The Marketing Work Done Early That Pays Off Later: Our Experts Weigh In
Author:
Holland Adhaus
Category:
Marketing
Like it or not, the return on a marketing investment often runs on a delay. There are quick wins, of course. But a lot of work that an agency begins right after you sign on the dotted line needs time for it to build the results you’re looking for.
To understand the process and payoff, we asked our team to walk through the early work in their area of expertise, and what a client gets from it in the future.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
↣ Audit account access at onboarding and require the CRM fields you’ll want to use later. Tracking down a login can take months, and an empty field means there’s no list to pull when you need one.
↣ A kickoff brief and a documented brand voice cut revision rounds for years. Clients who share their vision early get faster turnarounds on everything that follows.
↣ Build once and reuse. A photo and video library stays usable for two to three years, and a component-based website turns a new page into an afternoon of work.
↣ Brand decisions cost the most to change once the brand is recognizable. Design the logo and visual system to flex across future uses, since work built around a trend dates fastest.
↣ Platforms need time. Paid bidding learns after 20 conversions a month for three months, traditional media shows early signs in four to eight weeks with outcomes at three to six months, and search visibility takes several months to build.
Paul Frodge, President & CEO
I used to be more flexible about how much got nailed down at the beginning before we started building campaigns. Now an engagement starts with four things: ideal customer profiles, a point of differentiation no competitor can claim, KPIs that tie to real business impact, and a tracking setup that follows a lead as close to revenue as the client’s systems allow, ideally straight through an ERP — I want that tracking automated wherever it can be. All of that shapes the strategy and tells us which tactics will deliver the best ROI.
When it comes to budget, most owners want to put money into direct response first, because those leads convert quickly and show up as revenue in the current quarter. Brand building is the second conversation, when it comes up at all. But really, it deserves equal footing. A company that gets thought of first, best, and most often earns cheaper leads for years. That’s what the foundation work is buying, and it shouldn’t be skipped.
“Don’t discount the impact of foundation work. A brand people already know makes every lead we generate cheaper to win.”
Allie Schroeder, Marketing & Account Director
One of my major responsibilities as Account Director is making sure our internal team has what they need to do the job, which makes onboarding a crucial phase that sets up everything after it. We begin every new partnership with an audit of who has access to ad accounts, analytics, listings, profiles, and more.
This is often the hardest part when transferring marketing responsibilities to an external provider. The person who “owns” an account has usually left the company, or no one can find the login. I once had a client spend months trying to get ad account access from their old agency, only to be denied outright.
My advice: know who owns your marketing profiles and how to log into them (even if you don’t do anything else with them). It saves everyone months. It also matters more than ever in the age of AI, which describes companies using whatever profiles they can find. Your reputation is largely what everyone else says about you, and owning your profiles can be a way to shape that reputation.
“Know who owns your marketing profiles and how to log into them. It saves everyone months.”
Justin Ellison, Creative Director
The first month sets the pace for every next step. We run a kickoff meeting and come out of it with a creative brief both sides have signed off on, so the client and the agency agree on the goals from day one. The second piece is a clear brand voice and vision. Once those are documented, our team can produce new work without stopping to ask about every judgment call. A few weeks of that up front pays back on every piece of creative that follows.
When it comes to timing, a campaign needs at least three to six months to do its job. That doesn’t mean the same creative runs the whole time. Refreshing the work keeps it from going stale, as long as every execution still reads as part of one campaign. When a client wants to change direction in month two, I ask what the data says. If the numbers show clearly that it isn’t working, we move. Usually though, it’s fatigue on their side. By then the audience is only starting to recognize the work, so we make tweaks based on what we’re seeing. Starting over resets the clock.
“By the time you’re tired of a creative campaign, the audience is only starting to recognize it. Give it time.”
Lisa Specht, Media & Public Relations Director
The timeline varies by client, by message, by the tactics in play, and by the market. For most traditional media campaigns, results start showing up in four to eight weeks. I’d still recommend three to six months of sustained outreach for a campaign to affect outcomes. Holding strong reach and frequency while it builds is what makes the difference.
