decision.
Explain the economics relevant to the work.
For acquisition work, discuss contribution margin, average order or contract value, repeat behavior and cash constraints. For retention work, explain renewal timing, cancellation reasons and which customer actions appear related to continued use.
Use definitions your finance team accepts. A revenue target that excludes refunds should not be compared with a platform figure that includes them.
You do not need to distribute confidential financial statements to everyone involved. Agree on who needs detailed access and which planning assumptions other contributors can use.
Preserve what the agency has already learned.
Supply previous briefs, campaign results and the reasons important decisions were made. Include what failed, what was abandoned and what was never implemented.
The agency should carry forward the context established during the sales process. Ask it to prepare an initial summary so you can correct gaps instead of repeating the entire conversation.
In Agency Inner Circle #162, Tim discusses the cost of losing client context between sales and delivery. A practical client response is to maintain a short record of the business situation, past decisions and current uncertainties that both teams can update.
Give controlled access to the right people.
Prefer named user access with permissions appropriate to the work. Involve your IT or security owner when the assignment involves sensitive information or broad administrative rights.
CISA recommends multifactor authentication for business systems and stronger phishing-resistant methods where available. Apply your organization's access requirements to agency users as well as employees. Read CISA's business guidance.
Confirm who administers the accounts, who pays the platform and how access will end. Avoid putting passwords, recovery codes or personal customer records into a general briefing document. Use approved secure methods when credentials or restricted data must be shared.
Make the information exchange an ongoing responsibility.
Tell the agency who can answer product, finance, sales and technical questions. State when those people are available and how requests should be prioritized.
Update material facts when they change. A revised offer, a stock shortage or a new approval requirement can invalidate a plan that was sensible when it was written.
Ask the agency to maintain an unresolved-information list with the effect of each gap. That helps the client prioritize requests without treating every missing document as equally urgent.
Use this information checklist.
Complete the prompts with the agency and restrict access where appropriate.
- Our current business objective is [objective], and [person] owns the decision.
- Our priority customers are [group], based on [evidence].
- The economics relevant to this work are [approved assumptions and definitions].
- Our main operational constraints are [constraints].
- We have already tried [activity], and the available evidence shows [result or limitation].
- The agency needs access to [systems] for [specific purpose], approved by [owner].
- [People] can answer questions about [areas].
- We will update material changes through [process] and review open information requests on [date].
Use the onboarding guide to organize the exchange. The agency should be able to explain how each important fact changes its recommendations or its work.