SOP Consultant for Marketing Agencies

01 · The symptom

When the process only exists in someone’s head

The onboarding sequence is whatever the account lead remembers to do. The QA pass is whatever the person sending the file thinks to check. The reporting format changes depending on who built the last deck. It works, because your people are good. Then one takes leave, or you hire two more, and the same questions start getting asked every week.

I have spent twelve years running delivery operations for digital marketing agencies. Operations, project management and AI automation for agencies is the whole of what I do, and SOP work is the documentation layer underneath it. Every hour your senior people spend explaining a recurring process is an hour they are not spending on the work you sell.

02 · The work

What an SOP consultant actually does

An SOP is a short, written, owned description of how one recurring thing gets done. Not a manual. Not a policy binder. One procedure per recurring task, written so a competent person who has never done it can do it correctly the first time.

The work runs in four stages:

1. 01

   Find what repeats

   I sit with your delivery week and list every task that happens the same way more than twice a month. Most agencies are surprised by the length of that list.

2. 02

   Rank by pain

   Frequency times the cost of getting it wrong. The onboarding step that burns a client relationship outranks the one that costs ten minutes.

3. 03

   Write it where the work happens

   The procedure goes inside the tool your team already uses, attached to the task it describes, not into a folder they have to go looking for.

4. 04

   Assign an owner and a review date

   One named person, not a role. A date on the calendar when that person checks the procedure against what the team is actually doing.

Your procedures get built in whichever tool your team already lives in. If a step can be triggered automatically instead of remembered, it should be.

03 · The failure mode

Why most agency SOP projects fail

Most SOP projects produce a folder of documents. Written once, shared in a kickoff, never opened again. Stale within a quarter. Fiction within two.

The failure is not in the writing. It is in the design. A document that lives outside the workflow will not survive. A document that takes twenty minutes to read will not be read. A document with no owner will not be maintained.

So four rules are fixed before a word gets written.

A procedure that breaks any of the four is already dying.

04 · Which layer

SOPs or systems work: which one you need

These are two layers of the same job, easy to confuse. Business systems consulting designs the operating structure: which processes exist, who owns each, how they connect, where the handoffs are. SOP work is the documentation layer that makes each one repeatable in practice.

If you already know what your processes are and the problem is that nobody can follow them without asking, you need SOPs. If you are not sure the processes themselves are right, start with the structure. Most engagements touch both, and the audit says which is the bottleneck. Written procedures still need somebody running the week around them, which is day-to-day delivery management.

05 · The order

The procedures agencies need first

• Client onboarding

  Every relationship starts here, and a weak start colours the months that follow.

• Sales-to-delivery handoff

  Where scope gets lost and expectations quietly diverge.

• QA before anything reaches a client

  A five-minute checklist prevents hours of rework and one awkward email.

• Recurring reporting

  Clients judge agencies on communication more than output. Consistency here is the cheapest trust available.

• Offboarding

  You will lose clients. How the exit is handled decides whether they refer you or warn people about you.

Five procedures, written properly, remove most of the questions your team currently brings to you.

06 · Pricing

How it works

• Agency Ops Audit

  Two weeks. I review your delivery workflow, identify which procedures to write first and who should own them, and deliver a written 90-day operations roadmap. One 60-minute readout call. This is the entry point.

  $1,500 fixed

  Start with the audit

• Fractional operations retainer

  10 to 15 hours per week, 90-day minimum. I write the library, embed it in your tools, and run the reviews while your team builds the habit.

  $4,000–$6,000/month

• Implementation project

  The full SOP library, tool configuration, and the automations that trigger the procedures. Scoped after the audit so you know exactly what you are buying.

  $8,000–$14,000 fixed

Prices are posted because you have not met me and a negotiation at this stage helps neither of us. The full delivery operations practice covers the rest of the scope.

07 · Proof

The record

• 12Years
• 79Engagements
• 4.9/5Across 63 ratings
• 2,900+Hours billed

Case studies →

08 · Fit

Who this is not for

09 · Questions

Questions agencies ask

• What does an SOP consultant do?

  An SOP consultant finds the work your agency repeats, decides which of it is worth documenting, and writes each procedure as a short owned document that lives inside the tool where the work happens. The output is not a manual. It is a set of procedures, each with a named owner and a review date, that a new hire can follow without asking anyone.

• Which SOPs should an agency write first?

  Client onboarding, then the sales-to-delivery handoff, then QA before anything reaches a client, then recurring reporting, then offboarding. Rank by frequency multiplied by the cost of getting it wrong. Five procedures written properly remove most of the questions your team currently brings to you.

• How do you stop SOPs from going stale?

  Four rules. Short enough to read and follow in under ten minutes. Embedded in the tool your team already works in, not in a separate folder. Owned by one named person rather than a role. Reviewed on a scheduled date against what the team is actually doing. A procedure missing any of the four is already on its way out.

• Do you write SOPs inside our existing tools?

  Yes. I work inside ClickUp, Asana, Monday.com, Airtable, and Notion daily, and I connect them with n8n. The procedures get built wherever your team already works, attached to the tasks they describe. The point is to remove friction, not to add another login nobody asked for.

• Is SOP work the same as business systems consulting?

  No, they are two layers. Systems work designs the operating structure: which processes exist, who owns them, and how they connect. SOP work is the documentation layer that makes each of those repeatable by whoever is on shift. If you know your processes and nobody can follow them without asking, you need SOPs. If you are not sure the processes are right, start with the structure.