For agencies
White label marketing fulfilment for agencies
Agencies sell more than they can staff. This is how outsourced delivery actually works, the two models available, and the questions worth asking before you hand a client's account to anyone.
What is white label marketing and how does it work?
White label marketing is when one agency performs the work and another agency presents it to the client under its own brand. The client has one relationship, with the agency they hired. The delivery team is invisible to them.
There are two common arrangements. In a powered by model the delivery partner is named openly, which suits agencies who would rather be transparent than invisible. In a fully white label model the delivery partner never appears in anything the client sees, which suits agencies protecting a brand or a market position.
The practical difference between a good arrangement and a bad one is rarely price. It is whether the work is documented, whether the accounts stay in the client's name, and whether the agency can walk away without losing anything.
Selling capability you have not hired
Almost every growing agency hits the same wall. The pipeline contains work the team cannot deliver, and the choice is to turn it down, hire against an uncertain forecast, or find somebody to deliver it.
Outsourced fulfilment is the third option, and it is far more common than the industry admits publicly. A web design studio sells a retainer that includes search work it does not do. A public relations firm is asked to run paid advertising. A general agency wins a clinic and discovers that healthcare marketing has rules it has never had to think about. In each case there is real client demand and no internal capability, and building that capability properly is a hiring decision measured in months and salaries.
Read the full breakdown: Selling capability you have not hiredHide the full breakdown: Selling capability you have not hired
The arrangement itself is simple. The agency keeps the client relationship, the contract, the billing and the account management. The delivery partner does the work and reports into the agency rather than to the client. What varies is how visible the partner is, how the work is documented, and who holds the accounts.
It is worth being honest about the trade. You gain capability immediately and without fixed cost, and you lose direct control of execution. Whether that trade is good depends almost entirely on how the partner works, which is why the questions further down this page matter more than the commercial terms.
This is a real line of business for us. We deliver search, local visibility, paid advertising, web development and reputation work for other agencies as well as directly for businesses. We are describing it here rather than keeping it quiet because agencies looking for a delivery partner deserve to be able to evaluate one before a sales call.
Powered by, or fully white label
Both are legitimate and the right answer depends on your brand rather than on your budget. What matters is choosing deliberately, because switching later confuses clients who have already met somebody.
| Item | Powered by | Fully white label |
|---|---|---|
| Who the client sees | Your agency, with the delivery partner named | Your agency only |
| Reporting | Co-branded, or plainly attributed | Your branding throughout |
| Client calls | Specialists can join, introduced as partners | Your team presents, briefed by the partner |
| Suits | Agencies who prefer transparency about who does what | Agencies protecting a brand or a competitive position |
| Main advantage | Less to manage, and specialists can answer directly | A single, consistent brand experience |
| Main cost | The client knows part of the work is delivered elsewhere | Everything reaches the client through you, so you carry the translation |
Neither model changes what gets done. It changes who is in the room. Decide before the first client call, tell your delivery partner clearly, and do not change your mind halfway through an engagement.
Six questions worth asking any fulfilment partner
These are the questions that separate a partner you can build on from one you will be untangling in a year. Ask them before the commercial conversation, not after it.
Whose name are the accounts in?
The only acceptable answer is the client's. Google Business Profiles, ad accounts, analytics properties and social pages should be owned by the business and delegated to whoever is working on them, yours and ours alike. A partner that verifies profiles under its own account has given itself leverage over both you and your client.
- Ask what happens to the accounts if the arrangement ends. A good partner has an answer ready because it comes up.
- Ask to see the access model rather than being told about it. It takes two minutes to show.
Is the work documented, and can you see it?
Undocumented delivery is a person, not a process. It works until that person is busy, on holiday or gone. A partner that can show you written procedures for the work it performs is telling you the work is repeatable and that quality does not depend on who picked up the task.
- Documentation also protects you. When a client asks exactly what was done last month, you want an answer that does not require a phone call.
