Bottom line: The marketing questionnaire is different from the brand questionnaire. Brand questionnaires uncover positioning and identity. Marketing questionnaires uncover channels, history, KPIs, and attribution. Mixing them is the most common mistake. The 45-question template below is what works for performance, content, SEO, social, and paid marketing engagements. Send before the kickoff, score for fit, then run a smarter discovery.
Most "marketing intake forms" are 10 lazy questions that miss the operational signal. They ask "what are your goals?" but never ask "what did you try in the last 12 months that did not work, and why did it not work?" The second question is what tells you whether this engagement will succeed or repeat the same failure pattern.
Quick-Scan Summary:
- 6 sections, ~45 questions: Business context, Marketing history, Channels and assets, KPIs and goals, Competitors, Budget and timing.
- Time to complete (client side): 20-35 minutes.
- Use it before the kickoff. The kickoff agenda is built around their answers, not basic discovery.
- Score for fit on 4 criteria: specificity of past learnings, attribution maturity, budget clarity, decision-maker access. Two red flags is usually a walk.
- Where it differs from a brand questionnaire: less positioning and personality, more channel data and attribution. Use the branding questionnaire for identity work, this for marketing work.
Brand vs Marketing Questionnaire (Pick the Right Tool)
| Use brand questionnaire when... | Use marketing questionnaire when... | |---|---| | Engagement is positioning, identity, naming, or voice | Engagement is performance, content, social, paid, SEO, or campaigns | | Client is repositioning, rebranding, or pre-launch | Client has an existing market presence to grow | | Output is brand strategy, identity system, messaging framework | Output is campaign plans, content calendars, channel strategy, growth playbooks | | Discovery emphasis is on aspiration, personality, audience perception | Discovery emphasis is on what was tried, what worked, what the data shows |
Some agency engagements are hybrids. For those, run both questionnaires (in that order: brand first, marketing second). For pure marketing engagements, this one is enough.
The 6-Section Template (Copy-Paste)
Send as a Google Doc, Notion page, or via your client portal. Tell the client to budget 25 minutes.
Section 1: Business Context
1. What does your company actually do, in one sentence?
2. Annual revenue, team size, and primary product/service categories?
3. Your target buyer: describe them as a specific person, not a demographic.
4. What is the average customer LTV and the typical sales cycle (in days from first touch to closed-won)?
5. Who is the primary internal stakeholder for this marketing engagement? (Founder, CMO, Head of Marketing, in-house lead)
6. What is the broader business goal this marketing work supports? (Revenue target, expansion to new market, fundraising preparation, retention)
7. What does success look like 6 and 12 months out, specifically?Section 2: Marketing History (The Most Important Section)
This is where you find out if the engagement will work. The depth of past-learning answers is the single strongest predictor of campaign success.
8. List the top 3 marketing initiatives from the last 12 months. For each: what was the objective, what did you do, what was the outcome?
9. What is the single best-performing marketing thing your company has ever done? Why do you think it worked?
10. What is the single worst-performing marketing thing? Why do you think it failed?
11. What did you stop doing in the last 12 months, and why?
12. What are you currently doing that is "working" but you suspect you could not actually prove with attribution?
13. What in-house marketing capability do you have? (FTEs, freelancers, agencies currently engaged)
14. Have you worked with marketing agencies before? What was the outcome, and what would you do differently?Section 3: Channels and Assets
15. Which channels currently drive the most leads or revenue, ranked? (Organic search, paid search, social organic, paid social, email, partnerships, events, PR, direct, referral)
16. Estimated traffic to your website per month, and the source breakdown if known.
17. What is the current state of your content marketing? (Frequency, topic strategy, who writes it)
18. SEO baseline: which 3-5 keywords drive the most current traffic? What does your current ranking position look like?
19. What is your email list size, and what is its current engagement rate? (Open rate, CTR, list growth rate)
20. Which paid platforms are you currently active on? (Google Ads, Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok, programmatic) Monthly spend by platform?
21. What creative assets exist already? (Brand video, photography, case studies, testimonials, white papers, ebooks)
22. Who currently owns your website, and what platform is it on?
23. What CRM and marketing automation tools are in use?Section 4: KPIs and Goals
24. Primary KPI you want this engagement measured against? (Pipeline created, MQLs, SQLs, demo bookings, signups, organic traffic, revenue)
25. Target value for that KPI, and the current baseline?
26. What is the realistic timeline to see meaningful change on the primary KPI?
27. Secondary KPIs we should track but not optimize for?
28. What metrics does the board, founder, or leadership team look at monthly?
29. How will marketing performance be attributed? (Last touch, first touch, multi-touch, time decay, lift studies)
30. Are there any vanity metrics leadership cares about that you would advise us to also report on (even if we know they are not driving actual business outcome)?Section 5: Competitors and Market
31. Three closest direct competitors? For each, what is their marketing approach (channels, content style, positioning)?
32. Which competitor's marketing do you most respect, and why?
33. Where do competitors out-execute you today? (Channel they own, content depth, brand awareness, paid budget)
34. Where do you out-execute competitors today?
35. Are there market trends or shifts we should be aware of? (Category formation, consolidation, regulation, channel disruption)
36. What do you wish your buyers understood about your category that they don't yet?Section 6: Budget and Timing
37. Total monthly marketing budget envelope (agency fees + media spend + tools + everything)?
38. How is that budget currently split between agency fees, paid media spend, tools, in-house?
39. Is the budget locked, growing, or pressure-testing? (Locked = approved for 12 months. Growing = increases with results. Pressure-testing = if you don't see results in N months, it gets cut.)
