Your first 90 days with a marketing partner: what to expect and what to demand

Set the commercial target before touching a channelLink

Start with the P&L, not the followers.

Hiring a marketing partner is not a magic switch. You do not sign a contract on Monday and fill every quiet Tuesday by Friday. That is sales-pitch nonsense.

The first 90 days have one job: build a reliable commercial machine. That means fixing the foundations, launching the right activity, measuring what matters and proving whether the relationship deserves more of your money.

The order matters. Do the right work in the wrong order and you waste budget. Launch adverts before fixing the booking journey and you pay to send customers into a dead end. Post constantly without a commercial target and you create activity, not revenue.

Start with the P&L. Not followers. Not impressions. Not “brand awareness” floating around in a presentation. Decide what the marketing must improve.

Your partner should force this conversation early. A pub does not need “more visibility” in the abstract. It needs profitable covers on the nights that currently lose money. A boutique hotel does not need traffic for its own sake. It needs direct room nights at a rate that protects margin.

HMRA's approach starts with that commercial reality. Marketing creates demand. Revenue strategy makes sure you can sell it profitably. Agree the numbers before the work begins. Otherwise, the agency can declare victory using metrics that never reach your bank account.

• More midweek restaurant covers
• More direct hotel bookings
• Higher average spend per table
• More wedding or private-event enquiries
• Lower reliance on online travel agents
• Better occupancy during low-demand periods
• Fewer empty rooms, tables and event spaces

Days 1–30: give access and expose the leaksLink

The first month is discovery, auditing and setup.

It is not the time for endless creative workshops. It is the time to find out where money is already leaking.

They should also ask uncomfortable operational questions. Which dayparts are empty? Which rooms are hardest to sell? What can the kitchen actually deliver? Which dates are already full? What is your average spend per cover? How much commission are you paying to third parties?

If they never ask, they do not understand hospitality.

A proper onboarding also requires access to your real numbers. Share the last 12 months of covers, bookings, room nights, occupancy, average daily rate, average spend per head, booking sources, cancellation and no-show data, event enquiries, and seasonal peaks and troughs. Without this, the agency is driving through fog with the headlights off.

• Website speed and mobile usability
• Booking and enquiry journeys
• Google Business Profile
• Google Ads and Meta Ads accounts
• Social media activity
• Local search visibility
• Menus, room pages and event pages
• Booking-engine performance
• Analytics and conversion tracking
• Competitor positioning and offers
• Reviews and recurring customer complaints

A specialist pub-focused service such as PubLandlord makes the same basic point from a different angle: mobile booking buttons, accurate opening hours, usable menus and a complete Google profile are not cosmetic extras. They are conversion infrastructure.

By Day 30, demand a written audit, a baseline report, agreed commercial KPIs, a channel plan, a list of urgent fixes, a 30/60/90-day roadmap and clear responsibilities on both sides. If the only output is a mood board and a list of proposed posts, stop and ask why.

• A specialist pub-focused example of conversion infrastructure is PubLandlord

Fix the booking path before buying trafficLink

This is where inexperienced operators burn money.

They launch Google Ads because customers are searching. They boost a Facebook post because the food looks good. They send the traffic to a slow website with an invisible booking button, a broken menu PDF or a form that asks for twelve pieces of information. Then they blame the advertising.

Fix the route from search to sale first.

This is where a marketing partner earns its fee. Not by producing polished slides. By removing obstacles between customer intent and confirmed revenue.

JetAds is a useful example of the operational sequence agencies should follow: discover, plan, build, launch, then improve. That sequence is basic. It is also routinely ignored.

Do not launch campaign number three while campaign number one still points to a broken page.

• Understand what you offer immediately
• See the location and opening hours
• View a current menu or room option
• Find the booking or enquiry button
• Call with one tap on mobile
• Get directions without hunting
• Complete the booking without unnecessary friction

• A useful example of the discover, plan, build, launch, improve sequence is JetAds

Days 31–60: launch useful work and prove early valueLink

Month two is implementation.

Your partner should now be putting work into the market.

The work should be prioritised. One strong landing page for Sunday lunch can be worth more than twenty generic social posts. One accurate room page can outperform a month of hotel imagery. One properly tracked Google campaign can teach you more than a dashboard full of reach figures.

