7 Best Practices When Offboarding Marketing Teams

As digital marketing booms, many businesses have turned to external providers to develop and manage their campaigns. According to a 2024 Forbes report, organizations outsource 48% of content marketing responsibilities to external providers. 

Businesses often invest significant energy and resources into onboarding these teams, but offboarding is almost just as important to a successful partnership. “At the end of a marketing partnership, maintaining a smooth transition is vital for both parties,” says Scott Emalfarb, Founder and CEO of the social media company, Fresh Content Society.  

It’s not just on the service provider to ensure that everything goes according to plan. “Clients can play an essential role in facilitating a successful offboarding,” Emalfarb says. 

Developing an offboarding process will help you wrap up your collaborations neatly and set yourself up for ongoing marketing success. 

These protocols allow you to transfer knowledge and assets smoothly, so you don’t have to worry about an interruption in your marketing efforts. Get started by following our best practices for offboarding marketing teams.

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7 Best Practices To Follow at the End of Your Marketing Project

Even the most productive marketing partnerships eventually come to an end — whether you’re looking to scale down your marketing efforts, now have the internal resources to manage all of your marketing activities yourself, or want to invest in new channels, how you conclude your partnership is extremely important to ensure your business continues to grow. 

Whatever the reason for offboarding your partner, there are a few essential tasks to take care of before you say farewell. Follow these  best practices for a seamless offboarding process.

1. Review Your Original Contract

At the beginning of your partnership, you probably signed a contract that outlined the scope of work for the project. Revisit this document to make sure that your provider has met all deliverables.

This step allows you to verify that your collaborator has held up their end of the bargain (and that you have too). For example, they may have yet to deliver a final report as outlined in the contract, leaving you without vital performance insights.

Politely follow up with your partner to remind them of any outstanding deliverables. This is also the ideal time to take another look at the original contact’s fine print. Some documents have termination fees, non-compete agreements, and other terms and conditions you may be required to uphold. By reviewing your initial agreement, you can effectively prepare for any offboarding conversations. 

2.  Ensure A Successful Knowledge Transfer With Documentation

Many businesses outsource because their internal marketing team doesn’t have the experience or bandwidth to conduct these processes internally. Naturally, internal team members may not have the visibility to be able to execute these processes without additional support.

Usually, this means that you need to set up communication channels for your outsource partner to pass this information off to your internal team. Elmalfarb explains how the Fresh Content Society helps clients during the offboarding process, describing, “To ensure a seamless offboarding process, we prioritize transparency and comprehensive communication.”

A great marketing partner will support you throughout the offboarding process by establishing a step-by-step process to hand off any deliverables to your team. Afterall, communication is an essential part of any marketing partnership.

“Our approach involves a structured knowledge transfer, which may include detailed briefings, walkthroughs of ongoing campaigns, and shared documentation,” Emalfarb says. “This helps the client's in-house team or incoming agency hit the ground running without disruption.” 

Set your internal team up for success by creating systems to transfer knowledge. Ask your external partner to develop detailed documentation of their processes and workflows. Your team can consult these records if they encounter challenges or need to onboard new members to the project.

Particularly during this transitional phase, it can be beneficial to create communication channels to ensure your team has everything they need to be successful. Emalfarb advises that businesses maintain their relationships in the interim to ask questions as they arise.

“Establishing a feedback loop, even temporarily, with the former marketing team can be beneficial for troubleshooting during the initial weeks of independence,” he says. By creating channels for ongoing communication, you can ensure that your team is prepared to take over ongoing marketing efforts.

3. Conduct Any Necessary Training for Your Internal Team

While documentation is essential to a successful transition of responsibilities, your internal team may also require additional training.

“Clients should engage in training sessions or workshops, if offered, to understand the nuances of campaign management and content scheduling,” says Elmafarb. With proper training, your team won’t skip a beat and you can continue to make progress on your marketing goals. 

Encourage your internal team to ask last-minute questions, such as, “Can you show me how to automate that email workflow one more time?” and “How can we access the engagement data for our Halloween campaign?” This open dialogue will help clear up any remaining concerns and misunderstandings.

You should also clearly define responsibilities and roles for internal members taking over the project. By spelling out these duties, you’ll reduce confusion and make sure no one forgets important tasks.

