How to Write a Brief of Requirements for a Digital Marketing Agency?

Developing a new marketing campaign can be an exciting yet daunting task for any business. You know you need help getting your message out there, but how do you convey exactly what you need from a digital marketing agency? This is where creating a detailed brief of requirements comes in handy.

A strong brief will help set clear expectations between you and the agency, ensuring you both understand the goals, target audience, timeline, budget, and other vital information. It enables the agency to provide a tailored proposal and quote as well as creating a blueprint for an effective working relationship.  

Read on for tips on creating a useful brief that will lead to your marketing success. 

Why Write a Marketing Brief? 

Taking time upfront to outline your marketing needs and desired outcomes is time well spent. A detailed brief provides many important benefits: 

Firstly, it aligns you and the agency on the full scope, objectives, and exact requirements for the project. This reduces back and forth communication later on by getting all stakeholders on the same page from the very start. 

Secondly, a detailed brief allows the agency to provide a more accurate quote and proposal that is adapted to your organisation's unique needs, challenges, and target audience.  You can also more easily evaluate different agency proposals by comparing their approach to your stated goals and requirements in the brief. 

Finally, having a clear roadmap in the form of a brief provides direction for the entire project lifecycle. Being transparent about budget, timelines, and other specifics in this way fosters an open relationship built on trust with your chosen agency partner. With expectations set from the beginning, miscommunications or scope creep can be avoided. 

Tips for Style and Content 

Shortly, we’ll go through exactly what you should be including in the marketing brief for your digital agency. However, first, here are a few general tips you may find useful to keep in mind when you sit down to write your brief: 

• - Be concise yet detailed. You want to cover everything vital to the project without including overly lengthy sections that may cause key details to get lost. Aim for approximately two to four pages in length. 

• - Use a simple, logical structure. Group related information and sections together in a natural order that flows well and is easy to follow. 

• - Use formatting to your advantage. Use bullet points, descriptive headings, white space, and other formatting to make your brief skimmable and easy to parse. 

• - Invite feedback on how to achieve your goals. Be open to the agency's input on strategy while also making your "must haves" very clear. Collaboration yields the best results. 

What to Include in your Marketing Brief 

Now we’ve covered the basics, let's get into the specifics of how to write a marketing brief for an agency. Ideally, all of the below should be included for a successful brief:  

What Does Success Look Like? 

Be very specific when explaining your marketing objectives and desired outcomes for the campaign. This is extremely important and be included near the start of your brief. For example, do you want to: 

• - Increase brand awareness or product sales by a certain percentage or revenue amount within a defined timeframe? 

• - Generate a specific number of leads or amount of website traffic over the campaign duration? How much do you believe this will increase Sales? 

• - Engage social media followers or email list subscribers at a target interaction rate? 

• - Improve SEO rankings for targeted keywords by a set position or achieve a certain organic traffic goal? 

• - Hit a defined target for web conversions, landing page form fills, or other measurable actions? 

Detail any quantifiable KPIs or metrics you plan to use to determine success. This demonstrates to agencies that you intend to hold the campaign accountable to clear performance benchmarks and allows them to recommend strategies tailored to hitting your specified targets. 

Your Target Audience 

Describe your ideal target audience or customer personas in-depth. Make sure to include details like demographics, psychographics, common behaviours, challenges they face, motivations and buying factors. This will allow the agency to craft messaging that deeply resonates and select suitable digital channels to reach them.  

You should also share any existing market research or customer profiles you may already have developed. 

Read our blog “How Audience Personas can help your marketing”  

Budget and Timescale 

Be transparent about the budget you have allocated for the campaign or project as a whole. Provide a range if needed.  

It’s also a good idea to clearly indicate your desired timeline - do you need a short-term marketing push or an ongoing long term strategy? Having flexibility on budget and a reasonable timeline often results in better proposals from agencies. 

Industry Trends and Competitor Insights 

Contextualise your niche by providing an overview of current growth potential, emerging trends, and innovations, maturity level, and so on. Mention competitors and what their marketing strategy involves at a high level so the agency can help you differentiate. You could also include any competitor strategies you’re interested in duplicating or responding to directly. 

Absolute "No's" 

Be explicit about any messaging, channels, tactics, or types of partnerships you absolutely want to avoid. This might be based on misalignments with your brand, previous bad experiences, or other factors. For example, you may specify no influencer promotions, TikTok ads, trade show booths, etc. Stating these red lines upfront prevents missteps. 

Integration With Other Marketing Efforts 

Brief the agency on your existing marketing, PR, and sales initiatives across channels. A new campaign should complement other ongoing efforts for maximum impact.  

Inform agencies of any important launch dates, partnerships, or other marketing activities already in motion that could potentially tie in with this new effort. 

Available Assets and Needs 

Detail any branding guidelines, logos, images, whitepapers, or other creative assets you can provide for use in the campaign. 

Make note of any new needs that will require the agency to produce something new. For example, you may require new videos, webinars, infographics, or other custom visual assets. Their scope of work and cost estimate rely heavily on understanding what existing resources you have versus new creative needs. 

Conclusion 

Investing time upfront to write a thoughtful, detailed brief when seeking a digital marketing partner sets the stage for greater alignment and better outcomes.  

When you're ready to start your digital marketing journey, consider SpiderDigital - we're ready to partner with you on data-driven strategies that deliver real business results. Contact us today to find out how we can boost your digital presence and increase sales.