Mastering the Client Onboarding Process (Recipe for Long-Lasting, Happy Clients)

Hey y'all. I'm back with another post about making the most of your freelance lifestyle.

Today I'm talking about the early stages of bringing on a new client.

The onboarding process for a new client is very much your "first impression," so it's vital if you want to create long-lasting relationships with your clients.

Long-lasting relationships mean less churn, happier clients, and less of a need to be hunting for new leads all the time.

Who doesn't want that?

It's worth putting in the time to make a stellar onboarding process. In this post, I'm going to run through how I onboard my SEO and content marketing clients – a process I've perfected over the years I've been doing all this.

Let's dig in 👇

For the sake of clarity, when I'm talking about onboarding, I'm talking about what happens after a client has formally agreed to pay you for your services.

Finding and qualifying leads happens before this, and typically at this stage I've already had a free 30-minute consultation to suss out what they need so I can quote them appropriately. Once we've agreed to a deal, the onboarding process begins.

The very first thing I do is create a brand new version of my Client Onboarding Questionnaire.

I've built it over the last decade-and-a-half, constantly tweaking it and updating it. It's long, but pretty close to perfect.

I use this document to get all the information I need from my clients before I start a content strategy, or creating content.

It's divided into 6 sections, each containing a series of questions:

🖥 Admin details

I get everyone's name, job titles and contact details, all the important URLs I'll be working on, social media channels, and access to GA & GCS right off the bat. I also find out where my invoice is going, and make my payment terms crystal clear.

💼 Business overview

In the client's words, I hear the history of their business, how they position themselves currently, who their competitors are, and how they make money.

🏆 Goals & KPIs

I find out what the client wants to achieve in the big picture, and what success will look like while working with me. The questions are designed to help the client get specific.

👯 Audience Details

This section captures not just the demographics of the client's audience, but also their fears, their hopes, their frustrations, and their relationship with the business right now. I ask the client to copy and paste this section for each unique audience they target.

📋 Content Planning

Now I ask the client to show me examples of their tone of voice, of content styles they find inspirational, and details on what exactly they want their content to do.

🤷‍♂️ Other stuff

One last section for the client to tell me anything I haven't squeezed out of them yet.

My process works like this:

1. Client signs contract with me
2. I customize their onboarding questionnaire, and fill out as much as I can on my own
3. I send it to the client and ask them to fill it out in their own words
4. I schedule a call (usually book 2 hours) to go over their answers and ask LOTS more questions
5. I clean up everything and send a final version to the client

This process takes time, but it has A LOT of benefits:

😲 The client gets their first deliverable within days of signing the contract.

😍 The client has a nice, neat, and tidy Business Overview document that they can use training new folks they hire, or just sharing internally.

🧠 I have ALL the information I need in one handy document, so I can dig into the content strategy/content creation right away.

😳 I never have to awkwardly ask a client for information late in the game, which is not a cute look.

Totally worth it, because it starts everything off on the right foot, and that is crucial.

Here's a sneak peek at what the document itself looks like:

If that sounds like too much work to put together, you could sign up for my SEO Bridge Builders course, or for some 1:1 training. The questionnaire template is just one of many assets I give my students to help them build the bridge between "knowing SEO" and "selling SEO as a high-ticket service."

You can join my mailing list for more updates when that's live - next course is launching in October, and 1:1 mentorship is open any time.

Here's my mailing list: https://bit.ly/inkwell-email-subscription

Or come follow me on Twitter/LinkedIn, where I'm giving plenty of free SEO/Content/Freelancing advice (and keeping people informed when my new courses go live):

Twitter.com/liamcarnahan

https://www.linkedin.com/in/liamcarnahan/

I'd love to hear what your onboarding process looks like, and of course, any questions are welcome!

That's all for now 👋