40. What is the absolute hard deadline that triggers any of this work? (Funding round, product launch, fiscal year-end, board meeting)
41. Who has signing authority on contract amendments and scope changes?
42. What is the realistic decision timeline for approving creative, content, or campaign work? (Same day, 48 hours, weekly review, multi-stakeholder sign-off)
43. Are there approval bottlenecks we should know about? (Legal review, brand compliance, founder sign-off, board review)
44. Preferred communication cadence and channel? (Weekly call, async Slack, email digest, [client portal](/platform/client-portal))
45. Anything else we should know that isn't covered above?How to Use the Marketing Questionnaire
The questionnaire is not the discovery. It is the prep that lets discovery skip the basics.
The flow that works:
- Send 5-7 days before the kickoff. Less time than the brand questionnaire because marketing answers are more data-driven and faster to assemble.
- Read every answer before the kickoff. Highlight contradictions (e.g., "primary KPI is pipeline" + "no attribution model" = first conversation in the kickoff).
- Kickoff agenda: 15 minutes confirming context, 30 minutes on Section 2 (past initiatives), 15 minutes on Section 6 (budget reality vs goal feasibility).
- Within 48 hours, send "what we heard plus our initial reaction" doc. This anchors the engagement before scope drifts.
How to Score Answers for Client Fit
| Criterion | Green flag | Yellow flag | Red flag | |---|---|---|---| | Past learning depth | Specific failures and what they learned in Section 2 | Vague summaries ("we tried Facebook ads, didn't work") | Cannot articulate why anything succeeded or failed | | Attribution maturity | Clear answer in Section 4, knows model | Knows last-touch only | "We just look at total revenue" | | Budget clarity | Specific monthly envelope + split | Range without confidence | "We'll figure it out as we go" or below your minimum | | Decision access | Single decision-maker named with authority | Founder named but slow to respond historically | Committee approval, multi-stakeholder, no tiebreaker |
Two red flags is a sales conversation before accepting. Three is usually a walk.
Common Mistakes
1. Asking aspirational goals without past learnings. "Our goal is 3x pipeline in 6 months" without context is meaningless. Section 2 tells you whether the goal is reachable.
2. Skipping the attribution question. If the client has no attribution model, your campaign cannot fail in any way they will accept. They will measure you on whatever metric is most flattering or most stress-inducing in the moment.
3. Not asking what they stopped doing. The reasons companies stopped past marketing efforts reveal a lot about internal politics, leadership volatility, or vendor management issues that will affect your engagement.
4. Putting budget at the end without a real answer. "What is your budget?" gets a non-answer. The 3-question budget format in Section 6 forces specificity.
5. Treating the questionnaire as exhaustive. It is a starting point. The kickoff conversation always uncovers things the questionnaire missed. Update the template every 6 months.
Not For You
This template is not for you if:
- Your engagement is under $3K/month. The intake overhead exceeds the contract value.
- You sell pure execution work (write 4 blog posts per month, post on social) without strategy. A 10-question intake is closer.
- You are doing a quick audit project. Use a shorter audit-specific questionnaire instead.
- The client is your existing customer and you already know the context.
It is for you if you are starting a marketing retainer or campaign engagement above $5K/month with a client whose marketing context you do not deeply know yet.
FAQ
What is a marketing questionnaire for agencies?
A structured document an agency sends to a new client before starting a marketing engagement. It covers business context, marketing history, channels and assets, KPIs, competitors, and budget. Completed answers replace generic discovery questions and give the agency strategist a point of view going into the kickoff. Typically 35-50 questions, 20-35 minutes to complete.
How is a marketing questionnaire different from a brand questionnaire?
Brand questionnaires uncover positioning, identity, personality, and voice. Marketing questionnaires uncover channels, attribution, past initiatives, KPIs, and budget. Branding is "who you are as a company"; marketing is "how you reach buyers." Some discovery overlaps, but the depth and order differ. For identity engagements use the branding questionnaire; for marketing engagements use this one.
When should agencies send a marketing questionnaire?
5-7 days before the kickoff meeting. Less time than a brand questionnaire because marketing answers are more data-driven (the client pulls numbers from analytics rather than reflecting on identity). Pair the send with a clear deadline and a kickoff agenda that signals the meeting will be useless without the homework done.
What is the most important question to include?
The one that is most often skipped: "What did you try in the last 12 months that did not work, and why did it not work?" The depth of past-learning answers predicts engagement outcomes more than any other single signal. Vague answers usually mean either a lack of attribution maturity or a tendency to attribute past failures to outside factors (which means they will also attribute future failures to you).
Should I customize the questionnaire per client?
Use the 6 core sections universally and add 3-5 industry-specific questions for your most common client types. For B2B SaaS clients, add questions about ARR growth, ACV, and funnel stage definitions. For e-commerce clients, add questions about CAC payback period, AOV, and channel attribution. Heavy customization per individual client is overkill; consistent structure with category-specific add-ons works best.
How do I get clients to actually finish the questionnaire?
Three things help: (1) make it a Google Doc or Notion page they can edit in-browser, not a printable PDF; (2) name the specific data points you need (analytics, ad accounts, CRM exports) so they assemble the data before opening the questionnaire; (3) attach the kickoff calendar invite with a note that the agenda is built around their answers. Completion rate jumps when the meeting depends on the homework.
What To Do Next
To put this template to work:
- Copy the 45 questions into a Google Doc or Notion page.
- Add a one-paragraph intro explaining why you are asking and how long it should take.
- Add 3-5 industry-specific questions for your top client type.
- Build a "what we heard" doc template you fill in within 48 hours of every kickoff.
- Use a productized service intake to automate it if you take repeatable marketing engagements.
The marketing engagements that hit their KPIs are the ones where the strategist walked into the kickoff already knowing where the gaps were. The questionnaire is what makes that possible.
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