- Helps understand the client’s business and brand
- Provides a structured approach
- Improves client relationships
- Enables better collaboration
- Creates a benchmark for measurement
- Provides a competitive advantage
- Branding and company information
- Example onboarding questions to ask
- Target audience and demographics
- Example onboarding questions to ask
- Social media objectives and goals
- Example onboarding questions to ask
- Social media platform preferences
- Example onboarding questions to ask
- Content strategy and brand voice
- Example onboarding questions to ask
- Existing social media presence
- Example onboarding questions to ask
- Competition analysis
- Example onboarding questions to ask
- Budget and resources
- Example onboarding questions to ask
- Keep it simple and clear
- Ask open-ended questions
- Customize questions for different clients
- Focus on the client's needs and objectives
- Incorporate feedback from previous clients
- Review the questionnaire with the client
- Use the answers to develop a customized social media strategy
- Revise the questionnaire as necessary to reflect changes in the client's needs
- How long should a social media questionnaire be?
- What are some common mistakes to avoid when creating a social media questionnaire?
What is a social media questionnaire?
A social media questionnaire is a survey used by your marketing agency to collect information from new clients. It helps you understand the brand you’re representing, the audience they want to reach, where they are in their social marketing efforts, and where they want your agency to take them.
While you may have gleaned some of this information during the initial sales process, the agency client onboarding process is the time to uncover important details. Use social media surveys to build a picture of your client’s company, following up with in-person conversations to clarify detail.
Benefits of using a social media questionnaire for client onboarding
Whether you’re delivering services through our white-label social media management packages or handling client marketing activities in-house, you’ll find the most successful social marketing campaigns are customized to each client’s unique situation.
A social media questionnaire is the most efficient way to compile all the details you need to get started, laying the foundation for a productive and rewarding client relationship. Let’s look at why it’s worth developing a social media marketing questionnaire as part of new client onboarding.
Helps understand the client’s business and brand
To authentically represent your new social media client’s brand, you need to understand the nuances of their business. Use a social media client questionnaire to discover key information such as:
- How the company started
- Its vision, mission, and values
- Key products and services
- Target audience’s needs
- How they want customers to feel about them
With this insight, you can create a social media proposal for a campaign that fits into a company’s overall marketing strategy and accurately reflects their brand.
Provides a structured approach
When you take an ad hoc approach to collecting information, you risk missing important points. A social media client questionnaire puts a system into place, simplifying the onboarding process.
An automated online survey saves everyone time. You’ll have the same basic information on file for every client so team members can refer to it when needed. Your new social media client can complete the questionnaire at their own pace, thinking through what they want to achieve.
Improves client relationships
It’s critical to get your brand-new relationship off to a good start, assuring clients they made the right choice in selecting your agency’s social media management packages. Use the survey to formally welcome them into the fold, showing you take their business seriously and demonstrating expertise in determining what they want to accomplish.
With well-designed social media survey questions, you can collect the bulk of your information at once, saving you from continually reaching out to your new client when you realize you’ve forgotten a key detail. This sets a positive and professional tone for your partnership.
Enables better collaboration
It’s important for both parties to get on the same page as soon as possible. By inviting clients to express their thoughts directly—and systematically working through details about your client’s purpose, business operations, and audience segments— you avoid confusion or miscommunication.
Creates a benchmark for measurement
Once you begin implementing your client’s social media strategy, you can start measuring performance. The best way to quantify success is with social media analytics, but you should also refer to the social media client onboarding questionnaire to review initial goals and concerns.
Identify what you’ve achieved and what still needs to be done to meet the brand’s objectives. Then, adjust your marketing tactics and use data-driven decisions to continue growing your client’s social media presence.
Provides a competitive advantage
A social media strategy is only successful if you can connect with the right audiences and motivate them to take action. The more valuable insights you collect, the better you can target your client’s audience from the billions of users on social media.
Structure the social media questionnaires to pull out whatever information your team requires to do its job. Once you have a clear picture of how to position the brand and appeal to its customers, you can create content for the most relevant channels and carve out a vibrant digital space for your new social media clients.
Key elements of a social media questionnaire
Below, we’ll walk through examples of social media survey questions you can use to compile basic details from multiple clients. You may find that you need to add questions or reword for clarity as you review responses, so adjust the form as you learn from each onboarding experience.
1. Branding and company information
These social media survey questions help you better understand a client’s unique selling proposition so you can distinguish the brand from its competitors.
Example onboarding questions to ask
- What is the purpose of your company?
- How do you want to be perceived by your target audience?
- What differentiates your brand?
- What solutions are you offering your customers?
2. Target audience and demographics
To craft social media posts that are most likely to resonate with your client’s target market, find out everything you can about who they are, how they behave online, and why they might be interested in your client’s products.
Example onboarding questions to ask
- What do your target customers look like (age, gender, location, job title)? Describe in as much detail as possible.
- What are they interested in and what motivates them?
- How do they research and make purchasing decisions?
- What are your target audience’s needs and pain points that your product and/or services can satisfy?
- What are the challenges in reaching your audience?
3. Social media objectives and goals
Learn more about your client’s expectations so you can prioritize your marketing activities. For example, do they want your agency to focus on using social media in reputation management or growing their audience?
You’ll require follow-up conversations to get a more precise picture of what they want to accomplish, but at the initial stage, you can get a sense of whether clients have clear-cut plans or need guidance in setting goals.
Example onboarding questions to ask
- How can social media improve your business?
- What are you hoping to achieve through our partnership?
- What does social media success look like to you?
- What is the most important way we can help you?
4. Social media platform preferences
It’s important to choose social media channels that your client’s target audience frequents, rather than ones your client thinks they should be using. Assess which social media platforms they currently use and why, and determine if they’re open to other channels if your research indicates a good fit with their audience.
