How We Work
Welcome aboard! We’re so excited that you’ve entrusted us with your brand, and we look forward to working together to elevate it. As your agency, we’ve been around the block a time or two, which is why we’ve created this guide to give you a clear understanding of what you can expect from us. We also use this guide to share what we might need from you during certain parts of the onboarding and elevation process.
We will run through key points in this guide at the start of our relationship, but if at any point you have questions regarding this guide, our scope of work or our process, please don’t hesitate to send us a quick email or pick up the phone and give us a call.
We know you are going to read everything on this page—it's all important, we promise—but if you need to skip to a specific section for some reason, use the buttons below.
Client needs document
Soon—if we have not already—we will send a “Behind the Scenes” document. The more information you fill out in this document, the easier and faster the elevation process will be.
People
We request a list of personnel and points of contact, crucial access points and logins, etc., in order to maintain a strong and steady workflow. No one wants to halt your growth by asking you for a login or password. Thank you in advance!
Passwords
For confidentiality and security reasons, we don’t like to send passwords back and forth via email. If we need to send you a password, we will either (a) use a password-protected document, for which we will provide the master password at the start of our relationship, or (b) call you. Once we have your passwords, we use 1Password to keep them secure.
If at any point we feel we are missing a password or have a question that you can answer as the brand expert, we will reach out in a timely manner. A well-timed response is much appreciated, as a lack of access can impact our momentum and workflow.
Scopes of work
While we have outlined a scope of work for our relationship, if at any point there is something else you would like us to focus on, please let us know, and we’ll send over a change order to be signed prior to that work being initiated. Whenever possible, we use DocuSign to save paper (and your inbox).
Meetings/calls
Prior to every meeting, we send an agenda and any other necessary collateral to you to review ahead of time. During the call, we will take detailed notes so you can be 100% present. We’ll send these notes to you after the call with each party’s action items so everyone is clear on next steps and responsibilities.
While we like to schedule regular calls and/or meetings with our clients, there may be times when the schedule needs to be adjusted. If we need to change the date/time, we will be sure to let you know ASAP. And if you need to change the date/time of a meeting or call, please let us know as soon as possible. We will be happy to reschedule.
If, for some reason, we don’t have much to report, we may suggest rescheduling so we can spend that time doing the hands-on work that will meet your marketing goals.
Work policies
EMB’s work hours are Monday–Friday, 9:00am–6:00pm PT. If you need anything, you can count on us to get back to you within 24 to 48 business hours. However, since work-life balance is one of our core values, we do not work on the weekends except under special, pre-determined circumstances. If you have an urgent need, please give us a call or send a high-priority email.
If a team member is sick or out of the office (OOO) on a much-deserved vacation, another team member will be temporarily assigned to your account to make sure all your needs are met. Your Account Manager will let you know if they're aware that they will be out of the office ahead of time to avoid surprises. That's also why each account has a Lead and a Backup! If your Lead is OOO, your Backup takes control. No momentum lost!
Systems
Internally, EMB uses several systems to streamline processes. One of our systems is Harvest, which we use to track our team’s time spent on your account. We break down our hours by project and task so you can always see where our time is spent.
If you are working with us on an hourly project, we will be sure to alert you when we reach key increments of time via meeting or email. For instance, if you have a 20-hour package, we will alert you when your hours reach 5, 10, 15, and (of course) 20.
Our team also uses Slack to communicate internally. Whenever our client also uses Slack, we like to set up a shared channel so we can collaborate and communicate in real time. Let us know if you use Slack and want priority access to our team!
Finally, we leverage ClickUp to manage projects and tasks internally. Clients who move past the Discovery Phase are granted access to a brand-specific workspace that includes a team wiki, a task action report, an action item submission form and more. It's the single go-to source of truth for your account so you never have to search in a million places for your data or status updates.
Turnaround times
We always want to make sure we are working as efficiently as we can without sacrificing quality. As such, we will alert you to regular turnaround times per project so you know when you can expect it back and if you will need to review it. For instance, the regular turnaround time for a blog post is one week, while the turnaround time for a first draft of full website copy (e.g., home page, about page, team pages, product page, etc.) is two weeks, unless otherwise specified. The EMB does its best to set expectations for each request, but if you ever have questions, let us know!
If anything in this process changes, we will be sure to alert you.
Collateral
Reviews
To ensure 100% client satisfaction, we send mockups and ask you to provide approval on creative projects before anything gets sent to print or published online. While we understand this has the potential to slow things down, our goal is to keep our accuracy high and your costs low. The standard number of changes/edits to any creative piece of work is 3 rounds of revision.