Demand two or three quick wins. Not because quick wins are the entire strategy. They are not. Demand them because the first 60 days should demonstrate that the partner can identify commercial problems and act on them.

• Search campaigns aimed at profitable demand
• Meta campaigns for events, offers or specific audiences
• Landing pages for key services or seasonal periods
• Google Business Profile improvements
• Local SEO updates
• Website conversion fixes
• Social content tied to actual reasons to visit
• Email activity for repeat bookings
• Booking and ordering improvements

Examples of quick wins include moving a booking button above the fold, rebuilding a poorly performing event page, correcting inaccurate Google opening hours, stopping spend on an unprofitable audience, creating a midweek offer with clear margin rules, reallocating budget away from dates you cannot fulfil, and adding tracking to phone calls and booking completions.

Your role changes during this phase. You must approve work quickly. You must tell the agency when the kitchen is short-staffed, the hotel is full, the menu has changed or the event is sold out. Marketing a product you cannot deliver is not ambition. It is operational incompetence.

By Day 60, you should have live activity, functioning tracking, published assets and an early performance review. You should know which channels are producing qualified demand, which messages are attracting the right guests, which pages convert, what customers are asking for, what is wasting budget and what needs to change next.

Do not accept “engagement is up” as an answer. Ask how many covers, room nights or profitable enquiries came from it.

Days 61–90: optimise, challenge and decideLink

The third month is where the relationship gets tested.

The agency has now seen enough data to make decisions. It should be cutting weak activity, improving working campaigns and building a plan for the next quarter.

This is also the point where you assess the partner. Can they explain what happened in plain English? Can they distinguish between a booking and a click? Can they tell you the cost per booking, not just the cost per click? Can they explain why revenue moved? Can they challenge an offer that damages margin? Can they tell you which activity to stop?

If not, you have bought reporting theatre.

A plain-English audit model, such as the approach demonstrated by VU1, is useful because it turns technical findings into practical fixes. VU1 is built for trade businesses rather than hospitality, but the principle applies: a score is worthless unless it tells the operator what is costing them customers and what to fix next.

• Campaign optimisation
• Landing-page improvements
• Search-term reviews
• Budget reallocation
• Creative testing
• Local SEO progress
• Better audience segmentation
• Clearer reporting
• A forward plan based on seasonality

• A plain-English audit model is demonstrated by VU1

Demand reporting that reaches the tillLink

Your reporting should not require a marketing degree.

Vanity metrics can sit at the bottom if someone insists. They should never lead the meeting.

Ten thousand impressions do not pay your suppliers. A low cost per click does not guarantee profitable customers. A high social reach figure can coexist with an empty dining room.

Insist on a direct link between activity and commercial outcomes. Where tracking is imperfect, say so. Then fix it.

• Covers generated
• Room nights generated
• Direct booking revenue
• Event enquiries
• Cost per booking
• Return on advertising spend
• Average booking value
• Occupancy or cover performance by daypart
• Website conversion rate
• Phone calls and enquiries
• Actions taken next

Protect the relationship from both sidesLink

Agencies lose clients through poor delivery. Clients sabotage good work too.

Clients also sabotage good work through slow decisions, missing access and constant changes of direction. Set the operating rules early.

Do not change the target every fortnight. If you want more midweek covers, stay focused long enough to measure the work. If you suddenly switch to weddings, then rooms, then social followers, you are not testing strategy. You are creating noise.

• One decision-maker on your side
• Agreed approval times
• A fixed meeting cadence
• A shared action list
• Clear scope and response times
• Monthly commercial reporting
• No campaign without an operational owner
• No offer without a margin check

Know when to leaveLink

The first 90 days are not about demanding perfection. They are about demanding control.

Do not leave because SEO has not transformed in six weeks. That is impatience, not commercial judgement.

Do leave when there is no measurement, no learning and no accountability.

• Cannot explain where the budget went
• Reports activity instead of revenue
• Misses agreed deadlines repeatedly
• Hides behind jargon
• Refuses to show account access
• Promises instant SEO domination
• Ignores your capacity and margins
• Keeps recommending more spend without evidence
• Treats your venue like a generic business
• Cannot identify what should stop