What is a brief and how to make one?
Posted: Wed Jan 22, 2025 4:12 am
Our primary role as marketers is to constantly solve new and different types of challenges. The challenge is to demonstrate this information through a marketing brief. From a client-side perspective, this may be due to a change in the market for example, or a new competitor disrupting the status quo, or a sudden shift in consumer demand as a result of a new trend. From an agency perspective, this often involves responding to a client’s request to help formulate a strategy for a new campaign or initiative, usually in support of the challenge they are trying to solve. Want to know what a brief is and how to put one together? Read on!
A brief is essential, one of the keys to the success of any good brief is to define and articulate the marketing challenge you are trying to solve. Only once you have achieved absolute clarity on this key aspect, can you move on to the next stages.
In this post we will cover some of the main steps marketers need to take to define the true marketing challenge they are looking to address. In the context of a client/agency relationship, there is some debate about who “owns” this part of the process.
Some think that the client has the responsibility to define the challenge as best they can based on their deep knowledge of the company, market research, and the product or service. However, many agencies will have a planning function to help develop an informed and measurable strategy for where to take a brand/business. In this article we will discuss how to make a brief in a way that can be implemented by both parties.
Step 1: Locate the target
Whether you are a client or an agency, start by assessing where the business is now and ultimately where it wants to be. In other words, current state versus goal.
The strategy that will eventually be developed can be seen as the bridge between these two elements and therefore a clear understanding of each is essential. This requires a lot of work from all parties involved but weight loss email list inevitably requires input from the client side:
Marketing
Research / knowledge
Sales
Finance
Target audience / clients
As this is just the beginning of the process, the following questions may be helpful in starting to build an initial picture of what is going on:
Goals and objectives
Strategic Goals: What are the overall business, sales and marketing objectives?
Objectives: What does success look like in terms of opportunity size, market share, brand awareness, or lead generation?
Timing: Over what period should the objectives and goals be achieved?
Budget: What is the budget we are working with? Is there room for expansion?
Proposal and key messages
Overall brand positioning: What is the overall brand positioning and how does it influence the product/service message?
Key Messages: What are the key benefits of the audience?
140-character summary: If you had to sum up your sales pitch in one tweet, what would it be?
Proof points: What are the tangible evidence, e.g. statistics, success stories to demonstrate the benefits of the product/service?
Calls to action: What can we offer contacts as a next step that will be valuable to them?
Target audience
Insight: What do we know about the audience and their challenges? Is there any research? What profiles do we have to help achieve the goal?
Decision making: Who are the decision makers and who are their influencers?
Job Roles (B2B): What functions, job roles, areas of responsibility are we targeting?
Step 2: Discover a unique vision
The information gathered in the first step is extremely valuable, but without organizing it in a way that can be effectively distilled into meaningful categories, it may be of no use. The goal at this stage is to dig deeper into this information and look for compelling insight:
The business: goals, strategy and brand are all important as they underpin everything the business is trying to do. For example, if the company is aiming to move into a new sector, there needs to be good alignment between all of these elements.
The product: the product or service being sold and the unique aspects that differentiate it from the competition.
The market: Market maturity, competitiveness and pace all play a role in determining which path may or may not be realistic to follow.
The audience: How customers think and feel about your brand and market position can lead to some of the most unique and interesting insights.
Step 3: Identify obstacles to success
The core of defining a marketing challenge depends on identifying the obstacles that prevent a company from achieving its business objectives:
In the previous step we looked at where to look for information. This stage is about how we can find it and gain a solid understanding of the marketing challenge.
While facts related to the business, market, and/or product or service are all extremely valuable, there is often an audience-centric element that is of particular importance. This requires us to consider what we need the target audience to think or do or what they do differently that may be preventing the desired change in behavior from happening.
So how do we get to the bottom of this puzzle and identify the marketing objective? Through a combination of curiosity, precise questioning, and persistence. Ask “why” and keep going until you get a satisfactory answer. For example: “Why aren’t we hitting our monthly sales goal?”