Example onboarding questions to ask
- Which social platforms are you currently using and how did you choose them? Please list all account handles.
- Which of your social media accounts have the most user engagement?
- Have you considered expanding to other social media channels?
5. Content strategy and brand voice
When you’re selling social media packages, you’re offering tailor-made solutions to help grow your client’s audience. Your marketing agency must align stories, messages, and visuals with your client’s brand voice and create a consistent presence across multiple social platforms.
Example onboarding questions to ask
- Do you have an SEO content marketing strategy?
- What type of social media content does your audience respond to?
- What tone and voice do you use to communicate with your target audience?
- What colors, style, and visuals convey your brand?
- Do you have brand and style guides you can provide us? Provide a way to upload files.
- What seasonal dates or events are important to your industry?
6. Existing social media presence
Get a sense of your client’s current social media strategy so you can assess what is working and where you need to fine-tune it.
Example onboarding questions to ask
- How often do you post on each of the following social media platforms? (include a list)
- How often do you run paid ad campaigns?
- Which of the following content types do you currently use? Allow clients to choose from a list that includes choices such as blog posts, video, and live stories.
- What challenges are you experiencing in your current social media outreach?
- Which social media campaigns have fallen short of your expectations in the past?
7. Competition analysis
Gather competitor insights so you know who else is vying for your client’s target audience. You can study social media accounts of similar businesses to get ideas for content creation and see how to differentiate your client.
Complement what you gather from your new client survey with social listening techniques that fill you in on what users are saying about various brands. This helps your social media fit neatly into broader trends and concerns.
Example onboarding questions to ask
- Who are your key competitors?
- Why would a customer choose your brand over the competitor?
- Are there competitors with a successful social media strategy that you see as a model or example?
- What are your brand’s strengths and weaknesses when compared to your main competitors?
8. Budget and resources
Your agency will provide different social media services to each client depending on their budget, expertise, and availability of their in-house team. Narrow down their needs so you can set the scope of your social media marketing strategy and designate appropriate agency resources.
Example onboarding questions to ask
- Which staff are involved in social media at your organization?
- Which aspects of social marketing do you want to keep in-house?
- Which aspects of social marketing do you want us to handle?
- What is your approximate budget allocation for social media activities this quarter/year?
Tips for creating an effective social media questionnaire
A social media client onboarding questionnaire is a simple and efficient way to begin transferring knowledge to your agency. When you collect data with online forms, you can streamline the process for agency account managers and new clients.
Keep it simple and clear
To increase the chances of getting insightful answers, word questions clearly and focus each on a single point. Use a layout with plenty of white space to make the survey easy to read and inviting.
Ask open-ended questions
You’re more likely to get in-depth answers when you don’t limit the responses. Use open-ended questions when possible to encourage clients to answer in their own words and elaborate on their thoughts.
Customize questions for different clients
Make your social media surveys more valuable by tailoring questions based on the client group. While you’ll want a standard template to work from, you may want to tease out different information depending on the client’s industry or stage of business development.
You might have different questions for ecommerce companies or businesses providing local services, for example. Or, you might need more information from startups that are building an audience as compared to established companies that are growing rapidly. Adapt your survey to your social media marketing requirements.
Focus on the client's needs and objectives
Structure the questions to zero in on each client’s short and long-term goals so you know what they expect in terms of results.
A big part of onboarding is working with the client and setting expectations. As you review the questionnaire and your market research, begin aligning your strategies with the brand’s objective. Explain what they can realistically see in terms of performance and why. By clearly documenting the goals of a social media strategy in advance, you improve the chances of customer satisfaction.
Incorporate feedback from previous clients
Include a question asking clients what they thought of the social media survey. Is it too long or confusing? Use feedback to fine-tune the questionnaire for future clients so you can get the best possible responses.
How to use the social media questionnaire you created with your client
As you start analyzing all the answers, make a list of points that need to be clarified. You can then follow up in person to fill in knowledge gaps and begin formulating your client’s social media strategies.
Review the questionnaire with the client
Meet with your client to confirm your understanding of their responses and provide them with an opportunity to ask questions. This conversation ensures both sides are in alignment in terms of the client’s business, audience, and goals.
Use the answers to develop a customized social media strategy
Your social media agency can now use these valuable insights to customize a strategy that meets your client’s needs.
- Select tactics to appeal to their target audiences
- Shape social media content and messaging to reflect the client’s brand story
- Work within available budget and resources
As you roll out your strategy, use an advanced tool such as Social Marketing to compose and schedule posts across platforms and measure performance from a single dashboard.
Revise the questionnaire as necessary to reflect changes in the client's needs
Over time, customer preferences will shift and new competitors and products will enter the market. As the client’s priorities evolve, adapt the questionnaire to collect all the details you need to continue meeting the brand’s objectives.
By keeping your business intelligence fresh, your agency can ensure it’s meeting the client’s current needs and surpassing expectations.
Frequently asked questions
How long should a social media questionnaire be?
When creating a social media questionnaire for onboarding new clients, make sure it’s detailed enough to satisfy your informational needs but concise enough to avoid overwhelming the client. Depending on how your workflow is structured, you may not need questions about the client’s current activities because your account manager plans to audit their social media history, or you may already have built budget information into the client contract. Avoid duplicating efforts where possible.
What are some common mistakes to avoid when creating a social media questionnaire?
While a social media questionnaire has a business purpose, it should also engage your clients. Avoid using bland online forms and design a questionnaire that’s inviting and has some personality. Offer a mix of short and long answer questions for variety. You should also avoid jumping between topics. Try to structure the social media survey questions in a logical order so users can get into a flow and follow their train of thought.
