Stages 1 to 4 are the minimum before your first campaign goes live. Stages 5 to 8 can follow, but each one is a gap in what you can measure until it’s done.
Stage 0: Locations agreed
- Filled-in workbooks have one agreed home, recorded in get started.
- Source and creative files have one agreed home, recorded in brand assets.
- Each location has a named owner.
Stage 1: Shared vocabulary
- Glossary read by everyone who will write or review.
- Naming conventions overview read before any convention is set.
Stage 2: Brand
- Positioning is settled before messaging is written.
- Every claim in messaging has evidence and a refresh date.
- The asset register names an owner and a review date for every asset.
Stage 3: Product catalog
- Every product you advertise has a row and a short identifier.
- Every identifier is registered before any campaign brief references it.
- Retired products keep their row and their identifier.
- Offers are listed separately from products, with terms and an expiry.
Stage 4: Naming conventions
- Every field in every pattern has a closed list of allowed values.
- Someone owns adding new values to those lists.
Stage 5: Tracking
- UTM standards filled in, with a closed list per parameter.
- Event tracking plan built using the stage 4 event convention.
- Tracking plan saved to the event library.
- UTM values match the campaign naming values, so platform and analytics data can be joined.
Stage 6: Customer profiles
- At least one profile filled in from the B2B or B2C brief.
- Each profile named with the stage 4 convention.
- Each profile saved to the customer profile library.
- Platform audience CSVs exported where needed: Meta, Google, LinkedIn, TikTok.
Stage 7: Reporting
- Marketing reporting data dictionary filled in: every metric has one definition and one owner.
- KPI definitions agreed, including the north star and its counter-metric.
- Reporting cadence set: who reports what, to whom, how often.
- Dashboard standards agreed.
- Flat file built, and every report reads from it rather than from the platforms directly.
Stage 8: Experiments
- Experiment ID pattern defined.
- The register for issued IDs has a home and an owner.
- Experiment brief template ready to copy.
- Pilot brief template ready to copy, for spend with no control.
Setup is complete when
- Someone new can find the answer to “what do I call this?” without asking.
- A campaign brief links to a positioning statement, a customer profile, and a naming convention that all already exist.
- A weekly report can be produced from the flat file without anyone opening an ad platform.
- Nothing above lives in two places.
Related resources
- Get started The setup path this checklist tracks.
- Make a campaign The first task to run once stages 1 to 4 are done.
- What this framework covers What setup does and doesn’t include.
- New member onboarding For people joining after setup.
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