An inverse technique based on simple vibration tests is developed to characterise the elastic and viscoelastic properties of constituent materials used in the advanced composite repairs of pipelines. In the case of viscoelastic materials, this novel approach allows to preserve the frequency dependence of the storage and loss moduli in a wide range of frequencies. The computational effort is substantially reduced by using an optimisation based on the planning of the experiments and the response surface technique in order to minimize the error functional. The developed inverse technique has been tested on metallic plates and successfully applied to characterise orthotropic material properties of laminated composites and viscoelastic properties of adhesive materials. Good agreement between experimental and numerical results has been obtained.