Moving from agency dependence to marketing you own isn't one decision. It's four moves, in a specific order. Get the order wrong and you either hire the wrong people, leave a new team to fend for itself, or end up dependent all over again.
Ad Asthra's Build-Operate-Transfer model has four moves over 3 to 6 months: Audit & Design (analyse gaps and design the team), Build the Team (hire onto your payroll in 4 to 6 weeks), Operate the Pilot (run the team for 90 days with SOPs, KPIs and reporting), and Transfer the Keys (hand over the team, accounts, data and playbooks once your leadership is ready to run it).
- BOT runs in four moves: Audit & Design, Build the Team, Operate the Pilot, Transfer the Keys.
- A typical engagement takes 3 to 6 months: about 4 to 6 weeks of hiring and a 90-day pilot.
- The team is hired onto your payroll from day one, with a replacement guarantee in the first 60 days.
- The pilot sets up SOPs, KPIs and reporting loops, which tackle the workflow problems in-house teams most often face.
- The transfer is done when your team runs a full month without the partner.
The four moves at a glance
Ad Asthra's Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) model takes a business from depending on an agency to owning its marketing in four moves. They're the same four steps set out on our BOT page: audit and design, build the team, operate the pilot, and transfer the keys. A typical engagement takes 3 to 6 months.
| Move | What happens | Typical time | You end up with |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Audit & Design | We analyse your current gaps and design the right team structure | Start of the engagement | A plan, roles and targets in numbers |
| 2. Build the Team | We recruit through our vetted network and technical assessments, onto your payroll | 4 to 6 weeks | Your own marketing team |
| 3. Operate the Pilot | We run the team for 90 days, setting up SOPs, KPIs and reporting loops | 90 days | A working system with proven results |
| 4. Transfer the Keys | We hand over the reins, making sure your leadership is ready to run it | Final weeks | Full ownership: team, data, playbooks |
Why does it matter now? Marketing budgets have been flat for years and 39% of CMOs plan to cut agency spending (Gartner, 2025), while labour's share of marketing budgets is rising, from 21.9% to 24.5% in a year (Gartner, June 2026). Companies are moving money from rented capability to owned capability. BOT is a structured way to make that move without the usual false starts.
Move 1: Audit & Design
Every engagement starts by understanding the business: goals, customers, current marketing, numbers and gaps. A big part of this move is checking ownership: whose name the ad accounts, analytics, data and listings are in. Our 10-point ownership audit shows what that looks like.
The audit answers three questions:
- What does marketing need to deliver? Leads, appointments, admissions, site visits or sales, in numbers.
- What's working and what isn't? By channel, from your own data where possible.
- What team and tools does that need? Roles, skills, seniority and the minimum tool stack.
The output is a design: the org structure, job descriptions, budgets and KPIs for the pilot.
Move 2: Build the Team
Next comes the team, hired directly onto your payroll from day one, so the people who learn your business stay in your business. Roles depend on the audit: typically growth leads, performance marketers, content strategists, creative designers and data analysts.
The order matters. The first hires set the culture and carry the knowledge, so we start with the roles that unlock everything else. Our guide to your first in-house hire explains how to make that bet pay off. And if a hire doesn't meet their KPIs in the first 60 days, we replace them at no extra cost.
Hiring well matters more than hiring fast. In the ANA's research on in-house teams, attracting top-tier talent was the second biggest management concern, cited by 44% (ANA, 2019).
Move 3: Operate the Pilot
This is where the system runs. For 90 days, we operate marketing alongside your new team: campaigns, content, lead follow-up and reporting. The team learns by doing the real work, and every process gets written down as it happens.
By the end of the pilot, three things are in place:
- SOPs for every recurring task, from campaign launches to lead follow-up.
- KPIs agreed with leadership and tracked weekly.
- Reporting loops: dashboards on your own data, and a monthly review routine.
This move protects against the most common in-house problems. The ANA found the top challenges for in-house teams were managing workflow as projects grow, scaling efficiently and prioritising work (ANA, 2023). A pilot with written processes and clear KPIs solves those before the partner steps away.
Move 4: Transfer the Keys
The final move hands everything over: the team's reporting lines, accounts, data, dashboards, playbooks and training. Not a handoff of tasks, but a handoff of control. That includes making sure your people hold the top access level on every platform; in Google Ads, for example, only Admin users can manage who has access (Google Ads Help).
The transfer is done when your team runs a full month of marketing on its own and your leadership reviews the results without us. Here's the full handover checklist.
Why the order matters
Each move depends on the one before it:
- Skip Audit & Design, and you hire for the wrong roles.
- Skip the build discipline, and you end up with one overloaded generalist.
- Skip the pilot, and a new team is left to work everything out alone.
- Skip the transfer, and you've hired an agency with extra steps.
A multi-location clinic group starts BOT with an audit: 70% of new patients come from Google, the agency owns the ad accounts, and nobody tracks which enquiries book. The design calls for three roles: a performance marketer, a content and local-search specialist, and a CRM coordinator.
The team is hired in five weeks. During the 90-day pilot, every enquiry goes into one CRM, each centre gets its own Google Business Profile routine, and the monthly review is run against cost per booked appointment. At transfer, the clinic's operations head takes over the review, and the team runs on its own.
If owning the team outright isn't right for you yet, Build-Operate-Manage builds the same system and keeps us on as your management layer. Not sure which fits? Try the five questions.
Four moves. From dependency to ownership.
Start your BOT journey
Every BOT engagement starts with an audit. Here's where to go next:
Frequently asked questions
What are the four steps of Build-Operate-Transfer?
Audit & Design, where gaps are analysed and the team designed; Build the Team, where people are hired onto your payroll; Operate the Pilot, a 90-day run with SOPs, KPIs and reporting; and Transfer the Keys, the handover to your leadership.
How long does a BOT engagement take?
Typically 3 to 6 months. Hiring takes about 4 to 6 weeks and the pilot runs for 90 days before the transfer.
What roles can a BOT team include?
It depends on the audit. Common roles are growth leads, performance marketers, content strategists, creative designers and data analysts.
Who employs the team during BOT?
Your company. The team is hired directly onto your payroll from day one, so the people who learn your business stay with it.
What happens in the 90-day pilot?
Ad Asthra runs marketing alongside your new team, setting up SOPs for recurring work, agreeing KPIs with leadership and building reporting loops on your own data.
What if a BOT hire doesn't work out?
Ad Asthra offers a replacement guarantee: if a candidate doesn't meet KPIs within the first 60 days, we replace them at no extra cost.
What's the difference between BOT and BOM?
Both build the same system. In BOT, we transfer it to your leadership. In BOM, the team stays yours and we stay on as your fractional CMO and management layer.
Sources
- Gartner 2025 CMO Spend Survey Reveals Marketing Budgets Have Flatlined at 7.7% of Overall Company Revenue, Gartner, 12 May 2025
- Gartner Marketing Survey Finds Awareness and Conversion Account for 62.6% of Total Media Spend, Gartner, 8 June 2026
- In-House Agencies No Longer A Trend, They're Here To Stay: ANA Report, Association of National Advertisers (ANA), 2023
- New Study Reveals Concerns For In-House Agency Management, Association of National Advertisers (ANA), 2019
- About access levels in your Google Ads account, Google Ads Help
Last updated