- Ask what the quality checks are at the end of each task, not just what the steps are.
What happens when something goes wrong?
Profiles get suspended. Ad accounts get flagged. Sites get hacked. The interesting question is not whether a partner has ever had a problem, it is what they did about it and how quickly you found out.
- Ask for an example. A partner that has never had a problem has either not worked long enough or is not telling you.
- Ask how you are notified, and whether you hear about it before or after your client does.
See the remaining steps: Six questions worth asking any fulfilment partnerHide the remaining steps: Six questions worth asking any fulfilment partner
Will they tell a client's business the truth?
Some work should not be sold. A business that does not qualify for a listing, a claim that cannot be substantiated, a budget too small to be competitive in a given market. A partner willing to take the work anyway is transferring the risk to you, because you are the one with the client relationship.
- Ask what they have declined recently. The answer tells you a great deal.
- Watch for guaranteed rankings, guaranteed lead volumes and guaranteed timelines. None of those can be promised honestly.
Do they understand regulated work?
Healthcare, legal, financial services and anything making a health claim carry rules that ordinary marketing does not. Advertising claims need substantiation. Patient data has handling requirements. Some professions have board rules about how they may advertise. A partner that treats a clinic like a plumber will eventually cause a problem you have to explain.
- Ask specifically how they handle tracking on a healthcare site, and whether clinical claims get clinician review before publication.
- Ask what they will not do, rather than what they can do.
Will they work alongside what the client already runs?
Most businesses already have a practice management system, a booking tool or a customer database, and replacing it is rarely the right advice. Ask how a partner handles that. Be alert to the difference between genuine technical integration and simply linking or embedding an existing tool, because the second is usually what is happening and the first is often what is being described.
- We link and embed rather than integrate, and we say so. A website that opens the booking system the client already uses is honest and usually sufficient.
- A partner who promises deep integration with a system they have never touched is describing a project, not a feature.
None of these questions are about price. That is deliberate. The cheapest arrangement that loses a client's Google Business Profile is the most expensive thing an agency can buy.
The disciplines we deliver for other agencies
The same work we do directly, delivered into your brand. What a given engagement includes is agreed before it starts, and it is scoped to the client rather than sold as a fixed package.
Local search and visibility
Google Business Profile setup and management, listings across the platforms that feed maps and assistants, location pages, and the review habit that builds prominence over time.
Search and AI visibility
Technical work, content strategy, and the structured information that lets search engines and answer engines describe a business accurately.
Paid advertising
Search and social campaigns built around cost per qualified enquiry rather than impressions, with conversion tracking set up properly before spend starts.
Web design and development
Sites built to convert and to meet accessibility standards, working alongside the booking and practice systems a client already runs rather than replacing them.
Reputation and listings
Review generation that follows each platform's actual policy, response handling, and keeping business information consistent everywhere it appears.
Reporting you can hand over
Monthly reporting written so a business owner understands it, branded for your agency, leading with outcomes rather than dashboards.
Reporting you can hand overHow we handle healthcare and other regulated clients
A large part of our direct work is healthcare, which has shaped how we handle regulated accounts generally. The positions below are the ones we hold, and we would rather state them publicly than negotiate them per engagement.
We do not put patient health information into marketing systems, and we do not build advertising audiences from condition level behaviour on a healthcare site. That constrains what tracking can do on a clinic's website, and it is the right constraint. The alternative creates exposure for the practice that no amount of campaign performance justifies.
Read the full breakdown: How we handle healthcare and other regulated clientsHide the full breakdown: How we handle healthcare and other regulated clients
Clinical claims get reviewed by someone qualified at the practice before they are published. We write the page, the clinician confirms the medicine. Advertising claims about outcomes need substantiation, which is a regulatory requirement rather than a stylistic preference, and we will not publish an outcome claim a practice cannot support.
