New Client Questionnaire Template — Free Agency Tool — Ascend

New Client Questionnaire Template

A new client questionnaire template is the structured set of questions you send to a new client — or work through with them in a discovery call — to capture the information you need before quoting, scoping, or starting a project. A good questionnaire surfaces the brief, the business context, the stakeholders, the constraints, and the success criteria in one pass rather than across three follow-up email threads.

This template is organised in two layers: a universal section (applies to any new client engagement) and three project-type sections (branding, web design, marketing retainer). Use the universal section plus whichever project-type section fits. Skip the rest.

Universal (all clients)BrandingWeb designMarketing retainer

Universal section — all new client engagements

Send these 19 questions to every new client, regardless of project type. Together they cover business context, the specific project, audience, stakeholders, and constraints.

Part U1 — About the business

Business context

  1. 1What does your company do, and who are your customers? (A sentence or two — in your words, not a press release.)
  2. 2How long have you been in business, and what is your approximate annual revenue or team size? (This helps us right-size the work.)
  3. 3What are your top three business goals in the next 12 months?
  4. 4What is the biggest challenge your business is facing right now — and do you expect this project to address it directly?

Part U2 — The project

Project brief

  1. 5What is prompting this project now? Has there been a specific event, change, or trigger?
  2. 6How would you describe the outcome you're looking for — in terms a non-designer or non-marketer would use?
  3. 7What does success look like at the end of this engagement? What's the specific, observable result?
  4. 8What has already been tried? If you've worked on this problem before (internally or with another agency), what happened?

Part U3 — Audience and market

Target audience

  1. 9Who is your primary customer or target audience? Be specific — job title, company size, industry, geography, if relevant.
  2. 10Who are your two or three main competitors? What do you think they're doing better than you right now?
  3. 11How does a typical new customer find you today — and where does that break down?

Part U4 — Stakeholders and approvals

Decision-makers

  1. 12Who will be involved in reviewing and approving our work? List everyone, with their role.
  2. 13Who has final sign-off authority on this project?
  3. 14Are there any internal stakeholders (legal, brand, exec) who need to be consulted before approvals?
  4. 15Have you worked with an agency before? If so, what worked well and what didn't?

Part U5 — Budget, timeline, and constraints

Practical constraints

  1. 16What is your budget range for this project? (If you're not comfortable naming a number, giving us a floor helps more than you'd think.)
  2. 17Is there a hard deadline or launch date that's fixed — not preferred, but truly fixed? What drives it?
  3. 18Are there any technical, legal, brand, or approval constraints we should know about before we start?
  4. 19Is there anything else that would help us do good work for you, that we haven't asked about?

Branding section

Use alongside the universal section for any new brand identity, rebrand, or brand refresh. Combined with the universal section, this is approximately 31 questions — 15–20 minutes for the client.

Part B1 — Brand background

Existing brand

  1. 20Do you have an existing brand identity? If yes, what do you want to keep, and what do you want to change?
  2. 21How would you describe your current brand perception — how do you think customers and prospects see you today?
  3. 22How do you want to be perceived after this project? What's the gap between where you are and where you want to be?
  4. 23Are there any brand elements that are non-negotiable (existing brand colours from a parent company, a logo mark you can't change, etc.)?

Part B2 — Direction and reference

Creative direction

  1. 24Share 3–5 brands you admire — inside or outside your industry. What do you like about each?
  2. 25Share 1–2 brands you dislike or want to look nothing like. What puts you off?
  3. 26Describe your brand personality in 3–5 adjectives. Then describe where you want it to land after the rebrand.
  4. 27Who needs to be involved in reviewing brand direction — and at what stage?

Part B3 — Deliverables and usage

Usage and handoff

  1. 28Where will this brand identity be used? List every surface: digital, print, signage, merchandise, presentations.
  2. 29Do you need brand guidelines as part of the deliverable? What format — printed PDF, Figma, Google Doc, web page?
  3. 30Who internally will be responsible for applying the brand guidelines after we hand over?
  4. 31Are there any partner brands or parent-brand guidelines this identity needs to be consistent with?

