A marketing campaign is like a machine with many moving parts. Synchronise each of the diverse cogs, gears and mechanisms and you will be able to propel yourself into motion, taking your marketing ambitions from conceptualisation to execution. Writing a marketing brief successfully ensures that each of these components is working in tandem to achieve your business goals.
As your marketing brief lays the foundations for every part of the campaign and is the touchstone for everyone working on the project it needs to be smart as possible. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll run through what makes a marketing brief valuable, best practices for writing them and what to include.
Get your hands on our free marketing brief template.
- What is a marketing brief?
- How do they work?
- The purpose of the brief
- What makes a good one?
- How to write a marketing brief
- Conclusion
What is a marketing brief?
A marketing brief is a shared document that outlines a marketing campaign from start to finish. It contains the information required to keep all the stakeholders involved on the same page.
Think of it as a recipe book or blueprint for a successful campaign. This document will be the go-to for your marketing team and will help them plan their creative strategies and keep clients informed about them.
Marketing briefs vs creative briefs
Before we move on to anything else, let’s dispel any potential confusion: what’s the difference between a marketing and a creative brief? It’s a good thing to know as, while they serve similar functions, marketing and creative briefs have subtle differences.
Simply put, a marketing campaign brief is a document detailing what, how and when a promotional campaign will be achieved.
Whereas a creative brief is the document produced by those working on said campaign in response to the marketing brief. The former is more holistic and the latter more specific.
How do they work?
Typically, a marketing campaign brief will be put together by the marketing team of a company or agency and shared with the stakeholders involved. The purpose of them is to inform, clearly communicating the scope, timeline, objectives and audience of the project.
At their very core, these briefs are designed to align everyone working on the project towards one unified and specific goal.
Why do we need them?
Here’s the thing: if your team don’t have the same background on the project you’re working on, there’s going to be a lot of confusion. And probably a lot of frustration if we’re being real. Streamlining your approach and sharing a base level of understanding about your campaign has so many benefits – let’s take a look at some of them.
The benefits of writing a marketing brief
Creating a marketing brief can help team members organise their ideas and refine their output when it comes to tackling specific aspects of the campaign – saving the client and others on the project valuable time later down the line.
Everyone will be updated, roles and responsibilities will be clarified and with all the key information in one place, everyone can work seamlessly together. Streamlined strategies. Simplified communication. It’s a recipe for success.
What makes a good marketing brief?
A good marketing brief is a detailed one. So don’t skim out on the information – the more precise you are now, the easier it will be to start building the campaign later on.
How to write a marketing brief in 12 simple steps
We’ve answered the question “what is a marketing brief” and we’ve explored the benefits, so it’s time to get to the juicy part: what should be included.
Here are 12 aspects you should include in your brief to build a campaign that is truly buzz-worthy.
1. Introduce a project timeline with deadlines and milestones
After adding the project title, it’s worth outlining your project timescale; especially if there’s a looming deadline in place. When you’re after a team or marketing agency to deliver a speedy turnaround, you might be declined if the timescale is unreasonable.
Ensure that the milestones and final deadline are achievable in the duration of the campaign and be specific. This might mean including deadlines for submissions, proposals, reviews etc. all the way up to the final “go live” date.
2. Provide an overview of the business or client
This is particularly important to provide if you are working with contractors or agencies that aren’t as familiar with your brand. In a nutshell, you should outline the following:
- Your core business dealings, products and/or services
- Brand values, vision and priorities
- Specific niche or expertise
- USP and reason for doing what you do.
3. Outline the project
Now it’s time to outline the project with an overview of the marketing campaign. What problems are you fixing? What do you intend to accomplish? How?
Think about the answers to these questions and the benefits of running this campaign and summarise them succinctly for your team. This will inform the rest of the brief.
4. Describe your target audience(s)
Next, you should determine your audience. You can get really granular with this by segmenting your audience into distinct groups and creating a buyer persona from each.
Consider the following attributes when you get to brainstorming your primary and secondary audiences:
- Age
- Gender
- Profession
- Social background and social group
- Interests / vertical markets
- Lifestyle, needs, problems
- Personal values, ethos and political affiliations.
