By the Templateez Team · Licensed Attorney · June 2026

Marketing & PR Consulting Intake Forms: What to Capture Before You Start Any Engagement

The first thirty days of a marketing engagement set the trajectory for the entire relationship. Agencies that rush past onboarding — skipping straight from the signed proposal to a "kickoff call" with a blank whiteboard — spend the next six months backtracking to fill gaps they should have identified on day one. They build campaigns on assumptions about the audience, launch paid media without understanding the sales cycle, and pitch earned-media angles that contradict the brand voice the client has spent years establishing.

A structured marketing and PR intake form eliminates that guesswork. It captures everything an agency, consultancy, or freelance marketer needs to know before producing a single deliverable — the client's brand fundamentals, current marketing state, business objectives, target audience, service expectations, content assets, reporting preferences, and contractual terms. Here is what that form should cover.

Client and brand overview: understanding who you are working for

Before any strategic work begins, your team needs a clear picture of the client's business — not just their name and website, but the context that shapes every marketing decision you will make on their behalf:

• Company name and legal entity — the registered business name, any DBAs or brand names used publicly, and the entity structure. A franchisee and a franchisor have radically different marketing constraints even when they share a brand.
• Industry and vertical — not just "technology" or "healthcare" but the specific niche. A B2B SaaS company selling HR compliance software and a D2C health supplement brand both fall under broad categories, but their marketing playbooks share almost nothing.
• Founded date and company stage — a pre-revenue startup needs awareness and positioning work. A company doing $50M in annual revenue needs pipeline acceleration and competitive differentiation. Stage dictates strategy.
• Revenue range and team size — these numbers calibrate what is realistic. A five-person company cannot execute an enterprise ABM strategy with custom direct mail. A $200M company should not be running its entire paid media program on a $2,000/month budget.
• Website and social media presence — current URLs for the website, LinkedIn, Instagram, X (Twitter), Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and any other active platforms. Note follower counts and posting frequency — these are baseline metrics you will measure against.
• Brand guidelines — does the client have an existing brand guide (logo usage, typography, color palette, voice and tone)? If so, request a copy. If not, note that brand development may be a prerequisite before campaign work begins.

Current marketing state: what are they doing now

You cannot build a strategy without understanding the baseline. Most clients have some marketing activity in progress, even if it is disorganized or underperforming. Your intake should map the current landscape:

• Active channels — which channels are currently in use? Organic social, paid social, Google Ads, SEO, email marketing, content marketing, PR, events, partnerships, affiliate, direct mail, out-of-home. List every channel and note whether each is active, paused, or never used.
• Current monthly spend — total marketing budget and how it is allocated across channels. Many clients do not know their exact spend because it is split across departments, credit cards, and tool subscriptions. Ask for an estimate and flag the need for a full audit.
• Current execution model — is marketing handled in-house, by another agency, by freelancers, or some combination? If there is an existing agency, why is the client looking to change? The answer to this question tells you more about client expectations than almost anything else on the form.
• What is working — ask the client what they believe is generating results. This is subjective and may not match the data, but it reveals what the client values and where they are paying attention.
• What is not working — equally important. If they are running Google Ads and getting clicks but no conversions, that is a landing page or offer problem, not a traffic problem. If they are posting on LinkedIn three times a week with no engagement, that is a content or audience-fit problem.
• Analytics access — does the client have Google Analytics 4 set up? Google Search Console? Social media insights? CRM reporting? Ad platform data? Document what exists and what access you will need. If GA4 is not configured or is misconfigured, that becomes a week-one priority before any performance benchmarks are meaningful.
• Tech stack — CRM (Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho, none), email platform (Mailchimp, Klaviyo, Constant Contact, ActiveCampaign), CMS (WordPress, Shopify, Webflow, Squarespace, custom), ad accounts (Google Ads, Meta Business Manager, LinkedIn Campaign Manager), marketing automation (Marketo, Pardot, HubSpot), and any other tools in use. Integration constraints between these systems shape what is possible tactically.
• Competitor landscape — who does the client consider their top three to five competitors? This is a starting point, not the final competitive analysis. Clients often misidentify their competitors — they name aspirational brands or direct business competitors rather than the companies actually competing for the same search terms, social attention, or media coverage.