Please note that understanding any brand’s voice and aesthetic is an ongoing endeavor. As such, there may be a few documents or deliverables that need to be reviewed in more detail at the beginning of the relationship until both parties feel comfortable with the understanding of the brand voice. We appreciate your trust in the process!
Approvals
If your assigned point of contact approves a deliverable, whether verbally or via email, it is considered approved by our team, and the associated next steps will be taken to see the project through.
In your scope of work, we may have defined a pre-approved budget for ads or for other parts of the project. In order to streamline the process, if we have already approved a budget for an ad in our contract, we will notify you when the ad is running and let you know that it falls within the pre-approved budget. If any cost is slated to go outside of the pre-approved range, we will reach out to approve costs prior to any change being completed. As your agency, it’s our job to make sure we are being the most cost-effective, and monitoring ads and their corresponding budgets falls under that scope of work.
Credit cards
To streamline processes, we prefer to use your credit card for any outside/pass-through costs incurred while working on your account. This includes ads, software systems, swag materials, printing fees, etc. As mentioned above, we will notify you any time your card is used for expenses outside of our predefined budgets and will seek approval before incurring any charges. If, for any reason, EMB has to incur costs on your behalf, they will be added to your next monthly invoice.
Social media management
If social media management is part of your engagement with EMB, please read below for important information about both organic and paid social strategy.
Organic social media
With EMB as your social team, you can expect to receive a link to our proprietary social media approval grid that we use for all social media accounts. This will give you access to review, revise and approve posts before publication. We do not publish anything without explicit, post-specific approval, unless the client has provided carte blanche approval, which tends to happen after several months of successful content creation and publication.
If your accounts do not have pre-populated in-feed content, we always recommend taking an organic content approach and publishing a month’s worth of content before launching any advertising so that your brand and audience appear established. (Think of it this way: if you visited a new store and it was empty except for one rack of clothes, you would question the shop's validity, right? The same can be applied to social media.)
Note: social media rarely translates into direct leads. It is a long-term relationship-building strategy used to amplify awareness of your brand, engage with your followers, provide up-to-date notices about your company and establish thought leadership in your industry. Leveraging organic social media like dating: you need to have multiple touchpoints and topics, as well as healthy, constant communication, to grow your relationship. One text or one date every four weeks simply isn’t going to cut it.
Paid social media
One of the best ways to advertise your brand is on Meta, which includes both Facebook and Instagram. Not only does Meta provide the fastest ramp-up times, but it is also the most cost-effective. Plus, Meta allows us to A/B test your imagery, messaging, targeting, etc., so we can then take those insights and apply them to other advertising platforms with longer ramp-up times and cost thresholds.
If we run A/B tests, we recommend a minimum spend of $10/day per ad and a minimum ad run of one to two weeks, but our recommendations may vary by brand and circumstance.
(If you want to keep in close touch with us, follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn!)
Outside vendors
From time to time, depending on our scope of work, EMB may need to engage outside vendors. These could be graphic designers, web developers, photographers, videographers, printers, etc. When it comes to sourcing vendors, we are always happy to work with anyone in your network if you are happy with their services. However, we have a wide range of preferred vendors in nearly every marketing category, and will always present you with the best fit for your brand based on pricing, availability, location, aesthetic, etc. Since it's part of our ethos, we prioritize minority-owned businesses.
Feedback
As your agency, we do our best to take the ego out of marketing, so if you get exciting marketing opportunities outside of our partnership, we’d still love to hear about it! We’re happy to hear any and all recommendations. Our role is to maximize every opportunity and elevate your brand in every way possible. Opportunities include but are not limited to:
- Vendors
- Potential partnerships
- Public relations opportunities
- Investment opportunities
- Events in your industry
- Questions from followers on social media
- Advertising avenues
- Updates to your website
In order to make sure we are doing the best for our clients, our CEO, Laurel Mintz, will reach out on a regular basis to check in on your account and see if there is anything we can do better for you as our client or for your brand overall.
If, for some reason, we feel our lines of communication have broken down, we will schedule a "reset" meeting and/or call to get things back on track. Trust is critical in any relationship, including between an agency and its client. We don't take your partnership or investment in marketing lightly!
Pause clause
In our contract, you will notice there are two pause clauses.
- If at any point we don’t hear back from you on crucial pieces or approvals needed to move forward, without giving prior notice that you will be out of the office or unable to respond, EMB reserves the right to pause work on the account.
- If payment is not received within a thirty (30) day period, EMB reserves the right to pause work on the account until payment is received.
That's it! We know it's a lot, so we are thankful that you made it to the end. It's important to ensure we're on the same page so we can step in tune with one another on the way to your brand's success.
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