Web design section

Use alongside the universal section for any new website, landing page, or website redesign. Combined with the universal section, this is approximately 32 questions.

Part W1 — Current website

What exists today

  1. 20What is your current website URL? (If there isn't one, describe what exists today.)
  2. 21What's wrong with the current site — in your words? What do visitors or your team complain about?
  3. 22What do you most want to keep from the current site?
  4. 23How does the current site perform against your goals? Do you have any analytics or data you can share (traffic, conversion rates, bounce rate)?

Part W2 — New site goals and structure

Goals and structure

  1. 24What is the primary goal of the new website? (Examples: generate leads, sell products, explain the service, attract talent — pick the primary one.)
  2. 25What are the three pages or sections most important to your business?
  3. 26Do you have a sitemap, page list, or wireframes already? If not, is that part of the scope we should account for?
  4. 27Will you be managing the content on this site yourself after launch? If yes, how comfortable is your team with the CMS?

Part W3 — Content

Content ownership

  1. 28Is existing content being migrated, or is all content being written from scratch?
  2. 29Who is responsible for providing or approving copy — internally?
  3. 30Do you have professional photography, product images, or other assets ready to use? Or is that part of what we're producing?
  4. 31Are there any legal, compliance, or accessibility requirements for the content or the site?

Part W4 — Technical

Technical requirements

  1. 32Do you have a hosting provider and domain registrar preference, or should we recommend?
  2. 33Are there any integrations required — CRM, booking, analytics, e-commerce, payment, live chat?
  3. 34Does the site need to be built on a specific platform (Webflow, WordPress, Shopify, etc.) — and if so, why?
  4. 35Who handles technical maintenance after launch — your team, a third party, or are you retaining us?

Marketing retainer section

Use alongside the universal section for any ongoing content, social, SEO, or digital marketing retainer. Combined with the universal section, this is approximately 28 questions.

Part M1 — Marketing background

Current marketing

  1. 20What marketing is currently active — content, email, social, paid ads, SEO? What's working and what isn't?
  2. 21What does your current content calendar or publishing schedule look like, if any?
  3. 22Who at your company is responsible for marketing today — and how much of their time does it take?
  4. 23Where do you currently get the most qualified leads or traffic from?

Part M2 — Goals and priorities

Success definition

  1. 24What is the primary marketing goal for the next six months? (Examples: more leads, more organic traffic, better email engagement, social following — primary goal only.)
  2. 25Are there specific channels you want to grow in, or specific ones you want to stop relying on?
  3. 26What's the one metric you'd most want to improve — the number that, if it went up, would confirm the retainer is working?

Part M3 — Audience and voice

Brand voice

  1. 27What is your content voice today — formal, casual, technical, approachable? How does it need to shift?
  2. 28Do you have existing brand guidelines, tone of voice documentation, or an editorial style guide?
  3. 29Who approves content before it publishes — and what is the typical turnaround on approvals?

Part M4 — Content and assets

Existing assets

  1. 30What content assets do you already have that we can build on — existing articles, guides, videos, templates?
  2. 31Are there topics, products, or services that are off-limits or that require sign-off from a specific person before we write about them?
  3. 32Do you have a product or service roadmap we should be aware of — anything launching in the next three to six months that marketing should support?

Notes on sending the questionnaire

Timing

Send it the day after a verbal agreement or scoping call — not as a condition of having the first call. A questionnaire before any contact is a barrier; after a human conversation, it is a natural next step.

Format

Build it as a form that goes directly into your client records. Sending it as a Google Doc or email attachment means you'll transcribe answers by hand.

Length

Don't send all sections at once. Use the universal section for every client. Add the relevant project-type section. Sixty-plus questions is not reasonable for a first touchpoint.

