How to Cut the Chaos in Onboarding New Clients
The client onboarding process sets the tone for your partnership, so it’s vital to make sure all your bases are covered. This is your opportunity to show your attention to detail and value as a service-based biz and inform your client of your processes, systems, and boundaries.
At Homemade Social, we send each of our clients comprehensive questionnaires, along with decks that explain each and every one of our systems, to ensure our content exceeds expectations and the process goes smoothly from the jump. Our client onboarding experience is beyond detailed and we attribute much of our partnerships’ successes to the strong foundation we’ve built. Let’s dive in!
ORGANIZED SYSTEMS IN THE DISCOVERY STAGE 🔎
It’s important to have organized systems from the very beginning – yes, even in the discovery phase. Without this, you could lose track of leads, which could cost you valuable partnerships.
We use Dubsado to keep our internal systems organized and automated. It allows us to:
Keep track of our leads and automatically send them links to book calls
Save templates to create proposals and contracts
Create and send invoices
Take notes for client projects in one place
And more!
You can sign up for Dubsado here and save 20% off your first month or year.
COMMUNICATION IS KEY IN CLIENT ONBOARDING 🔑
Showcasing strong communication in the client onboarding process makes footing for an even stronger partnership. In this stage, it’s important to clearly state the ins and outs of your processes and systems.
For us, this means we send over a welcome presentation that details:
The agenda for our kickoff call
Information about team members they’ll be in contact with
Communication policies (ie how to get in touch with us and when)
Partnership expectations and boundaries
More about our content approval and request process
This welcome presentation is not only reviewed with the client on our kick-off call, but it’s also automatically sent to them during the onboarding process. Leveraging canned emails and automations like this in Dubsado ensures we never miss a detail.
CLIENT ONBOARDING QUESTIONNAIRES 🤔
Once the contract is signed and the first invoice is paid, we send our client onboarding questionnaires that outline every bit of information we need from our clients. These docs are DETAILED! 👏
All client onboarding questionnaires should ask the basics, like login info, ideal start date, points of contact for invoices and meetings, ideal communication practices, and more! But we also have four different questionnaires that we send to clients based on the services included in their package. We organize it this way to avoid asking clients questions that aren’t relevant to them, while also ensuring we receive the answers and assets needed to be successful.
Here are our current client onboarding questionnaires:
💭 New Client Onboarding Questionnaire - This includes questions that provide insight on their target audience, their goals, competitors, accounts for inspiration, and more!
💭 Client Onboarding Questionnaire for Influencer Management - This covers the client’s budget, current or desired affiliate programs, key deliverables from influencers, and more!
💭 Client Onboarding Questionnaire for Advertising - This details instructions on how to set up their pixel, add our agency as a partner on ad platforms, review competitor ads they like, and more!
💭 Client Onboarding Questionnaire for Email/SMS Management - This details what promos they’re willing to offer in automations (if any), their goals for email marketing, competitor newsletters/SMS they like, and more!
We hope this blog post has given you some clarity on how to lay the groundwork for a seamless client onboarding experience within your social media agency. 👏 If you want access to our complete questionnaires and step-by-step roadmap, check out our Client Onboarding Checklist. Chat soon!
xx,
The Homies