5. Brand values and tone of voice
After you’ve settled on your target audience, it’s time to think about your brand identity and tone of voice. This doesn’t have to be extensive – it’s more than likely that you will have a separate brand guidelines document – but having a brief touchpoint is helpful.
This is also a great point to settle any mandatory information or content that must appear on marketing materials, for example, logos or disclaimers required for particular marketing channels.
6. List your chosen marketing channels
In this day and age, there is a wealth of marketing channels available to us. From the likes of content marketing such as local SEO and PPC to analogue channels like events marketing and direct sales, make sure to list each that your marketing campaign will engage with.
Here, it’s advisable to do some research. While it’s tempting to blast your content across every corner of the internet and across every channel, this isn’t a good idea.
Each channel has a different audience and user base, a different microcosm. Instead of spreading yourself thin, be tactical. For example, marketing channels suited to B2B companies might be in-person networking events. Whereas an eco-conscious clothing retailer might be more suited to social media.
7. Underline the problem you’re facing
It’s good to focus on the positives of your organisation but without some deep evaluation on the negatives, we’re never going to improve. In this part of the marketing brief, you should take a step back and reflect on what isn’t going as well. What can you improve? Be specific and pinpoint the area or areas that need to be made priorities. Then your team or agency can focus their efforts to remedy the problems.
8. Lay out your competitors
Who are your competitors and what challenges do they pose? These are the next considerations to make for your marketing planning.
Assess the competition and note down their USP, what you admire about them, where you situate yourself in the market in relation to them and where you can outcompete them.
This will come in handy later down the line when you need to do some competitor research or keyword analysis.
9. Communicate your brand strategy
This is the meat of the brief. In this section, you should go into detail about the strategies involved in the campaign, its scope and deliverables. You’ll want to ponder the following questions:
- What is the campaign’s concept statement?
- How do you intend to reach and connect with your audience?
- What are the deliverables for this project? What can you feasibly do?
- What external factors are you working with/against?
- What influences or inspiration are you drawing from?
Then once you’ve thought about these in detail, you can share the answers with the project stakeholders. You don’t need to write reams and reams, but be concise in outlining the crucial details.
10. Underline your SMART goals and KPIs
Next on the list, is including your campaign objectives and what you expect to achieve during the project timeline. They should be tailored and with as much detail as possible – simply putting increase website engagement isn’t enough when you don’t know how, how much by, when and how.
Are you aiming to increase online sales by a certain threshold in the next 6 months? Are you hoping to see leads gained by organic search to increase by 10% in the next year? Whatever it is, it needs to be (SMART) specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound.
11. Map out your budget allocation
Did you hear that? That was the elephant in the room. Whether you’re budgeting for PPC, a stint of email marketing or estimating how much your new website will cost, including an accurate budget for all of your marketing efforts is essential.
While no one particularly likes budgeting, being honest with how much you can spend from the get-go will help you get the most out of your money by prioritising which tasks you don’t have the personnel, time or expertise to complete internally.
From an in-house perspective, even if you can’t lay it out to the exact penny, having an accurate budget will allow you to estimate what you can realistically achieve internally. Remember: time is a valuable commodity that can be budgeted too – after all, time is money.
12. Add your contact information
Last but not least, you should include the relevant contact details for the project lead(s) and campaign stakeholders. It’s all well and good having a shiny new brief, but if you don’t have a point of contact for it, how can anyone share their insights with you?
Here, you might also want to outline roles and responsibilities to save you time looking for a specific contact later on.
And there we have it – all 12 aspects of a powerful marketing brief!
Work smarter not harder
Let’s rewind for a second and remind ourselves of what we’ve covered: a marketing brief is a pinpoint precise blueprint for your marketing campaign.
Taking a closer look at the basics, you can see that writing a marketing brief is essential to any well-executed marketing campaign. They lay out the requirements, constraints and provide a full background on your company’s targets, audience, branding and more. Make no mistake about it. You should share a marketing brief every time you start a new campaign.
So the next time you’re working with a freelancer or approaching a digital marketing agency, you can whip out your fine-tuned brief and give yourself a needed leg up.
Download our free marketing brief template
Don’t forget to download our free marketing brief template to keep your campaigns well-oiled and fine-tuned. As I said, a marketing campaign is a machine with many parts, so keep this to hand, update it frequently and save yourself valuable time. Trust me. You’ll be glad you did.