Chasing responses

Give the client five business days. If they haven't responded, a single follow-up is fine. A questionnaire that takes more than two follow-ups to complete is useful data about the engagement.

Why project-type specificity matters

Generic new client questionnaires ask the same questions regardless of whether you're building a brand identity or a marketing retainer. A branding project needs questions about existing brand equity, non-negotiable elements, and usage surfaces. A web project needs questions about CMS preference, technical integrations, and post-launch ownership. A marketing retainer needs questions about current channel performance, content approvals, and the one metric that defines success. None of these questions belong in every questionnaire; all of them belong in the right one.

The failure mode of a generic questionnaire is that it either asks too little (the brief arrives incomplete) or too much (the client gives up halfway through). Specificity is the fix.

The questionnaire is also not a relationship test. It is designed to come after the first conversation — as a natural next step when both sides have agreed there's likely a fit. At that point, a structured questionnaire signals organisation rather than gatekeeping. A client who can't or won't answer basic questions about their goals, stakeholders, and budget before a project starts is showing you something useful before you've invested delivery time. Use this alongside the client onboarding checklist — the questionnaire feeds the intake phase.

What Ascend connects here

This questionnaire works as a Google Form, Typeform, or any other form tool. The step that saves the most time is when the responses don't require manual transcription — when a client submits the form and the answers land directly in the client record your team uses for the project. Ascend Forms write to Ascend Databases; the new-client questionnaire becomes a database record the moment the client submits.

Ascend is in early access. The free tier covers one client end to end — including the intake form, project records, and invoicing.

Frequently asked questions

What is a new client questionnaire template?+

A new client questionnaire template is a structured set of questions an agency sends to or works through with a new client to capture the information needed before quoting, scoping, or starting a project — including the brief, business context, stakeholders, constraints, and success criteria.

What questions should be in a new client questionnaire?+

Every new client questionnaire should cover the business context (what the client does, who their customers are), the specific project trigger and goal, audience and competitive landscape, stakeholders and approval chain, and budget and timeline. Project-type questions — branding, web design, marketing — are added on top of this universal base.

When should I send a new client questionnaire?+

After the first conversation that confirms likely fit — not as a prerequisite to having that first call. Send it the same day as or the day after a verbal scoping call or initial meeting. A questionnaire before any human contact is a barrier; after a conversation, it is a logical next step.

How many questions should a client questionnaire have?+

Enough to capture a complete brief; not so many that the client abandons it. Fifteen to thirty questions is a reasonable range for most agency engagements. The universal section of this template runs nineteen questions; the project-type sections add ten to thirteen more. Sixty or more questions should be split across multiple stages.

Should I send the questionnaire as a document or a form?+

A form, not a document. Documents (Word, Google Doc, PDF) require the client to type into a formatted file and send it back, and they require you to manually transcribe the answers into wherever you keep client information. A form captures answers directly into your records without a second step.

What do I do if a client doesn't answer the questionnaire fully?+

One follow-up after five business days is reasonable. If key sections remain blank, address them specifically in the kickoff call rather than trying to start work on an incomplete brief. Note which questions went unanswered — a pattern of vague or missing answers is relevant context for how the engagement will run.

How is a new client questionnaire different from a discovery call?+

A questionnaire captures factual, structural information efficiently — contact details, existing assets, technical constraints, stakeholder list, budget range. A discovery call explores context, nuance, and the relationship. The two work together: a completed questionnaire before the discovery call means the call focuses on exploration rather than information collection.

Related resource

Client Onboarding Checklist (Agency)

The questionnaire feeds the intake phase. The onboarding checklist covers everything from intake through kickoff — use them together.

View checklist

Intake that lands in the client record automatically.

The step most agencies skip is wiring the questionnaire to the project record. Ascend Forms write responses directly to Ascend Databases — so the new-client questionnaire becomes a database record the moment the client submits. The free tier covers one client end to end.

Start with Ascend free