The Ultimate Social Media Questionnaire for New Clients

Did you know you can easily improve your onboarding process with a social media questionnaire for new clients?

In 2023, brands expect a positive onboarding experience when they are handing over their marketing to your agency.

A negative experience can give off the wrong impression, which can increase your customer churn rate and impact your agency’s reputation.

Fortunately, with a few simple systems in place, you can ensure your new client is on-boarded smoothly and effectively.

We’ve put together everything you need to implement a simple social media questionnaire to kick things off on a positive note.

Want to add a social media questionnaire for new clients today? All Agency Vista members get a complimentary white labeled customer intake questionnaire with their plan!

What is a client onboarding process?

A client onboarding process is when you welcome new clients, address their questions and concerns, set expectations, and ensure they understand the services available to them. 

For a social media agency, it is an essential element that sets the tone of the future relationship and helps ensure it runs smoothly. 

And first impressions count. 

When a business is handing over the reins to its marketing communication channels, they are trusting your agency with not only the branding of its company but its reputation.

If a client’s first experience of your agency is chaotic and unorganized, they are going to be hesitant to trust you with their marketing. What’s worse is they could churn before you’ve even had a chance to deliver your service.

Why is client onboarding important?

Client onboarding is important because it establishes trust and can increase profit.

There is a 70% chance of selling a service to an existing client, but that drops to around 5% for new leads. 

So, what does this mean? It’s easier to upsell to an existing client than it is to continually sell services to a new client.

It’s clear that a smooth onboarding process is imperative to retain clients and increase sales. But how do you ensure the process goes smoothly?

For social media agencies, a well-considered social media questionnaire gathers all of the information you need from the client, speeding up the process and creating a stress-free way to start working together. 

Social media questionnaire onboarding questions

Creating an onboarding questionnaire is a careful balance of asking enough questions to understand the business fully without asking too many and overwhelming your client.

The questionnaire can be broken down into 7 categories:

• Gain access to existing accounts
• Business goals
• Value proposition and differentiator
• Target audience
• Objectives
• Brand tone and voice
• Past efforts

Pick and choose from each section to build your own bespoke questionnaire. 

#1 Gain Access to Existing Platforms

Unless this is a brand-new business, your new client will likely have a handful of existing account credentials. Before starting any work, make sure you have the correct access to all of these accounts. 

Depending on the relevant platforms, ask the client the following questions:

• Do you use a social media management tool like Vista Social?
• Do you have Google Analytics set up on your website?
• Do you have Google Search Console set up on your website?
• Do you have Google Tag Manager set up on your website?
• Do you have a Facebook page?
• Do you have an Instagram account?
• Do you have a TikTok account?
• Do you have a Linkedin account?
• Do you have a Pinterest account?
• Do you have a Twitter account?

Always remember to ask for access to be shared securely. It may make the process a little trickier, but don’t just ask for the client’s login details. 

For instance, ask the client to add you as an admin on their Google Analytics account instead of asking them to send private login credentials. 

Pro Tip: Most platforms now require two-factor authentication. You don’t want to get delayed by having the confirmation code sent to an inactive email address or phone number. Confirm these details in your social media onboarding questionnaire!

#2 Business Goals

Any social media campaign needs to be tightly aligned with your client’s business goals.  

As an agency knows, there are certain strategies that work better for a top-funnel objective compared to a bottom-funnel objective.

It’s important to get very clear on what results they are expecting so that you can create a campaign that will meet those requirements.

To get an understanding of your client’s business goals, consider asking these questions:

• What is your purpose on social media? What do you hope to achieve? 
• Are there any barriers, or have you experienced any barriers to success on social media?
• How does social media fit into your growth plan?
• What is (are) your primary social media marketing goal(s), what’s the conversion metric, and is that metric set up in Google Analytics?
• What is (are) your secondary social media marketing goal(s), what’s the conversion metric, and is that metric set up in Google Analytics?

These questions will dig deep into your clients’ perspectives on social media marketing and what they are hoping to achieve through your agency’s involvement. 

#3 Value Proposition and Differentiator

Let’s get real social media is extremely saturated. So, you’ll need to know what makes your client unique to cut through all the noise.

