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How to run a local service marketing selection checklist
A practical checklist for local service marketing selection, covering lawful data use, supplier checks, audience research and profile settings.
What to take away
A local service marketing selection checklist is a written set of pass or fail checks you run before signing with any supplier, tool or agency that will contact customers on your behalf.
- Confirm the lawful basis for direct marketing before any list, tool or agency touches customer data. The ICO's guidance on choosing a lawful basis for direct marketing makes the sender responsible, not the platform.
- Score suppliers on access controls, reporting and exit terms, not on the polish of their pitch deck.
- Match every channel to evidence about the audience you actually serve, not the audience you wish you served.
- Set the review date and the kill criteria in the contract stage, while you still have room to negotiate.
Define the job first
Write one sentence describing what the supplier must produce. An extra ten booked jobs a month in a named town is a job. More visibility is not.
That sentence decides which questions you ask later. If the job is lead generation, you care about tracking and call handling. If the job is awareness, you care about reach and frequency data.
Keep the definition narrow enough that a supplier could fail it.
Data and consent checks
List every place customer data will sit: the supplier's CRM, your own, any shared spreadsheet. Each location needs an owner and a retention period.
Data and consent checks
- List every place customer data sits
- Assign owner and retention period
- Confirm who sends the message
- Check opt-outs flow back within days
Ask who sends the message and who is named as the sender. Under UK direct marketing rules the sender carries the responsibility, so an agency cannot absorb that risk for you.
Check how opt-outs flow back to your records. If a customer asks to stop, both systems must reflect that within a stated number of days.
Audience evidence checks
Before choosing channels, gather evidence about the people you serve. For hospitality and entertainment businesses, the ONS publishes leisure and tourism data that can support demand assumptions rather than guesswork.
Check whether the supplier has described your catchment, not a national average. A campaign that works in a city centre may fail in a market town with different travel patterns.
Ask for the source behind any audience claim, and treat a hunch as zero.
Supplier due diligence checks
Run these in order and stop at the first fail:
- Confirm the legal entity and registered address.
- Ask for two client references in a similar trade and check both.
- Review who inside the supplier can access your accounts, and whether access is role-based.
- Read the exit clausenotice period, data return, and who keeps the ad accounts.
- Confirm reporting format and frequency in writing.
For a fuller method of scoring competing offers, see our guide to local service marketing product comparison.
Channel and profile checks
If local search is part of the plan, the profile settings matter as much as the posts. Review service areas, attributes and opening hours against Google's guidance on advanced profile settings before any agency claims to have optimised them.
Check that tracking numbers and forms route to a person who answers. A lead that rings out is a lead lost.
Decide which channels you will not use, and write them down.
Scoring and sign-off
Give each checklist item a pass, fail or unknown. Unknown is not a pass, and three unknowns should pause the decision until resolved.
Weight the items by risk: data handling and access controls first, price last. A cheap supplier that fails the data checks is the most expensive option available.
Record who signed off and when. Our review of local service marketing reviews and comparison methods explains how to keep that record defensible if a campaign is later questioned.
Common questions
How long should the checklist take to complete?
For a single supplier, allow two to three working hours once the questions are written.
What if the supplier refuses to answer an item?
Treat a refusal as a fail and note it. Do not sign while an access control or data question is open.
Should the checklist change between suppliers?
No. Keep one checklist and score every supplier against it, so the comparison is like for like. Add items only when a new risk appears.
Who should own the checklist?
Name one person, usually whoever holds the marketing budget. Shared ownership is how items get marked as done without evidence.