We build to WCAG 2.1 AA, because accessibility is both a legal exposure and a practical one for practices whose patients include people with disabilities. And we work within whatever advertising rules a profession's own board imposes, which vary by state and by specialty and which are the practice's obligation as much as ours.
If you are bringing us a regulated client, expect us to ask questions before the work starts rather than discovering the constraints halfway through. That is slower at the beginning and considerably faster overall.
What a partner engagement needs from your side
Delivery goes wrong most often at the handover, not during the work. These are the things that, when they arrive late, delay everything after them.
- Account access, delegated properly, with the accounts in the client's name.
- A named person on your side who can get an answer from the client within a day or two.
- The client's real business details: exact name, address, phone, hours, and the services they actually offer.
- Whatever brand assets exist: logo files, colours, fonts, and photographs of the real business.
- For regulated clients, the name of whoever signs off on claims, and any board or compliance constraints you already know about.
- A clear decision on which model you want, powered by or fully white label, before the first client conversation.
- Honesty about what has already been promised to the client, including anything you would rather we did not know.
That last one matters more than it looks. We can work around a promise that was optimistic, by resetting expectations early and quietly, in a conversation you lead. We cannot work around one we find out about from the client, on a call, three months in. Tell us what was said and we will help you make it land.
Talk to us about partner work
Rates depend on scope, volume and which model you want, so they are agreed on a call rather than published. Bring a live opportunity and we will tell you honestly whether we are the right fit for it.
Straight answers.
Will my client ever find out you exist?
Not in a fully white label arrangement. Reporting carries your branding, communication runs through you, and nothing we produce identifies us. In a powered by arrangement we are named openly, which some agencies prefer because it lets specialists join client calls directly.
Either way, the decision is yours and we follow it. What we will not do is tell a client one thing while telling you another.
Will you approach my clients directly?
No. Partner arrangements carry a non solicitation term in both directions, and it is there because it should be.
The practical safeguard matters as much as the contractual one: in a white label arrangement we have no client-facing contact with your client at all, so the question does not arise operationally. In a powered by arrangement, any contact happens with you in the room.
What do you charge?
Rates depend on the scope, the client, the volume of accounts and which delivery model you choose, so they are agreed on a call rather than published here.
What we can say up front is how the commercial relationship is shaped. You contract with the client and set your own pricing. We contract with you. Your pricing is your business, and we do not publish or discuss what a partner pays anywhere a partner's clients could read it.
Can you guarantee results for my client?
No, and neither can anyone else. Search rankings, lead volume and revenue all depend on factors outside any agency's control, including competitors, seasonality, the platforms' own changes and how the business converts the enquiries it receives.
What can be committed to is scope, process and reporting: what work happens, how it is checked, and what you see at the end of each month. If a fulfilment partner offers you a guaranteed ranking, that is a reason to look elsewhere rather than a reason to sign.
What happens to the work if we stop working together?
You keep it. The accounts are in your client's name throughout, the website and content belong to the client, and the reporting history is yours. We remove our access and that is the end of it.
Ask this question of every partner you evaluate. An arrangement that is painful to leave was designed to be.
Do you work with agencies that already have an in-house team?
Often, yes. The common pattern is an agency with strong capability in one discipline that needs another, or a team that can handle steady work but not a sudden surge.
It also works the other way. Some agencies use partner delivery to test whether a discipline is worth hiring for, which is a sensible way to answer that question without committing to a salary first.
Where this comes from.
Primary documentation and published research behind the guidance on this page.
- FTC: Advertising and marketing basics for business (opens in a new tab)
- FTC: Health Products Compliance Guidance (opens in a new tab)What substantiation a health-related advertising claim requires.
- W3C: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 (opens in a new tab)
- ADA.gov: Guidance on web accessibility and the ADA (opens in a new tab)
- Google Search Central: Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content (opens in a new tab)Google's published self-assessment questions for content quality and experience.
Talk to the team
A short call, a look at how the business currently shows up, and a straight answer on what we would do first.