Social media users are very savvy shoppers and are the most information-hungry consumers. They know what they are looking for, and it’s up to you to connect your client to that audience.

Understanding your client’s values and differentiators is key to finding and capitalizing on their niche across each social media network.

Ask your client the following questions:

• What is your value proposition?
• Who are your competitors?
• What makes your products, services, or team different?
• Why do your customers choose you and not your competition?
• What feedback have your previous customers provided on their purchase?

Bonus if your client has online reviews that have been published to their Google Business, Facebook Page, or other review sites.

This allows you to get a feel for the tone and language past customers have used to describe their experience and why they converted. Which allows your agency to better understand your client’s target audience.

Then, it’s important to evaluate if that messaging is being communicated across your client’s current channels.

#4 Target Audiences and Their Needs

Engaging or attracting the wrong target audience is a complete waste of resources and time.

It’s important to get very clear on who your client’s target is and out of that group, which ones have the highest customer lifetime value.

Consider asking your client the following questions:

• What are the demographics of your customers that have repeatedly purchased from your business?
• What are the demographics of your customers that have purchased the highest amount from your business?
• What demographics or accounts interact the most on your content on social media?
• What are their buying patterns and online shopping preferences?
• How do your customers research, analyze, compare, choose, and purchase your product or service?
• What are their pain points related to your product or service?
• How does your product or service solve their pains?

Use the answers to create audience personas. Once you know exactly who the business is trying to reach, you can plan a social media strategy to meet their specific needs and determine which social media channels they frequent.

#5 Objectives

In order to run a successful social media campaign, you need to find out what your client views a success. 

For one business, success could be increased traffic, while another may need more followers. Ask questions to find out whether the company wants to hit: 

• branding goals such as awareness, recognition, reputation;
• community engagement such as audience growth, customer referrals;
• sales-driven goals such as leads, registrations, sales;
• a mixture of the above.

To find out, consider asking your client the following questions:

• What is the most important objective for your business on social media?
• Do you have different objectives across each social media network?
• How do you define success on social media? Is success the same across each channel?
• In one year from today, what would be deemed a success from social media?

Whatever the goals are, make sure they are specific, measurable, and clearly documented, for example:

“By 2020, we are successful if we’ve increased sales by an average of 10% across all product lines at an average cost per acquisition of $10.”

#6 Brand Tone and Voice

When you start working with a new social media client, you need to understand their brand’s tone and voice. 

Then, you need to evaluate if this is aligned with how their target audience communicates. The best way to do this is by taking a look at online reviews!

If your client is talking very proper and formal, but their target audience is more tailored to Gen Z—then, clearly there is a disconnect.

Now, we’re not saying that Gen Z can’t be formal, but typically, that demographic has their own slang and acronyms that would make sense for your client to incorporate in their marketing.

Ask your clients the following questions:

• Do you have online reviews?
• Do you notice certain phrases used by your customers when describing your product or service?
• Describe your brand voice.

Use the answers to consider the content type best suited to the business (long-form, user-generated, video, funny, informational) and to inform the tone of responses to conversations and engagement. 

#7 Past Social Media Activity

Most businesses will have already conducted some form of social media marketing before your agency gets involved. 

This offers an excellent opportunity for you to glean valuable information about the business’s views on social media, it’s a willingness to spend on paid advertising, and past successes and failures. 

• Are you currently spending any money on social advertising? Could you provide us with details on the campaigns?
• For social media management, do you use an agency or internal team?
• What social networks are you most active on (please provide profile URLs)?
• Have you done any influencer campaigns? How did they end up?

Ready to Create a Social Media Questionnaire for New Clients?

When you use a social media questionnaire for new clients during the onboarding process, it should provide all the information you need to prepare and plan a successful social media strategy. 

Pick and mix from the questions above to build a questionnaire for your clients. The questions will give you insights into your client’s goals, tone and voice, audience, content style, their current situation, and, importantly, their expectations of your management.

Looking to incorporate your own social media questionnaire for new clients? Agency Vista offers all agency members a fully-customizeable white labeled customer intake questionnaire!