Your next agency meeting is an opportunity to connect campaign decisions with the economics of your business. Bringing the person who owns your financial numbers into that conversation gives everyone a clearer starting point.
We created a practical resource to help: the Financial Transparency Checklist for Agencies and Clients.
What to bring to the conversation
Start with the information that affects what your business keeps from a sale: product or service delivery costs, discounts, fulfillment, returns, and commissions. Ask your finance lead to clarify which costs are included in your margin figures and whether those figures are before or after advertising.
You can begin with a focused summary, category-level margins, or agreed acquisition targets. Establish who can access the information and how you will update it when costs change.
A shared agenda for marketing and finance
The checklist helps your team work through five areas:
- Agreeing on what success means for the business.
- Identifying costs that sit outside campaign dashboards.
- Sharing useful information with clear boundaries.
- Turning financial inputs into campaign decisions.
- Holding a 30-minute monthly review with named owners and next steps.
It also includes a meeting record you can copy into your own working document. Use it during onboarding or bring it to an existing agency relationship when targets, costs, or growth plans change.
Make the next decision together
Profit-First Marketing starts with better questions. Before agreeing to a new campaign target or a larger budget, give your agency and finance team a chance to compare their assumptions. The goal is a recommendation everyone can understand and evaluate against the business’s needs.
Open the checklist linked above, choose a finance owner and an agency owner, and make the first conversation about what information is missing.
