Lead Capture8 min read

PPC Agency Intake Form Templates and Field Checklist

Three copy-ready PPC intake form layouts plus a field checklist, qualifying questions, an access checklist, best practices and where to embed each form.

Farhad · Founder, GHL Spark

August 1, 2026

Cover illustration — a clean form outline on a dark green background, marked GHL Spark, Lead Capture

In short

A PPC agency intake form is the structured question set you put in front of a prospect or new client to collect exactly the details you need to quote an audit, qualify the fit and start managing paid campaigns — no more and no less. The best forms are short where the buyer is cold and thorough only where the value justifies the effort, so a lead or audit-request form asks for five or six fields while a new-client onboarding intake can run long because the person has already signed. This guide gives you three ready-to-copy layouts as plain field lists — a lead and free-audit request, a full onboarding intake covering ad accounts, goals, budget and assets, and a per-campaign brief — plus a field checklist that explains why you ask for each qualifying detail like monthly ad spend, platforms, target CPA and offer, and whether it should be required. You will also get an access and permissions checklist so you can be granted the ad accounts without a back-and-forth, the best practices that lift conversion, and a kickoff automation pattern that turns a submitted form into an assigned lead and a booked call. Finally it covers where to embed each form so it meets the buyer at the right moment. Copy a layout, trim it to your process, and connect it to a tool that hosts, routes and automates onboarding for you.

Key takeaways

Match form length to intent — keep the cold lead and audit-request form to five or six fields, and save the long intake for clients who have already signed.
Ask paid-media questions with a purpose — monthly ad spend, platforms, target CPA and current results exist to qualify and scope, not to pad the form.
Front-load the access checklist — collect ad-account IDs and grant instructions on the onboarding intake so you can start work without chasing logins.
Split onboarding from the campaign brief — capture the account and goals once, then take a lighter per-campaign brief for every new offer or launch.
Wire kickoff automation at the form level — so a submitted intake assigns the lead, notifies the strategist and sends a booking link in minutes, not hours.

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A PPC agency intake form is the structured question set you put in front of a prospect or new client to collect exactly the details your team needs to quote, qualify and start managing paid campaigns. Get it right and it becomes the front door to your pipeline and your onboarding; get it wrong and you either scare people off with too many fields or start work blind, chasing ad-account access for a week. This guide gives you three ready-to-copy layouts — a lead and free-audit request, a full new-client onboarding intake, and a per-campaign brief — plus a field checklist, an access and permissions checklist, the best practices that lift conversion, and where to embed each one.

What is a PPC agency intake form, and why does it matter?

An intake form is simply a set of questions that gathers information at a specific moment in the buyer journey. For a paid-ads agency that moment might be a cold visitor requesting a free audit, a warmer lead asking for a proposal, or a signed client handing over the ad accounts and goals you need to launch. Each of those moments justifies a different form. The mistake most agencies make is using one generic contact form for all of them — too long for the cold visitor, too shallow for the new client whose account you now have to run.

The right frame is intent. The more someone has already committed, the more you can ask. A first-touch audit request should be short because trust is low and the field count is the biggest lever on completion. An onboarding intake can run long because the person has already signed and expects to give you account access and detail. Keep that principle in mind as you copy the layouts below. For the wider strategy around this, see our guide on how to capture leads with forms.

Template 1 — Lead and free-audit request form (short, cold traffic)

This is your highest-traffic, lowest-commitment form. Keep it to six fields. Every field beyond that trades away completed submissions. Use square-bracket tokens as placeholders you replace with your own labels and options.

[Full name] — required
[Work email] — required
[Website or business name] — required
[Monthly ad spend] — dropdown: under 5k, 5k-15k, 15k-50k, 50k+ — required
[Platforms you run] — checklist: Google, Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok, other — required
[What is your main goal or biggest problem right now?] — short text or dropdown — optional

That is enough to reply intelligently, price a proposal, and route by spend and platform. Resist adding phone number, target CPA or account access here — a strategist can capture those on the audit call, and each one costs you fills. If you must ask for a phone number, make it optional.

Template 2 — New-client onboarding intake (long, post-sale)

Send this as a private link the moment a contract is signed. The person has committed, so a longer form is not just acceptable — it is expected, because it saves them a discovery call and gets their campaigns live faster.

[Primary contact name] — required
[Work email] — required
[Billing contact and email] — required
[Company legal name and website] — required
[Platforms to manage] — checklist — required
[Google Ads customer ID] — text — optional
[Meta Business Manager and ad-account ID] — text — optional
[Analytics property and conversion domain] — text — optional
[Main goal for the next 90 days] — long text — required
[Target cost per acquisition or ROAS] — text — optional
[Total monthly budget and any per-platform split] — text — required
[Current results and what has been tried] — long text — optional
[Brand assets, logos and ad creative] — file upload or link — optional
[Offers, landing pages and any compliance notes] — long text — optional

Long is fine here, but still mark as required only what blocks you from starting. Everything an account manager can chase later stays optional. Pair the confirmation with one of our PPC agency email templates so the welcome message goes out fast and on-brand.