Goals, KPIs, and budget: defining what success looks like

The single most common failure point in agency-client relationships is a mismatch between what the client expects and what the agency delivers. A client who says "we need more leads" and an agency that delivers 500 leads that sales never follows up on are both right and both frustrated. Specificity at intake prevents this:

• Primary objective — brand awareness, lead generation, direct sales or revenue, reputation management, market positioning, product launch, investor relations, employer branding, crisis recovery. Most clients have one primary and one or two secondary objectives.
• Specific targets — push beyond the vague goal to the number. How many MQLs per month? What revenue target is tied to marketing-sourced pipeline? What organic traffic growth rate? How many media placements per quarter? What follower growth rate? If the client cannot name a number, that is a signal that you need to help them set benchmarks before committing to deliverables.
• Timeline — when do they need to see results? A product launch in eight weeks is a fundamentally different engagement than a twelve-month brand-building program. Clients who expect SEO results in sixty days need their expectations recalibrated at intake, not in month three when the calls start.
• Budget — total monthly budget including both agency fees and media spend. Is this a monthly retainer, a project fee, or a performance-based arrangement? Is the budget approved or aspirational? Who controls budget decisions — the marketing contact or someone above them?
• Previous agency experience — has the client worked with a marketing agency or PR firm before? If yes, who and for how long? Why did the relationship end? The answer reveals patterns. A client who has churned through three agencies in eighteen months may have unrealistic expectations, poor internal processes, or a decision-maker who changes direction every quarter. That is information you need before you sign.

Target audience: who are you trying to reach

Every marketing decision — channel selection, messaging, creative, media targeting, content topics — flows from audience definition. Your intake should capture what the client knows (and flag what they do not):

• Buyer personas — does the client have documented buyer personas? If yes, request them. If no, note that persona development is a prerequisite workstream. Ask for a rough description of their ideal customer in the meantime.
• B2B vs. B2C — this is the most fundamental audience distinction and it determines channel strategy, content format, sales cycle expectations, and measurement approach. Some businesses serve both (a SaaS company selling to enterprises but also offering a self-serve plan for individuals), which complicates messaging and targeting.
• Geographic focus — local, regional, national, or international? A local home services company needs local SEO and geo-targeted paid media. A national e-commerce brand needs broad reach. An international company needs localization and market-specific strategies.
• Demographics and psychographics — age range, income level, education, job titles (for B2B), lifestyle, values, pain points, purchase motivations. Psychographics are harder to capture but more useful for messaging — a 45-year-old CFO who is risk-averse and values compliance is a different audience than a 45-year-old CFO who is growth-oriented and values innovation, even though their demographics are identical.
• Customer journey — how do customers currently discover the brand (awareness), evaluate it (consideration), and buy (decision)? What is the average deal size and sales cycle length? A $50 consumer product with a same-day purchase cycle and a $500,000 enterprise contract with a nine-month sales cycle require entirely different marketing approaches.

Services needed: strategy, execution, or both

Marketing and PR encompass dozens of distinct disciplines. Your intake should clarify exactly which services the client needs — and which they do not — so your scope of work matches reality:

• Strategy vs. execution — does the client need you to build the plan, execute the plan, or both? Some clients have internal teams that can execute but lack strategic direction. Others have a clear vision but no capacity to implement. The engagement model is different in each case.
• Content marketing — blog posts, long-form articles, white papers, case studies, video production, podcast production, social media content, infographics, interactive content. Note the expected volume and cadence. For engagements focused specifically on social media channels, a dedicated social media management intake form captures the platform-specific details, content approval workflow, and community management expectations that a broad marketing intake does not cover.
• Paid media — Google Search, Google Display, YouTube, Meta (Facebook/Instagram), LinkedIn, TikTok, programmatic, retargeting, connected TV. Note existing account access and historical performance data.
• SEO — technical SEO audit, on-page optimization, content strategy for organic search, local SEO (Google Business Profile, citations, reviews), link building, site speed and Core Web Vitals. This ties directly to the web presence conversation — agencies working with the client's website need to coordinate with whoever manages the site. Web design and development agencies capture many of the same technical details from a different angle.
• Public relations — media relations (earned media pitching, press releases, media list building), crisis communications (has there been a crisis? is one anticipated?), thought leadership (executive positioning, bylined articles, speaking engagements), event PR (product launches, press conferences, trade shows), and analyst relations (for B2B tech companies).
• Email marketing — current list size, list hygiene (when was it last cleaned?), email platform, existing automation sequences, segmentation strategy, average open and click rates. Email is the highest-ROI channel for most businesses, but only if the list is healthy and the segmentation is right.
• Branding — messaging framework (positioning, value propositions, key messages), visual identity (logo, color, typography), brand voice development, competitive positioning. Note whether the client needs a rebrand, a brand refresh, or just brand documentation of what already exists.
• Social media management — which platforms, posting frequency, community management (responding to comments and DMs), social listening, influencer partnerships. Note whether the client or the agency owns the content calendar and who has final approval.

