Having an established set of client onboarding procedures is crucial if you're running your own marketing firm. Every new client presents a fresh opportunity to showcase your expertise and establish yourself as an authority in your industry. But before you decide to sign a contract and get the ball rolling, you must make sure you can actually meet your client's expectations and deliver results that will be beneficial for both of you.
A great way to discover this vital information is by implementing a marketing questionnaire for clients during the early stages of your onboarding process. This is not only a professional way to begin the relationship, but it will give you essential insights into your client's preferences, goals and their biggest sales challenges. This will also make an excellent tool for you to draft a client-winning marketing proposal.
To help you create the perfect client questionnaire, we will go over some of the main aspects you should cover. Let's get to it!
Note: Bonsai helps take your marketing business to the next level with excellent administrative tools to manage your end-to-end processes. From client onboarding, to invoicing, payments, tax and accounting, we've got your back.
Questions to Include in Your Marketing Client Questionnaire
Your client onboarding questionnaire should help you discover essential information including your client's goals, their marketing metrics, and how their business operates. In order to avoid wasting either your own or the client's time, it is important to make the questionnaire brief and to the point. The secret to success is tailoring the questionnaire to the requirements of your marketing agency while keeping it easy enough for a prospective customer to finish it promptly.
Here are some vital aspects you must try to cover along with some example questions to help guide you in the right direction.
Client's Business Information
To begin your client onboarding questionnaire, you must collect the basic business and contact information as well as establish communication guidelines and billing details. Gathering this client information from the beginning will help you maintain your records well organized and make your follow-up process more efficient.
- Please provide your company information including business address, name, phone number, and email address.
- Please provide your business billing information.
- Who serves as your company's primary point of contact?
- What is the best way to reach them?
- Which form of communication suits you the best?
- Do you have any guidelines that we should read and keep on hand concerning your company?
Company Background
This section will allow you to get to know the client's company more clearly and identify the client's objectives, strengths, as well as limitations. It is essential to establish these elements when getting to know your new clients. These questions' responses reveal who you're dealing with, what your client believes in, and how they prefer to conduct business.
Here are some questions you can incorporate into your client questionnaire.
- What is the history of your company?
- When did you launch your company?
- What does the future have in store for your company? What do you see?
- What values and beliefs do you hold?
- Who are your main competitors? (mention from three to five)
- What distinguishes your business from your competitors?
- What are the short- and long-term objectives of your company?
- What is the mission statement and future vision of your company?
Expectations
The success of your new business relationship will highly depend on whether or not you can meet your client's expectations. You must ask questions to find out the reason why they are seeking out your services and whether they have any previous experience with marketing services. This way, you can create a tailored strategy that your client will appreciate and find useful.
These questions will help you dig deeper.
- Why did you choose our company for this job, exactly?
- Have you ever collaborated with a digital marketing agency? If so, how did that go for you? What happened as a result?
- What tasks do you expect us to perform as your account manager?
- What do you want this marketing project to help you accomplish? How will you know when you have succeeded?
- How much say do you want in campaign decisions?
- What can we do in terms of customer service to make sure you get what you want?
Target Audience & Sales Process
In order to determine the most effective marketing strategy to target your client's ideal client, you must clearly understand who they are and what is currently being done to attract them (whether it is working or not). Once you have all the answers, you can create innovative and targeted campaign material.
These are some example questions to include to get all the details you need.
- Who are your ideal customers or clients?
- Who is the intended market for your business?
- How are customers currently finding your business online?
- What kind of connection do you have with your audience?
- After viewing your content, what steps do you generally expect your audience to take?
- What do you believe has historically worked for you in terms of your experience with digital marketing? What hasn’t worked?
- How would you describe your sales process?
- Which social media platforms do you anticipate your customers using?
- Are your sales impacted by seasonal patterns?
- What have been some of the biggest challenges your company has had to overcome?
Marketing and Branding
It's important to fully understand the business particulars in order to be able to customize your marketing approach for your new client. During the onboarding process, you should learn as much as you can about the infrastructure and technologies the organization currently uses.
Ask these questions to find out what their current marketing and branding strategy look like.
- Do you currently have brand assets or a predetermined style guide?
- Do you use a certain font for branding and marketing?
- What are your preferred spelling conventions, target languages, and geographical regions?
- What issues are your goods/services resolving for potential customers?
- What prompts a prospect to purchase your goods or services at this time?
- What upselling tactics do you use?
- What message do you want to deliver to both your current and potential customers?
- Which of your products or services is the most successful?
- What metrics do you currently track for marketing?
Project Details
Finally, you'll want to get some final project details including what your client hopes to achieve and how much control they wish to have during the process. Don't forget about the client's budget and any specific deadlines or milestones to meet.
Try incorporating the following questions.
- What objectives do you have for this digital marketing project or our collaboration?
- Which elements of digital marketing would you like to emphasize?
- What is the projected budget of this project?
- What is the project delivery schedule and deadline?
- Are there any specific milestones that must be met during this project?
- Which tasks would you need our agency to do as opposed to those that your team will carry out?
Create Your New Client Questionnaire With Bonsai
Creating your own marketing questionnaire may sound a bit overwhelming and time-consuming. But it doesn't have to be that hard. Bonsai makes it simpler with its lightweight custom form builder which allows you to quickly create professional client questionnaires and keep all the information you need at hand. Our forms are fully customizable so you can make it your own by including as many questions as you need, add your own branding elements and select your preferred answer format (single choice, text or multiple choice).
Your client questionnaire can be sent to new customers via email, URL link or you can have it embedded into your business website which will streamline your onboarding process and help you collect more leads. Start your 14-day free trial to discover these and many more tools to help you grow your business and save valuable time without compromising quality. Focus on your passion, not your paperwork.
