An onboarding questionnaire should help your agency make the next decision. If it asks a client to write their entire business history before a kickoff call, it will often create more delay than clarity.
For a small marketing agency, start with one short intake form that identifies the goal, audience, offer, current channels, key contacts, and urgent constraints. Ask detailed strategy questions during discovery or once you know which deliverable needs them.
Below is a questionnaire you can copy. It is designed for a new engagement, but the optional questions change depending on whether you will manage content, SEO, paid campaigns, or a website.
The short form: ten questions to send before kickoff
Tell the client why you need the answers, who will see them, and when you need them. Mark only genuinely essential items as required.
| # | Client-facing question | What it helps the agency decide |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | What is the main result you want this project to achieve? | Defines the priority outcome |
| 2 | Which product or service should this work support first? | Prevents a vague “promote everything” brief |
| 3 | Who is the primary customer for that offer? | Identifies the audience |
| 4 | Which markets and languages matter for this project? | Sets geography and copy requirements |
| 5 | What should someone do after seeing the campaign or page? | Clarifies the action to design around |
| 6 | What is already working, and what has failed? | Provides context without claiming proof |
| 7 | Which website, brand, content, or campaign materials can you share? | Starts the asset inventory |
| 8 | Who can answer day-to-day questions, and who approves final work? | Avoids decision bottlenecks |
| 9 | Are there fixed launch dates, legal reviews, or other constraints? | Identifies dependencies |
| 10 | What would make the first deliverable useful to you? | Defines an early acceptance test |
Keep a free-text option such as “We are not sure yet.” An honest unknown is more useful than a confident guess you later treat as a fact.
Add only the questions your first deliverable requires
For an SEO engagement, ask for the most important products or services, relevant locations, access to existing search data, and pages that must remain stable. Do not ask the client for a list of keywords and assume that list is a strategy.
For paid campaigns, ask for the approved budget range, target action, landing page, existing tracking setup, account owner, and any offer restrictions. Do not request card details or account passwords in the form.
For content production, ask for subject-matter contacts, examples of approved content, claims requiring evidence, brand voice guidance, and the person who signs off. Ask where source documents live and whether you may quote them.
For a website project, ask for the pages in scope, the main conversion action, existing hosting or CMS, brand assets, and who supplies copy and images. Confirm whether a migration or redirect plan is part of the agreed work.
These are modules. A client paying for an SEO audit does not need to answer an entire questionnaire about video production.
Use a kickoff call to resolve ambiguous answers
Imagine a client writes, “We want more leads.” At kickoff, ask what a qualified lead means, which service those leads should request, and who can answer quickly. You may discover that the website already gets enquiries but the contact form sends them to an unattended inbox. The first useful action is then different from launching a new ad campaign.
Record the decisions after the call:
| Decision | Agreed answer | Owner | Open question |
|---|---|---|---|
| Priority offer | Example: commercial window installation | Client lead | Confirm target cities |
| Primary action | Example: request a site visit | Agency lead | Verify form routing |
| Final approver | Named person | Client lead | None |
This example is fictional. The purpose is to demonstrate a decision log, not report a client outcome.
What not to put in an intake form
Never ask a client to type passwords, recovery codes, payment card details, or sensitive personal data into a general marketing form. Request access through the relevant platform's invite flow or your approved secure process. If the work involves regulated data, define the handling procedure before collecting it.
Avoid asking the same question in the sales call, form, and kickoff meeting without carrying the answer forward. Pre-fill what your team already knows and give the client a chance to correct it.
Send a clearer request
Example invitation:
To prepare a useful kickoff, please answer the ten questions below by Thursday. Most answers can be short. If you are unsure about a question, write “not sure” and we will resolve it together on the call. Please share account access through the platform's invitation system rather than this form.
After submission, the project owner reviews the answers, flags contradictions, and assigns the unanswered items. Only then mark the intake task complete in the client onboarding template.
Decide whether your form is working
After a few projects, look at the questions clients skip, the questions your team never uses, and the decisions that repeatedly get deferred to kickoff. Remove unused fields. Rewrite confusing ones in the client's language. The best questionnaire is the shortest one that makes the next decision possible.
Use the client onboarding checklist to place this form within the full handoff, and consider automating the notification only after testing your process.