Why? "Because our social campaigns are not reaching the audience"
Why? "Because very few people engage (comment, like, share) the content
Why? "Because the product is not relevant to them"
Why? "Because the proposal is not clear"
Why? "Because we don't have a clear understanding of who we're targeting and why our product is relevant."
Through a series of simple “why” questions, we have found a potential source for the general problem that was originally identified.
A brief is essential, one of the keys to the success of any good brief is to define and articulate the marketing challenge you are trying to solve. Only once you have achieved absolute clarity on this key aspect, can you move on to the next stages.
In this post we will cover some of the main steps marketers need to take to define the true marketing challenge they are looking to address. In the context of a client/agency relationship, there is some debate about who “owns” this part of the process.
Some think that the client has the responsibility to define the challenge as best they can based on their deep knowledge of the company, market research, and the product or service. However, many agencies will have a planning function to help develop an informed and measurable strategy for where to take a brand/business. In this article we will discuss how to make a brief in a way that can be implemented by both parties.
Step 1: Locate the target
Whether you are a client or an agency, start by assessing where the business is now and ultimately where it wants to be. In other words, current state versus goal.
The strategy that will eventually be developed can be seen as the bridge between these two elements and therefore a clear understanding of each is essential. This requires a lot of work from all parties involved but weight loss email list inevitably requires input from the client side:
Marketing
Research / knowledge
Sales
Finance
Target audience / clients
As this is just the beginning of the process, the following questions may be helpful in starting to build an initial picture of what is going on:
Goals and objectives
Strategic Goals: What are the overall business, sales and marketing objectives?
Objectives: What does success look like in terms of opportunity size, market share, brand awareness, or lead generation?
Timing: Over what period should the objectives and goals be achieved?
Budget: What is the budget we are working with? Is there room for expansion?
Proposal and key messages
Overall brand positioning: What is the overall brand positioning and how does it influence the product/service message?
Key Messages: What are the key benefits of the audience?
140-character summary: If you had to sum up your sales pitch in one tweet, what would it be?
Proof points: What are the tangible evidence, e.g. statistics, success stories to demonstrate the benefits of the product/service?
Calls to action: What can we offer contacts as a next step that will be valuable to them?
Target audience
Insight: What do we know about the audience and their challenges? Is there any research? What profiles do we have to help achieve the goal?
Decision making: Who are the decision makers and who are their influencers?
Job Roles (B2B): What functions, job roles, areas of responsibility are we targeting?
Step 2: Discover a unique vision
The information gathered in the first step is extremely valuable, but without organizing it in a way that can be effectively distilled into meaningful categories, it may be of no use. The goal at this stage is to dig deeper into this information and look for compelling insight:
The business: goals, strategy and brand are all important as they underpin everything the business is trying to do. For example, if the company is aiming to move into a new sector, there needs to be good alignment between all of these elements.
The product: the product or service being sold and the unique aspects that differentiate it from the competition.
The market: Market maturity, competitiveness and pace all play a role in determining which path may or may not be realistic to follow.
The audience: How customers think and feel about your brand and market position can lead to some of the most unique and interesting insights.
Step 3: Identify obstacles to success
The core of defining a marketing challenge depends on identifying the obstacles that prevent a company from achieving its business objectives:
In the previous step we looked at where to look for information. This stage is about how we can find it and gain a solid understanding of the marketing challenge.
While facts related to the business, market, and/or product or service are all extremely valuable, there is often an audience-centric element that is of particular importance. This requires us to consider what we need the target audience to think or do or what they do differently that may be preventing the desired change in behavior from happening.
So how do we get to the bottom of this puzzle and identify the marketing objective? Through a combination of curiosity, precise questioning, and persistence. Ask “why” and keep going until you get a satisfactory answer. For example: “Why aren’t we hitting our monthly sales goal?”
Why? "Because our social campaigns are not reaching the audience"
Why? "Because very few people engage (comment, like, share) the content
Why? "Because the product is not relevant to them"
Why? "Because the proposal is not clear"
Why? "Because we don't have a clear understanding of who we're targeting and why our product is relevant."
Through a series of simple “why” questions, we have found a potential source for the general problem that was originally identified.