The scope of services also intersects with the client's broader creative needs. If the engagement includes visual content production, design assets, or brand collateral, the intake requirements overlap with what graphic design firms capture for their own onboarding — existing asset libraries, brand standards, file format requirements, and approval workflows.

Content and assets: what exists and what needs to be built

Starting a content strategy from scratch takes longer and costs more than building on existing assets. Your intake should inventory what the client already has:

• Existing content library — blog archive, white papers, case studies, webinar recordings, presentations, sales decks, product sheets. Much of this can be repurposed, updated, or redistributed across new channels.
• Photography and video — professional headshots, product photography, office/facility photos, video assets, B-roll footage. Note quality level and recency. Product photos from 2019 may not represent the current product.
• Brand voice — formal, conversational, technical, playful, authoritative? Is this documented, or does the agency need to infer it from existing content? Mismatched brand voice is one of the fastest ways to lose a client's confidence — if your team writes in a casual, first-person tone and the client's existing content is third-person and clinical, that disconnect surfaces immediately.
• Approval process — who signs off on content before it publishes? One person or a committee? What is the expected turnaround time for approvals? Is there a legal or compliance review requirement? Agencies that do not establish the approval workflow at intake discover it the hard way when a blog post sits in a review queue for three weeks because it needed sign-off from four people the agency did not know existed.
• Compliance and regulatory requirements — is the client in a regulated industry (healthcare, financial services, pharmaceuticals, alcohol, cannabis, legal)? Are there advertising restrictions, required disclaimers, or prohibited claims? HIPAA, FINRA, FDA, FTC guidelines — these constraints must be identified at intake because they affect every piece of content, every ad, and every press release.

Reporting and communication: how the relationship operates

Misaligned expectations about communication frequency and reporting detail kill more agency relationships than poor campaign performance. Two competent professionals can disagree about whether a weekly email update and a monthly report is adequate or insufficient. Set it at intake:

• Reporting cadence — weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly? What format — written report, dashboard access, live presentation? What metrics does the client want to see front and center?
• KPI dashboard — does the client want a live dashboard they can check anytime (Google Looker Studio, Databox, Agency Analytics), or do they prefer periodic reports? Some clients want real-time visibility. Others find dashboards overwhelming and prefer a curated summary.
• Meeting frequency and format — weekly status calls, bi-weekly strategy sessions, monthly reviews? In-person or virtual? Who attends from the client side and from the agency side?
• Point of contact — who is the primary contact on the client side? Who has decision-making authority? Are they the same person? An agency that routes everything through a marketing coordinator who cannot approve budget changes or creative direction will hit bottlenecks on every deliverable.
• Escalation path — when something goes wrong — a PR crisis, a campaign underperforming, a budget overspend — who gets the call? What is the expected response time? Document this before you need it.

Contract terms: the business structure of the engagement

Your intake form should capture the commercial terms that govern the working relationship. These are not substitutes for a formal services agreement, but they establish mutual expectations before the contract is drafted:

• Engagement type — monthly retainer (most common for ongoing services), project-based (defined scope and deliverable), or performance-based (compensation tied to results). Each has different risk profiles and different levels of flexibility.
• Term length — month-to-month, three-month minimum, six-month commitment, annual contract? Longer terms give the agency runway to show results — SEO and content marketing take time. Shorter terms give the client an exit if the relationship is not working.
• Ownership of work product — who owns the content, creative assets, ad accounts, and data generated during the engagement? This is a common source of dispute when relationships end. A client who discovers that their agency owns the Google Ads account and all the campaign data is in a bad position. Clarify ownership at intake.
• Non-compete and exclusivity — does the client expect the agency to avoid working with competitors in their industry? If so, how is "competitor" defined, and what geographic or vertical scope applies? Exclusivity limits the agency's revenue potential and should be reflected in pricing.

Why the intake form shapes the entire engagement

A marketing engagement without a thorough intake is a campaign built on guesses. The agency guesses at the audience. The client guesses at the budget. Both parties guess at what "success" looks like and discover three months later that they were never on the same page.

A structured intake form forces those conversations to happen before a single dollar is spent on media, before a single blog post is written, before a single pitch is sent to a journalist. It surfaces the gaps — no buyer personas, no analytics baseline, no clear KPIs, no approval process — so they can be addressed as part of the engagement rather than discovered as obstacles midway through it.

The best marketing agencies treat intake as a strategic exercise, not an administrative one. The form is not paperwork. It is the foundation of the relationship.

If you are building documentation across a multi-service professional practice, the Professional Services Bundle includes marketing and PR consulting alongside 34 other professional service categories, each with discipline-specific intake fields.