Template 3 — Per-campaign brief (medium, recurring)

Once the account is onboarded, you do not need the whole intake again for every launch. Take a lighter brief each time a new offer, promotion or campaign is scheduled. Keep it inside your client portal.

[Campaign name or offer] — required
[Objective] — dropdown: leads, sales, calls, traffic, awareness — required
[Platforms for this campaign] — checklist — required
[Budget and flight dates] — text — required
[Target audience or geography] — long text — optional
[Offer, promo details and expiry] — long text — required
[Landing page URL] — text — required
[Creative and copy assets] — file upload or link — optional
[Success metric and target] — text — required

This keeps every launch consistent without re-asking for account-level detail you already hold.

Field checklist — what to ask and why

Use this table when you build or trim any PPC intake form. The "required?" column is a default you can adjust to your process.

Field	Why you ask	Required?
Full name	You cannot address or route a lead without it	Yes
Work email	Your primary contact channel; a work domain also signals a real business	Yes
Website or business	Lets you glance at the account before you reply	Yes
Monthly ad spend	Tells you fit against your minimums and how to price	Yes
Platforms	Routes to the right specialist and confirms it matches your team	Yes
Main goal	Defines what success looks like and shapes the first call	Optional on lead form
Target CPA / ROAS	Shows whether their expectations are realistic	Optional
Current results	Gives a baseline so you can promise a credible lift	Optional
Ad-account IDs	Needed to request access and start work without delay	Yes on onboarding
Budget and split	Drives the media plan and pacing	Yes on onboarding
Creative assets	Determines whether you build ads or receive them	Optional

What should the access and permissions checklist cover?

Ad-account access is where PPC onboarding stalls, so treat it as its own step on the intake. Collect the identifiers, not the passwords. Ask for the Google Ads customer ID, the Meta Business Manager and ad-account IDs, the analytics property, and the domain where conversions fire. Then give clear grant instructions: request that the client add your manager account or partner ID with the correct role, and never collect raw logins on a form. Finally, confirm who controls the website and tag manager, because a launch often waits on a pixel or conversion tag that only their developer can place. Capturing all of this on the onboarding intake means you can request access the same day instead of trading emails for a week.

What are the best practices that lift conversion?

Three practices do most of the work. First, keep cold forms short. Fewer fields means fewer reasons to abandon, and on top-of-funnel forms the field count is the single biggest lever you control. Do your qualifying with two or three tight dropdowns — spend and platform — rather than a wall of open text.

Second, split onboarding from the campaign brief. Collect account-level detail once, then take a lighter per-campaign brief for every new launch. That keeps each form short enough that people finish it, and it stops you re-asking for things you already hold.

Third, wire kickoff automation at the form level. When the onboarding intake is submitted, the platform should create the client record, assign the strategist, send the access instructions, and drop a booking link for the kickoff call — automatically. In a competitive space, speed to the right person often decides who wins, and manual triage from a shared inbox is where that speed dies. These forms are the top of a system that also runs on email marketing for PPC agencies once the client is captured.

Where should you embed each form?

Put each form where its buyer already is. The short lead or audit form belongs on your services and pricing pages, in the top navigation, and at the foot of high-intent blog posts and case studies — embed it inline so there is no extra click. A qualification-style audit form works best on a dedicated landing page behind your paid campaigns, where the message match is tight. The onboarding intake should never be public: send it as a private link the moment the deal closes. The per-campaign brief lives inside your client portal or goes out as a link whenever a new launch is scheduled.

What tool should host and automate the form?

You can host an intake form in a dedicated form builder, in your CRM's native forms, or in an all-in-one platform. The build is the easy part; what matters is what happens after submit. HighLevel is one option that hosts the form and then routes each lead by spend or platform, notifies the right strategist, and can fire a welcome email, an access-request message and a booking link automatically to kick off onboarding. It is not the only tool that does this, but bundling the form, routing and kickoff automation in one place is worth real money when the alternative is stitching several tools together and hoping they stay in sync. If that fits how you work, you can start a free HighLevel trial and build the audit-request layout above first.

Copy a layout, trim it to your process, and connect it to a tool that routes and automates onboarding for you. For more playbooks like this, browse the Paid Ads, PPC & Meta Agencies hub, check our pricing, or book a call to have us build the whole intake-and-onboarding flow with you.

Frequently asked questions

What is a PPC agency intake form?