While we’re waiting on the outcome, we’re watching for signs the message is landing. Increases in direct search and organic traffic. Phone calls. Foot traffic, when there’s a location involved. Those tell us the message is reaching the intended audience before the sales numbers catch up.
That’s also why baselines have to exist before a campaign launches. Website traffic, branded search volume, call tracking with attribution, and either sales volume, leads, or store traffic, depending on the business. Traditional media has limited direct measurement through a click, so these numbers are what let us judge whether it’s working. After a campaign runs, looking back at those same metrics guides future buys toward the channels moving the markers that matter.
“There’s no click to count on a traditional media buy. We record where branded search and call volume sit before launch, then watch what those numbers do.”
Melissa Morrison, Digital Marketing Manager
A new Google Ads build starts with the account itself. We create it, apply our agency credit promo, which runs between $500 and $3,000 in ad credit, then link the Google platforms: Tag Manager, GA4, and the Business Profile. Conversion tracking gets built next. We also turn on a remarketing list to start capturing website visitors and upload the client’s customer list. Neither one gets used right away. Both need volume before they’re useful, so we set them up early and let them fill. These audiences may be used for Demand Gen, Performance Max or YouTube TV campaigns.
Bidding stays manual, or max clicks, until the account hits around 20 conversions a month for three months — automated bidding needs examples to learn from. Every conversion logged in those early months teaches Google what a good lead looks like for this specific business. Once we clear that bar, Search moves to max conversions or max conversion value. We may layer in a Performance Max campaign that runs alongside it, and Google’s AI goes out and gets as many conversions as it can across YouTube, Gmail, Search, Display, Discovery, and Maps.
“The paid ad campaign hitting its numbers in month six is running on tracking we built in week one.”
Courtney Henderson, Head of SEO & AI Visibility
I always remind clients that SEO is a marathon, not a sprint. It takes time for Google and AI platforms to trust you enough to serve your brand up as an answer to a searcher’s question or query — sometimes this can take several months. Keep in mind that these tools don’t crawl and index every single page of every single website every single day. The clock starts when the work starts.
So, how do we help you build that trust? By focusing optimization efforts in three areas: the technical performance of a website, the content and assets on a website, and digital PR efforts (think reviews, citations and mentions in news stories, citations, etc.). Search engines and AI assistants pull from all of these sources to determine how trustworthy a brand is. Investing in just one or two, or investing only for a short amount of time, won’t move the needle. The sooner search-focused brand building starts, the sooner a business can start owning the narrative in your space instead of leaving it to its competitors.
“The sooner you start with search optimization, the sooner you can own the narrative in your space instead of your competitors.”
Nick Tatoian, Digital Content Specialist
The clients we move fastest for are the ones who tell us their vision at the start or give us feedback on the initial pitch. We build with that in mind, which cuts the revision rounds later. After a few years of that, you know what they like, how far you can push the creative, and what they’ll say no to. Some clients need exact details about their products — industrial manufacturing especially — so there’s more back and forth to make sure we’re communicating the information accurately. Turnaround also depends on what’s being built. A three-minute informational video takes longer than a 30-second social ad — and longer still with special effects, motion graphics, or custom voiceovers.
The bigger difference is whether we’ve been able to shoot footage. Clients who let us out on a variety of shoots early have a content library, so we’re not scheduling a new shoot every time video or photo is needed. We capture general b-roll and photography that represents every important part of the company, everything but interviews. That evergreen footage stays useful for two or three years, sometimes longer. We still go out for specific asks, but for filling gaps we pull from the library, which saves the client money and the scheduling headaches that come with a shoot. Even three-year-old footage of a real crew beats stock. Consumers can tell the difference.
“A shoot done three years ago can still fill gaps today. Stock footage can’t replace that.”
Ryan Braughler, Full-Stack Web Developer
Most of what makes a site easy to update later is decided while it’s being built. I build pages out of reusable components in Elementor, so a service page is a template with fields that anyone can fill in. Content lives in the CMS as structured fields, which means the client can change a headline or swap a photo without going near the code. I keep the plugin list short, since these are notorious for breaking during an update.