Of course, your internal members will need the right training and support to handle their new duties. There are many ways to get them up to speed quickly, such as:

• Allow them to shadow their external counterparts to learn about best practices and workflows
• Compile training materials into a shared knowledge base
• Ask your external partner to create how-to tutorials, video guides, and other resources
• Organize interactive training sessions for specific marketing methods and tools
• Share project documentation, such as email templates and style guides

Ask your external partners to provide ongoing offboarding support for a few weeks after the handover. They may be willing to answer questions and provide guidance as your internal team adapts to their new roles.

4. Establish A Strategy For The Future 

One of the biggest benefits of hiring an external marketing agency is that they can kickstart your campaigns and help you launch projects quickly. As you bring these tasks in-house, though, you don’t want to lose the progress you’ve made.

“For continued marketing success after the end of a partnership, clients should ensure they are equipped with the strategic insights and tools needed to sustain momentum” Emalfarb says. This means that your internal marketing team needs to establish objectives for the first few months and identify everything you need to know to accomplish your goals going forward.

Many service providers can help you outline next steps or establish benchmarks to ensure that although your partnership may have ended, their work is still having a big impact on your business.

If you’re not sure what to do next, you can ask your partners to help build out your marketing strategy. “This can include requesting a roadmap or playbook for the next 3-6 months that builds upon the strategies developed during the partnership,” Emalfarb claims.

With a solid strategy in place, you will be able to move forward and continue to grow your business. 

5. Double-Check Your Access to All Deliverables

Depending on the scope of your project, your partner may have created a single deliverable or dozens. 

“Clients should also prioritize maintaining access to key accounts, marketing platforms, and creative assets, ensuring any shared login credentials or software subscriptions are transferred appropriately.” Emalfarb advises. Make sure you can easily access every digital and physical asset before you finish offboarding. That way, you won’t have to worry about losing valuable content and data.

Start by confirming that you have control over all exclusive brand materials. Transfer your strategy documents and style guides out of shared drives or platforms. You should also lock down proprietary data — like customer data and financial reports — to keep it secure.

Verify that you can access campaign assets, too. These materials can take many forms, including:

• Ad copy 
• Content, such as infographics and white papers 
• Images and videos 
• Social media posts 
• Templates for blog posts, emails, and other materials 
• Unfinished drafts 

Don’t forget about campaign reports, email marketing reports, and other records. You’ll need these documents to demonstrate the success of your partnership.

Finally, ensure you have all the login credentials for the tools you’re using, like data visualization software and social media scheduling platforms.

6. Revoke Access to Internal Assets and Systems

Giving your marketing partner access to your assets and systems is normal; after all, you wouldn’t be able to collaborate effectively if you didn’t. However, you must revoke access to these resources once the project wraps up to protect your data.

Create a checklist of every asset and tool you’ve shared, such as:

• Advertising accounts
• Cloud storage platforms
• Communication tools
• Content management systems
• Customer relationship management tools
• Internal reports
• Social media accounts
• Your website’s backend

Revoking access is often easy — just change the password and update your verification settings. However, some platforms can be downright tricky to regain control over. You may need to change multiple user permissions settings or even contact customer support to remove your former partner.

While this process can be tedious, it’s necessary to transition all your assets and data to your internal team. Consider gradually revoking access as the project winds down to avoid any last-minute disruptions or rushes. A proactive approach will also let you identify any access issues early while you’re still collaborating with your partner.

7. Close Out Remaining Invoices 

At the end of your collaboration, the last thing you want to do is owe your marketing partner money. Watch for their final invoices, and make sure you settle your accounts promptly.

Taking care of the financial side of your partnership will help you maintain a positive relationship. It could also lead to additional opportunities in the future. For instance, your provider may remember your professionalism and prioritize your business over an unknown quantity if you choose to collaborate again down the line.

Wrap Up Your Collaboration With Confidence

The end of a marketing project is often a time for celebration and reflection, but don’t rest on your laurels just yet. Before you can wrap this chapter up, you must transfer all the knowledge and resources to your internal team. Creating a solid offboarding system will help you cross all the tasks off your to-do list and support your in-house staff.

Hiring the right marketing provider from the get-go will set the stage for a low-stress offboarding process. An experienced partner will communicate regularly and create thorough documentation, making it easy for your in-house staff to take over at the end. 

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