Marketing questionnaire for clients: forty questions in six sections

A marketing questionnaire for clients is a set of questions an agency or freelancer sends before the first strategy call, so that the work starts from the client's facts and not from guesses. A good one has six sections: the business, the customers, the offer and competitors, the numbers, past marketing, and the practical limits on the work. It should take the client thirty to forty minutes to answer. Below is a full version you can copy, with the reason each section earns its place and how to use the answers.

Send it after the proposal is signed and before the kickoff call. For the steps that follow it, see the marketing onboarding checklist.

How to run the questionnaire

• Send it as a form or a shared document, not a long email. Clients answer a form.
• Tell them it takes about half an hour and that rough answers are fine. Perfect answers delay the project.
• Mark which questions are essential. Four of the questions below carry most of the value, and they are flagged.
• Ask them to attach, not describe: reports, brand files, previous proposals.
• Read the answers before the kickoff call and bring a short list of follow up questions.

Section 1: the business

1. What does the business do, in two sentences, as you would tell a stranger?
2. How long has it operated, and how many people work in it?
3. Where do you operate: one city, a region, a country, online?
4. What are the main products or services? Which one earns the most profit?
5. What does the business want to be known for in five years?
6. Essential: What is the single most important goal of this project, and by when?

Section 2: the customers

1. Essential: Describe your best customer. Who are they, what do they do, and why did they choose you?
2. Describe a customer you wish you had never taken on.
3. How do customers usually find you today?
4. What problem are they trying to solve when they first contact you?
5. What questions do they ask before they buy?
6. What objections come up most often, and how do you answer them?
7. Who else is involved in the buying decision: a partner, an accountant, a manager?
8. How long does a typical sale take from first contact to payment?

Section 3: the offer and the competitors

1. What makes you different from the alternatives? Give examples a customer would recognise.
2. List your three closest competitors with their websites.
3. Which competitor do you admire, and what do they do well?
4. What do you charge, and how does that compare with the competitors?
5. Do you offer guarantees, trials or warranties?
6. Which claims can you prove with documents, numbers or named customers?

Section 4: the numbers

1. Essential: How many enquiries, orders or bookings do you get in a typical month?
2. What share of enquiries become paying customers?
3. What is the average value of a sale, and what is a customer worth over a year?
4. What is the most you would pay to win one new customer?
5. What is the monthly budget for this work, and what is the budget for advertising spend, kept separate?
6. Which tools can we access: website analytics, search console, advertising accounts, email platform, customer database?
7. How do you record where each enquiry came from?

Section 5: past marketing

1. Essential: What has worked best so far, and how do you know?
2. What have you tried that did not work?
3. Who has handled your marketing before, and why did that end?
4. Which channels are live today: website, social media, email, paid search, print, events, referrals?
5. Do you have brand guidelines, a logo file, photos and approved wording?
6. Have you ever received a complaint or a bad review? What was it about?

Section 6: practical limits

1. Who is our day to day contact, and who approves final work?
2. How quickly can you review drafts? Please give a number of working days.
3. Are there topics, words or claims we must avoid, including any legal or regulatory rules for your industry?
4. Are there seasonal peaks we should plan around?
5. Are there other projects, such as a new site or a move, that may change the plan?
6. What would make you cancel this contract?
7. How do you prefer to receive reports: a short email, a call, a dashboard?

Turning the answers into a plan

Answers about	Becomes
Best customer and objections (7 to 13)	The audience, the messages and the page outlines
Differences and proof (15 to 20)	The positioning and the claims to put on the site
Numbers (21 to 27)	The targets, the budget split and the reporting
Past marketing (28 to 33)	What to keep, stop and test first
Practical limits (34 to 40)	The approval path, the schedule and the contract terms

Highlight any answer where two people at the client disagree, such as the owner and the sales lead naming different best customers. Resolve that on the kickoff call, before any work begins. The tests for choosing a position from these answers are in positioning in marketing.

Shorter versions

For a small project such as a landing page or a one month campaign, ask these eight questions only: the goal (6), the best customer (7), the closest competitors (16), the proof (20), the monthly volume (21), what has worked (28), the budget (25) and the approver (34). Keep the full version for retainers and strategy work.

Mistakes to avoid

• Asking questions whose answers you could find yourself, such as the client's address.
• Asking about the budget last. Put it in the questionnaire, because it shapes the scope.
• Using jargon the client has to look up.
• Arriving at the kickoff call without having read the answers, which tells the client the form was a formality.
• Treating the questionnaire as one off. Re-send the numbers section every quarter.

Questions about the client marketing questionnaire

How many questions should it have?

Between twenty and forty. Fewer leaves gaps, and more than forty tires the client before the work starts.

Should a client questionnaire be a form or a call?

Use both. The form collects facts and files, and the call explores the answers that surprised you.

What if the client cannot answer the numbers questions?

That is a finding. Make setting up the measurement the first month of work.

Can I send the same questionnaire to every client?

Send the same core, then add a short section for the industry, such as service areas for a local business or catalogue size for a shop.

Who should fill it in?

The decision maker for sections one and six, and the person who talks to customers for sections two and three.

A question to add: how do assistants describe the client?

Add a seventh section to the questionnaire for today's buyers: ask the client what ChatGPT or Gemini says when a customer asks about their category. Paste the question as a customer would type it, record the names that come back and note whether the client appears. That one exercise shows whether the client's positioning has reached the places buyers now ask first. AI Knows Us (aiknowsus.com) can run that question across the assistants for a client before the kickoff call, so the answers go into the plan.