On a site built that way, a new service page takes much less time. Same with a location page or a new form. Sitewide changes are where the difference really shows. Update a brand color or a footer once and it applies everywhere. When nothing shares a template, that same footer change means opening forty pages one at a time. The requests that ship the same week they come in are the ones the site was already built to handle.
“A site built or updated correctly from the start turns a new service page into an afternoon. Built wrong, the same request becomes a project.”
Taylour Maggart, Art Director
When a brand needs to hold up through decades of seasons and trends, everything rides on the base you structure it around. I start with the philosophy of the company, who their target audiences are, the top three to five things they want people to understand about them, and where they see themselves expanding. That research gives me the ingredients for a custom recipe, a set of instructions for making anything the brand needs out of the same base elements.
What dates fastest is trend-chasing. A company goes heavy on whatever is working this month, tries to manufacture something viral, and loses its own voice along the way. Audiences notice. As AI floods every channel with content, the brands that sound like themselves are the ones holding onto loyalty.
A company can have ten years of material and still be starting from zero, usually because it expanded fast and still needs content out the door. Most of that work might be due for an overhaul, but none of it is wasted. Research what worked before, then get clear on what you want people to understand after they interact with the brand. Once you have those highlights, you have the base every future piece gets built from. Brand colors, messaging, tone, and presentation stay consistent everywhere. The prep done before art execution is what carries a brand for decades.
“A brand that still looks like itself in ten years was built on decisions made in the first few weeks.”
Sarah Ganote, HubSpot Specialist & Key Account Manager
Any company can pull a targeted list out of its CRM, as long as somebody set up the fields ahead of time and entry was treated as a priority. Good data in, good data out. The most important thing a company using a CRM can focus on is entering organized, structured data from the start. For anyone moving off Excel spreadsheets, that transition is the best chance you’ll get to build a solid foundation. Companies that have run a CRM for years and no longer trust what’s in it face a much harder recovery.
Data organization rules have to be enforced, and everyone in the organization needs to understand why the tedious parts matter. A B2C client will say, “I want to send all of our clients a holiday card, can we pull their addresses from the CRM?” The answer depends on whether reps were required to enter an address when the contact was created. If the data isn’t there, the action can’t happen. Same story on the B2B side. Someone wants a targeted campaign to every healthcare account, which only works if reps logged industry type when the account went in. An empty field means there’s no list to pull.
When you’re adding data, ask what you’ll use each piece of information for. There’s no reason to rush an import, especially a large one. Don’t tell yourself you’ll fill in the rest later, because that almost never happens. I’d also recommend building roadblocks that stop someone from moving forward without a required field. If the system is where you’ll turn for holiday cards, everyone needs an address. Data management gets tedious, and it pays off tenfold.
“The targeted campaign you want to send next year depends on the fields in the CRM your reps are filling in today.”
Katelyn Hartmann, Graphic Designer
The first decisions, logo and colors and fonts and overall voice, shape how people recognize and connect with a brand. Once those are out in the world, changing them gets difficult and can cost you the recognition you’ve built. That’s why a thoughtful design foundation from the start matters so much. You can’t pull the bottom bricks out of the pile without the whole thing coming down.
When I’m designing, I think about where the work will live beyond the first project. It has to hold up everywhere. I’m accounting for how it scales, layout format, digital versus print, readability, contrast against whatever it sits on, and whether it still reads as the brand in full color, all white, or all black. A logo built to flex from the beginning is one you can put anywhere later.
“A logo designed to flex from day one is one you can put on a truck door or a phone screen years later.”
The Setup Is the Strategy
The answers here cover different parts of an account, and they all point at the same stretch of time: the first few weeks. That work shows up months later as faster turnarounds and reporting that holds up. Marketing that performs a year from now is set up from the beginning.
This is a sample of the work the Holland Adhaus team does at the start of every engagement. Tell us where you want your business to be a year from now. We’ll start with what has to happen first.
