In the world of marketing agencies, great work comes from exceptional collaboration between the agency team and their clients. Agencies bring their niche expertise and creativity for the initiatives that will be built while clients bring unparalleled knowledge about the product or service that will be marketed.
When both clients and agencies respect the value that each side brings to the proverbial table, great things happen. But it’s not just a great relationship that allows the work product to flourish. This relationship needs a solid foundation to grow from, and in many cases, that foundation is an amazing brief.
How do you go about creating a solid brief, though? When is it just good enough, and when is it great?
We’ll break it all down for you today.
What is a marketing brief?
At its core, a marketing brief is a blueprint that outlines the scope and purpose of any sort of work that will be undertaken. This document sets the expectations for the business needs and desired outcome of a given project.
For SEO agencies, the brief will detail the goals that the client is aiming to achieve (perhaps an overall traffic number or a ranking goal), the intended keywords that the website should be optimized for, current insights into what’s performing well and more. Meanwhile, an ad agency may require the sales goals, a media budget, a detailed customer breakdown, etc.
Overall, though, a brief should provide a bit of background about the project, why it’s important, an insight that can influence the final deliverable, timelines, audience definitions and budgets. It allows anyone, be they on the client or agency side, to pick up the document and understand what needs to be done.
Why is a detailed brief so important?
As a blueprint, a brief sets the stage for all work thereafter. But not all briefs are created equal. Typically, a marketer should aim to pack as much relevant detail into a brief as possible in order to give the agency the best idea of the project vision.
Think of it like asking a chef to cook for you. One way to do this, is to simply ask them, “Can you make me dinner, please?”
What do you think the chef will make? There’s not much context for the chef to work with (a very sparse brief). They could go to town and craft a luxurious meal worthy of a Michelin star, or they could make you a basic grilled cheese sandwich.
Or, you could provide the chef with a much more detailed brief:
- Dinner for one person, tonight.
- I can provide you with $50 to purchase ingredients.
- I’d like something fresh and seasonal that’s not too fancy.
- I typically love Asian and Latin food, though I’m open to something new.
- I hate mushrooms and I’m allergic to shellfish.
With a bit more effort and thought put into the brief from the start, the chef (the agency) already has a much better idea of what you’re asking them to craft.
What should be included in a brief?
While the brief should be as detailed as possible, marketers also need to be reasonable. They simply don’t have the time or the ability to pack every nuance of the company’s history into a brief for digital ad strategy (for example). But there are a few items marketers should spend their time to get right in the brief.
Overview
At the top of the brief should be a general overview about the project. It should succinctly inform the agency why they are being contracted to perform the work. Don’t feel the need to over-explain here. A couple sentences will suffice.
Background
Here’s where you can start to add a bit more context to the brief. The background should outline how your team has arrived at the decision to take this project on.
Are your sales slumping? Are you rolling out a new service? Are you revamping your entire brand? Perhaps there were competing business dynamics that have driven you to a certain point. Now is the time to set the stage for your agency so they know what they’re getting into.
Objective
Now, it’s time to set the benchmark for success. Depending on the scope of the project, the objective will have a certain level of granularity. When engaging a digital advertising agency, a marketing team may need to set a couple KPIs along with metrics that will serve as leading indicators. When revamping a brand, you may need to account for internal stakeholder buy-in, share of voice scores and more.
Definition of the product or service
What, exactly, are you selling? In this section, you should clearly define your product or service as well as why your customers should buy it over a competitor. In this section, detail is your friend — but keep it within reason.
The audience
At this point in the brief creation process, you’ve outlined the project and its intent. Now, you need to define who you are speaking to. Again, detail is your best friend in this section.
In fact, many marketers don’t go far enough when defining their audience. Think of an e-commerce context. It’s simply not reasonable to ask your agency to craft marketing initiatives for “men and women, ages 18 to 65, who live around the world.” That’s a majority of the global population.
Instead, you’ll need to hone in on a more specific niche. Who will be your most passionate customers? What is their socioeconomic status? What inspires them to make a purchase? What types of media do they consume?
Some agencies, depending on the scope of work, may want to work with marketers to further define the audience by creating mood boards and personalities around the ideal customer profile. This work can help the agency to pinpoint the psychological triggers and contexts that will move your customer to make a purchase.
Additionally, this section can also lay out what the target audience currently thinks of your product or service — and if they are aware of it at all.
What do we want them (the audience) to do?
This might seem very straightforward, but defining the intended action for your audience can also reflect a lot of nuance. In many retail bottom-of-the-funnel retail ads, the intent is to “buy now.” However, upper-funnel ads may simply serve to build awareness, brand preference or slowly influence a decision over time.
Plus, a marketer’s own business dynamics can influence the intended action. If you’re a SaaS product that sells to enterprises, for example, you may need to get a lead in touch with a salesperson that can evaluate a customer’s needs. This dynamic may soften a potential CTA from “buy now” to something like “get in touch” or “book a demo.”
Insights
You know what you’re selling, who you are selling to and what action you want your audience to take. Great! Now is the time to dig through your marketing data to pull out any insights that can help your agency kick things into high gear. These insights could identify a gap in the marketing, an opportunity in consumer behavior, rising discontent with a competitor and more.
These nuggets can be powerful to an agency, and an entire concept can be shaped around them. That means marketers need to be thoughtful when highlighting relevant insights. And don’t be afraid to add caveats along with the insights in order to give them better context.
The single-minded takeaway
Effective marketing communication tells a singular message and leaves the audience walking away understanding one, single thing.
Are you trying to communicate three use cases for your services in a single ad? It won’t work. Your audience will quickly become confused, unsure if the ad is really speaking to them and their needs.
It may feel unnatural to do this (almost like you are giving up on some additional sales opportunities), but you need to define just one idea that the audience will come away with.
Mandatories
Quite simply, this section defines what has to be included and/or excluded. Be clear and blunt here as necessary.
Agencies need to know which logo should be used, mandatory taglines and URLs, brand standards, acceptable imagery and more. It’s also often helpful to give an agency a head’s up on certain things that will never get approved.
Imagine your CMO or CEO hates blue. It may seem silly, but these issues are not unheard of. If you know these peculiarities about the project’s various stakeholders, point them out in the brief.
Budgets
It should be obvious, but a $100,000 ad campaign and a $1 million ad campaign are two very different things. The difference in reach between these two campaigns will, of course, be great. But too too can the creative quality.
The more expensive ad campaign may feature a celebrity, popular music and exotic / iconic locations. The less expensive campaign may feature unknown talent, b-roll (stock video) and generic backing tracks.
The point is, marketers need to advise agencies what kind of ballpark they're creating within. Leaving budgets blank or unknown can cause your agency to produce an incredible concept that has no hopes of being executed due to insufficient budgets.
Timings
Let's face it, agencies need deadlines in order to be creative. The pressure of a time crunch almost always leads to better work product — (again) within reason. The brief should define a clear end date for all agency work, as well as any key milestones along the way.
If you’re engaging an agency for a brand overhaul, you may need to factor in board meetings in order to get approval on an identity package. Identifying these points at the brief stage will alleviate stress later on.
Briefs at a glance
At the end of the day, you want anyone associated with your project to be able to pick up the marketing brief and understand when the desired output will be delivered by the agency (along with the context for any strategies). It can be tough to achieve, but putting in the work to craft a compelling and detailed brief will lead to a better output and a better relationship with your agency.
Do you think we left anything out from our list? Let us know.