A PPC agency intake form is a structured set of questions a paid-ads agency uses to collect the details it needs from a prospect or a new client. Depending on where it sits in the funnel it might be a lead or free-audit request, a new-client onboarding intake, or a per-campaign brief. The goal is always the same: gather exactly what the media buyer needs to quote, qualify the fit, get access to the ad accounts and launch campaigns — without asking for so much that the person abandons the form before they finish.

What fields should a PPC agency intake form include?

Start with the identity fields you cannot act without — name, work email and business or website — then add only the paid-media fields that change what you do next, such as monthly ad spend, which platforms they run, their main goal, target cost per acquisition and current results. Cold, top-of-funnel lead forms should keep this list short. A new-client onboarding intake can ask for far more, including ad-account IDs, tracking setup and creative assets, because the person has already signed and expects to hand over that detail.

How long should a PPC agency intake form be?

It depends on intent. A lead or free-audit request aimed at a cold visitor should ask for roughly five or six fields, because every extra field lowers the completion rate. A qualification-style audit form can run a little longer since the person has shown clear buying intent. A new-client onboarding intake can be genuinely long — the client has already said yes and understands you need account access, goals and assets to run their campaigns well. Match the length to how much the person has already committed.

What qualifying questions should I ask PPC leads?

The ones that carry the most weight are monthly ad spend, the platforms they run, their primary goal, and their current results or target cost per acquisition. Ad spend tells you whether the account fits your minimums and how you should price. Platforms tell you whether the work matches your team's strengths. Goal and target CPA tell you what success looks like and whether it is realistic. Ask these as dropdowns or ranges rather than open text where you can, so answers stay consistent and easy to score.

What access and permissions should I collect on the intake form?

Ask for the identifiers first — the Google Ads customer ID, the Meta Business Manager and ad-account IDs, the analytics property, and the domain where conversions fire. Then give clear grant instructions rather than asking for passwords: request that the client add your manager account or partner ID with the right role, and never collect raw logins on a form. Also confirm who controls the website and tag manager, because a launch often stalls waiting on a pixel or conversion tag that only their developer can place.

Should I use one long onboarding form or split it up?

Split it. Keep the cold lead or audit-request form short so it converts, then send a longer onboarding intake only after the client signs. Beyond that, separate the account-level onboarding — access, goals, brand, billing — from the per-campaign brief you take for each new offer or launch. The account details rarely change, so you collect them once, while the campaign brief is lighter and gets filled in every time you spin up a new campaign. That split keeps every individual form short enough that people actually finish it.

How do I route PPC intake submissions to the right person?

Routing uses the answers on the form to decide who gets the submission. You might send high-spend accounts to a senior strategist and smaller ones to a standard onboarding flow, or split by platform so Google and Meta specialists get the accounts they run. A good form tool lets you set these rules once so every submission is assigned automatically and instantly, usually with a notification and a booking link. The alternative — a shared inbox that someone checks periodically — costs you speed, and a prospect comparing agencies often signs with whoever responds first.

What is kickoff automation for a PPC onboarding form?

Kickoff automation is the sequence of actions that fires the moment an onboarding intake is submitted. Instead of a human noticing the email and manually starting things, the platform creates the client record, assigns the account manager, sends a welcome email with the access instructions, and drops a booking link for the kickoff call. Good automation can also open an internal task checklist so nothing in setup gets skipped. It turns the form from a data-collection step into the first working step of onboarding, which is where new clients form their first impression of the agency.

Where should I embed a PPC intake form?

Put each form where its buyer already is. A lead or free-audit request belongs on your services and pricing pages, in the main navigation, and at the end of relevant blog posts and case studies. A qualification-style audit form can live on a dedicated landing page behind your ads, where the message match is tight. A new-client onboarding intake is best sent as a private link right after the contract is signed, and the per-campaign brief lives inside your client portal or goes out as a link whenever a new launch is scheduled.

Should intake form fields be required or optional?

Make a field required only when you genuinely cannot proceed without it or cannot route the lead correctly — usually name, work email, website, and the one or two qualifying answers your pricing and routing depend on, like monthly ad spend and platforms. Everything else should be optional. Every required field is a small barrier, and barriers cost you completed submissions. A useful test: if a strategist could find the answer themselves or ask for it on the kickoff call, leave it optional and keep the form moving.

What tools can host and automate a PPC agency intake form?

Dedicated form builders, your CRM's native forms, and all-in-one platforms can all host an intake form. The difference is what happens after the submit button. Look for a tool that not only captures the answers but also routes each lead by spend or platform, notifies the right strategist, and can trigger a welcome email, an access-request message and a booking link automatically. Hosting the form is the easy part; the routing and the kickoff automation are what turn a form into a working part of your onboarding.

About the author

Farhad

Founder, GHL Spark

Farhad is the founder of GHL Spark, where he builds and white-labels GoHighLevel SaaS platforms for agencies and SaaS operators. He writes about the parts of GoHighLevel that actually break in production — A2P registration, onboarding, support load and automation.