The better your questionnaire, the better your ability to write persuasive copy that turns visitors into customers.
A great copywriting questionnaire will help you understand the business you’re working with, its value, its customers, and its competition. It should be exactly long enough to get the information you need without creating too much of a hassle for your clients.
Over the last 5 years, I’ve been perfecting my own copywriting questionnaire, and after sending it to a client the other day, I realized that having access to this list of questions would be beneficial for both business owners and copywriters alike.
- Many business owners who approach me have trouble answering some of these questions – usually the questions about their target audience. If you can’t clearly define who you’re speaking to, you will struggle to sell to them effectively. Taking the time to work out the answers to these questions will immediately benefit your business.
- For copywriters, you need the answers to these questions in order to write persuasive copy. It’s not enough to just follow a template or write stuff that “sounds good”. Truly effective copy connects the value of the product/service with the needs of the target customer. By thinking through these questions and obtaining the answers from your clients, your ability to write compelling copy will increase dramatically.
Since every copywriting project is unique, I typically work out project details before sending this questionnaire, so the questions here deal specifically with understanding the business I’m working with. Most of these questions are essential for writing any variety of persuasive copy, while a few are supplementary and designed to ferret out some of the less tangible preferences of a client.
As a final note, keep in mind that this is a universal questionnaire, which I adapt for each client, so there will be some questions that aren’t applicable to every business. You can either use it as-is or modify it slightly to be more relevant to the unique business you’re targeting.
The Best Copywriting Questionnaire On The Web
1. What do you want people to do when they visit your site? What is the #1 thing?
2. Who is your target audience? Are there any distinctive customer segments you are targeting that differ from each other?
3. What does your “bread and butter” customer look like at this point in your business? What does your ideal customer of the future look like?
4. What is your primary value proposition? What makes you THE choice in your niche?
5. What is your core offer? Describe the product or explain the process.
6. What are the primary emotional benefits that have tended to resonate the most with customers?
7. What are the primary analytical points, case studies, or figures that have prompted a “wow” response?
8. What aspect of your pitch has been, in your opinion, the most effective at selling customers on your business?
9. What are the primary problems and challenges customers come to you to solve?
10. Do you have direct competitors that you are wanting to outperform?
11. How are you better than your competitors?
12. In addition to direct competitors, are there any alternative options your potential customers are considering?
13. How are you better than those alternatives?
14. How do people typically find your website. Name all traffic sources that make up 15% or more of incoming traffic.
15. What sort of tone and brand image do you wish to project?
16. Are there any businesses that you want to emulate in some way?
17. What is your favorite thing about your business?
18. What is your favorite thing about your customers?
19. How many people will be involved in providing feedback on my copywriting?
20. Is there anything else you feel I should know while writing your copy?
Hello Jacob, this is great. We really needed the questions to create an inquiry form for our copywriting service.
Many thanks.
Whoops, missed this comment. Glad these were helpful for you!
Exactly! This question about the value proposition should be the crucial one. Without knowing what is unique regarding the offer you are writing about, the copywriting process doesn’t make any sense… And after you cleared it out, everything is going smoother.
I’m glad you mentioned it here, Jacob. 🙂
Agreed!
Jacob, I stole a bunch of your questions and asked them of my second copywriting client this afternoon, and they generated some great discussion and useable content. (Btw, I just looked it up and found out that “useable” and “usable” are both perfectly acceptable spellings — ain’t English grand?)
Thank you very much for sharing these questions and helping others (like me) get off the ground with some of the basics. We really appreciate it.
Awesome, glad they helped!
Thank you for the help, Jacob. This was exactly what I was searching for. You have my e-mail, reach out and I’ll send a bottle of home wine, from the island of Hvar 🙂 a small red thank you, cheers mate
I need to take you up on this!
This is truly “The Best Copywriting Questionnaire On The Web.” These questions were beyond helpful, thank you so much for sharing your insight!
Thanks Willow, glad you found it helpful!
This is incredibly helpful. Thank you so much!
Sure thing Kim!
Shazam! Just what I needed.
Thank you so much Jacob!
Awesome! Sure thing Liz!
Hey, Jacob. Love the questionnaire, the tips are really helpful. Though, there are some questions that I don’t understand their purposes.
1) “What is your favorite thing about your business?”
2) “What is your favorite thing about your customers?”
3) “How many people will be involved in providing feedback on my copywriting?” (I partially understand the purpose of this, but is this the right question to ask in this questionnaire?)
Hope to receive your reply soon, and hope I’m not too late to ask this : )
Hey Ray! The “how many people” question is specifically for freelance copywriters, who never want to be in a situation where they have 3+ people giving them competing feedback on a project. Making a gameplan for that ahead of the project can be really important in certain scenarios. The other two questions aren’t necessarily critical, but they provide another angle to potentially fish out some helpful ideas for the copy. Most clients will provide enough feedback in the previous questions to give you what you need, but in rare occasions, they might be really brief, and having those supplemental questions might pull out what you’re looking for.
Hi Jacob, I just wanted to say thank you for publishing this. It saved me a lot of time.
Sure thing Gabriel, glad you found it helpful!
Jacob!! You rock!! This questionnaire is GOLD!! Dude; You’re my hero of the day.
Haha thanks Steve!
This is an extraordinarily generous thing for you to do – to share this list. I have just started putting together my own list based on early conversations I’ve had with my first few clients (I’m a newbie!) and I can’t tell you how helpful it is to see your list! Thank you VERY much. You’re a good egg.
Haha thanks Trish, glad you found it helpful! Getting the right info at the beginning of the project can definitely make a huge difference!
Thanks a lot! I used some of your questions to tailor my questionnaire.
Hey Jacob, thank you so much for the value you share on your website straight from your heart. I have literally made your site my reference point for my business. I am building and setting up based on almost every idea you share. God bless you mate. Namaste!