Marketing Agency Intake Form Template
Qualify marketing engagements before the pitch: channels in play, monthly spend, in-house capacity, and the result that would pay for the retainer.
Good marketing starts with an honest baseline. Tell us where things stand, including what isn't working, and we'll bring a point of view to the first call.
Agencies lose more margin to bad-fit clients than to bad campaigns, and bad fit shows on day one when you ask the right five things. This intake asks them: what marketing must deliver, what already exists, what it all costs each month, who does the work in-house, and what outcome would justify the retainer.
Channels and spend read together. The active-channels multi-select and the monthly-budget band answer the same underlying question from two sides: how mature is this marketing operation? A company running paid search, lifecycle email, and content on under $2,000 a month is spread fatally thin, and that diagnosis writes itself before the call. The budget question bundles media and agency fees into one number on purpose, because prospects quoting media-only budgets are the oldest source of quote-stage surprise in the business.
The capacity answer rewrites the proposal. "Who handles marketing today?" is not small talk. An agency serving a client who has no one running marketing must sell execution; the same agency serving an in-house team must sell strategy and stay out of the team's lane. Proposals that miss this distinction read as tone-deaf regardless of quality. The honest option labels give permission for the true answer, and the true answer is the useful one.
Payback in the client's words. The closing long-answer asks what result would make the partnership pay for itself. It converts vague ambition into an accountability sentence you can quote in the proposal, the kickoff, and the quarterly review. Clients who write "30 demo requests a month" get performance plans; clients who write "feel less invisible" get brand plans. Either way, the retainer now has a definition of working.
What the branding questionnaire owns. Brand adjectives and audience personas stay off this form, because they belong to a branding questionnaire, and there is a separate template for them. Contract terms, ad account IDs, and analytics access come after the agreement, not with the enquiry.
Gating the proposal calendar. Growth and full-service agencies gate their proposal calendar with it. Freelance marketers use it to filter projects that cannot fund the work. Fractional CMOs send it before the first advisory session. It pairs with the pipeline: enable email notifications so enquiries hit your inbox, and let the webhook create the deal in your CRM with every answer attached, since the channel and spend fields make triage a ten-second job.
Tuning it to your specialty. Swap the goals list to match your focus, so a PPC shop splits "more qualified leads" into search and social lanes. Raise the budget bands to match your minimum retainer. And consider a Logic rule that reveals an extra "which platforms?" question only when paid social sits among the active channels, giving depth to the relevant enquiry and brevity to everyone else.
Frequently asked questions
Can enquiries create deals in our CRM automatically?
The webhook posts each submission as signed JSON in real time, so your CRM or automation tool can open a deal with every answer attached.
How should we set the budget bands?
Edit the options so the lowest band sits a notch under your minimum retainer. Prospects self-qualify against visible bands far more gracefully than against a required open number.
Can we ask platform-specific follow-ups?
Add show rules in the Logic panel keyed to the channels answer. For example, reveal a "which ad platforms?" question only when paid social is selected.
Does the form filter out bot submissions?
Spam defenses run automatically: honeypot, timing analysis, and an invisible proof-of-work challenge that engages only when abuse patterns appear.