Why That PITA Onboarding Questionnaire is Important to Your Success

You’re ready to get help with the content and social media marketing tasks that you know you should be doing, but just don’t have the time. You did some searching and found a marketing agency to help – and once you sign on they hand you a questionnaire to fill out.

“What?” you think, “Why do I have homework? Isn’t this what I am hiring this company to figure out?”

Yes and no. There’s a lot a marketing agency can do for you, but they need to be pointed in the right direction. They are experts on their techniques and strategy – but you and your team are the experts on you. On your company. While the onboarding questionnaire might feel like a pain in the ass, it’s actually quite important. Here’s why.

It’s important for our strategy.

You get the best results from content marketing and social media when it’s closely tied to your target audience. You know your audience better than we do – it’s not everyone. It’s a specific persona that would make an ideal customer for your product or service. We need to know that person.

When we get to know that person, and how your product or service solves their biggest problems, we can create content and social media outreach to speak specifically to them. Content marketing and social media are conversations with your audience – we need to know who they are so we can speak their language.

It’s important for your team.

The process of going through that PITA questionnaire can help your team focus.  Each of you have slightly different ideas about the nature of what you do, who your ideal customers are and what your position is within your market. This is your opportunity to review where you’ve been, how far you’ve come and where you are now–and get a better understanding of where you’d like to go next.

For example, your industry may have gone through some major changes in the last few years. The competitive landscape has evolved, so you have new strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Filling out the questionnaire today will give you the opportunity to reevaluate your new position and get everyone on the same page so you can move the needle toward future success.

It’s important for measuring results.

A key part of our questionnaire is taking a baseline of your current activity and results. Where are you active on social media? How many followers or fans do you have? Which types of engagement activities are you seeing? On the content side, you’ll want to share how often you blog, who contributes content to the blog, which pages are getting the most views and which pages are delivering the highest conversions. This is important stuff. 🙂

These figures will act as a baseline moving forward, and without them you can’t accurately measure results. You have to have a starting point.

Help your marketing agency help you. Block off some time and get the team together. That PITA marketing questionnaire will help you define your position, select the best online marketing methods and execute a stronger strategy.