The Part Most Agencies Leave You to Guess. Here's the Whole First Month.
Saying yes to an agency usually means finding out how onboarding works afterwards — who calls you, what they need from you, how long before anything happens. That uncertainty is a reason to stall, and it should not be. Here is how Get Us Listed runs the whole first month of agency onboarding, whether you are in York PA, Baltimore or anywhere between.
Most of Month One Is Us Waiting on Access, Not You Doing Homework.
Owners brace for onboarding because they have been through one that ate a fortnight of evenings — questionnaires, brand workshops, asset requests for things that do not exist yet. That is not what this is. The single biggest cause of a slow first month is not you: it is waiting on account access, usually from a previous agency that is in no hurry to hand it over. We do that chasing, and we tell you where it is stuck instead of letting the silence look like progress. What we genuinely need from you is small and specific. Half an hour on a kickoff call. Manager access to accounts you already own. Answers to the handful of questions only you can answer — what you charge, how far you travel, which jobs you would rather not take. And phone photos of finished work, which are worth more than anything else you could send us.
- About 90 minutes of your time in the first month, then roughly 30 a month
- One named person doing the work — you can call them
- Nothing goes live on your site without your sign-off
- We chase stuck access, and tell you when it is stuck
- Start from whatever exists, including nothing
Onboarding: Four
Weeks, Nothing Hidden.
Timings are what we plan for. If something slips — an access request stuck with a previous agency is the usual culprit — you hear it from us before you notice it.
-
Day 1–2
One kickoff call, 30 minutes
You meet the person doing the work, not a salesperson handing you off. We confirm what the audit found, what you want the phone to do, and which jobs you actually want more of — that last one changes the plan more than anything else.
-
Week 1
Access, not paperwork
We ask for manager access to what already exists — Google Business Profile, website, ad accounts. Access, never ownership transfer. If a previous agency is holding something, we do the chasing, and we tell you what is stuck rather than going quiet.
-
Week 2–3
The build, with checkpoints
Pages, profile work and tracking get built. You see it before anyone else does: nothing is published to your live site without your sign-off, and ‘I don’t like that’ is a complete sentence at this stage.
-
Week 4
Live, tracked, and reported
It goes live, call and form tracking is verified working, and you get the first report. It counts calls, forms and leads — not impressions — and it names what we are doing next month and why.
Your Job
and Our Job.
The most common way an engagement stalls is an unclear handoff. This is the whole division of labour — if something is on the left, it needs you, and we will chase you for it.
| Feature | We need this from you | We handle this |
|---|---|---|
| Getting started | 30 minutes on a kickoff call, and manager access to your accounts | Every setup step, every configuration, every technical decision |
| Deciding what matters | Tell us which jobs are worth the most to you and which you'd rather not take | Translating that into keywords, pages, services and ad targeting |
| Content about your business | Answer occasional questions only you can answer — pricing, service area, what you refuse to do | Writing it, structuring it, publishing it and keeping it accurate |
| Photos of real work | Send phone photos of finished jobs when you have them — genuinely the highest-value thing you can give us | Selecting, sizing, captioning and placing them |
| Reviews | Ask happy customers — a repeatable script is provided | The system, the follow-up, and drafting honest replies for you to approve |
| Answering the phone | This one is entirely yours, and no marketing survives it going unanswered | Making it ring, and telling you when it did |
Roughly 90 minutes of your time in month one, then about 30 minutes a month. If we are asking for more than that, we are doing our job badly.
What People Ask
Before They Say Yes.
Results take days for paid ads and months for local SEO, and anyone who gives you a confident date is guessing. Paid ads can produce calls in days because you are buying placement. Local SEO is slower — a Google Business Profile that has been neglected often moves within weeks, while competitive search rankings are usually a matter of months. What we will commit to is telling you the truth about which one you are in, and reporting the number of calls either way.
You see it before it is public, and revisions are part of the build rather than an extra. Nothing gets published to your live site without your sign-off. If the direction is wrong, week two is exactly when we want to hear it.
One named person who does the work, not an account manager relaying messages to a team you never meet. It is a local Maryland and Pennsylvania team, so you can call and get someone who knows your account.
You stop. Service is month to month with no notice period beyond the month and no exit fee, and you keep everything — the site, the content, the domain and the ad accounts. How pricing works covers the billing side in detail.
More common than you would think, and it is a solvable problem. We start by establishing what you actually own on paper, which is often more than you have been told. Where something genuinely is not recoverable, we rebuild it in accounts registered to you so it cannot happen twice. That situation is the reason our ownership terms read the way they do.
No. Owners routinely stall for months waiting to have photos, copy and a logo sorted. We can start from whatever exists — including nothing — and the free audit will tell you exactly which gaps are worth filling first and which do not matter yet.
Take the First Step.
It's the Free One.
Send your business name and website. In 48 hours you'll have the written 12-point audit — the same document the kickoff call is built on. Nothing starts until you say so.