Client and business
Start with the company and offer.
Capture the contact, company, offer, market, and reason for starting now.
- Primary contact, company, website, and role.
- Offer and how customers buy it.
- Reason for the project.
Describe your services and Makeform creates a client intake form for scope, audience, voice, goals, deliverables, approvals, and deadlines.
Send new copywriting briefs to Slack, Google Sheets, and Zapier.
Sample prompts for the builder
Choose a starting point, tailor the prompt, or send it to the Makeform builder.
Audience
New clients requesting website copy
Format
Multi-page brief with conditional page questions
Prompt size
283 chars
Example form structure
Multi-page brief with conditional page questions
Company, offer, and primary audience
Which website pages need copy?
What should visitors do next?
Voice, competitors, and proof points
Brand guides and source materials
Suggested routing tags
Ready to quote
Needs clarification
Rush request
Ask for the single action a reader should take; it guides hierarchy and calls to action.
Step 1
Qualify
fit, scope, budget, and timing
Step 2
Discover
audience, offer, voice, and goals
Step 3
Plan
deliverables, inputs, and approvals
Step 4
Kick off
brief complete and files together
Why use an intake form
A focused copywriter intake form collects the decisions that shape the draft before you estimate, research, or open a blank document.
Capture deliverable, quantity, length, due date, and services in structured fields before proposing a price.
Pair voice traits and terminology with examples that feel right or wrong.
Identify decision-makers, review stages, and launch timing before delivery.
Adapt the questions
Keep the core client and brand questions, then reveal the project-specific details that affect each deliverable.
Selected pages, navigation context, conversion paths, proof points, SEO inputs, and launch dependencies.
Audience segment, awareness, sequence purpose, offer mechanics, send dates, platform, and calls to action.
Angle, search intent, sources, interview contacts, editorial standards, internal links, and publication workflow.
Personality scales, vocabulary, tone boundaries, admired examples, audience expectations, and approval ownership.
Intake workflow
Generate, tailor, share, and route each completed brief.
Name your copy services and the facts needed to estimate each project.
Add budget bands, deadlines, uploads, and conditional questions for each deliverable.
Send the form after an inquiry so every client follows a consistent sequence.
Review responses, notify collaborators, and send details into your project workflow.
Form vs email vs call
A form gives every prospect focused questions and keeps files beside answers.
Field guide
Six focused sections create a brief you can qualify, quote, and turn into a project plan without asking the client to write the copy for you.
Client and business
Capture the contact, company, offer, market, and reason for starting now.
Scope and deliverables
Use structured fields for formats, quantities, pages, lengths, and optional services.
Audience and awareness
Ask what readers know, want, question, and say in their own words.
Voice and messaging
Pair voice traits with examples, boundaries, vocabulary, and core messages.
Goal and measurement
A clear reader action guides hierarchy, argument, and calls to action.
Inputs and approvals
Collect files, expert contacts, deadlines, and approval ownership before kickoff.
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Open toolFAQ
Practical answers for freelance copywriters turning new-client inquiries into usable briefs.
It is a questionnaire completed before quoting or kickoff. It gathers business context, scope, audience, voice, goals, source material, timing, budget, and approvals in one submission.
Ask about the company, offer, audience, project reason, deliverables, voice, messages, reader action, source material, deadline, budget, and approver. Add conditional questions for websites, email, or SEO content.
Send a concise version before the call to check fit and reserve the conversation for nuance. For an early-stage brief, collect qualification details first and use a deeper form after the call.
Combine three voice traits with paired scales, right and wrong examples, preferred vocabulary, banned words, and humor or formality boundaries. Ask why each example fits.
Yes. Show relevant follow-ups after the client chooses a deliverable. Website branches can request pages and conversion paths; email branches can ask about the segment, offer, sequence, and send date.
Yes. Request brand guides, product notes, previous copy, research, transcripts, or examples with labeled file-upload fields. Add a link field for materials stored elsewhere.
Yes. Makeform offers unlimited free forms and responses. Generate, edit, publish, and reuse the form without a response cap; the paid tier removes the Makeform badge.
Match it to the next decision: qualification should be shorter than kickoff. Group questions, use conditional logic, require only essential answers, and let clients mark strategic questions for discussion.
Start with a brief you can use.