How to Approach Making Marketing Brief
Marketing is always about meeting new challenges. The way people live and get information is always changing, so we as marketers always have to adapt to that. Or competition is getting better; customers expect perfect customer service, so we have to make sure that we are not falling behind.
It’s almost impossible to talk about successful marketing without mentioning the word ‘strategy’. And that’s when we are reminded of a marketing brief. A brief is what we use to outline the key steps and direction of our marketing efforts. In most cases, it’s almost essential to write one. It is especially so when we talk about large-scale marketing strategies. But it’s, of course, also used in digital marketing for small business.
How do you write a great brief that can serve as a base for future advancements and achievements?
That’s what we are going to talk about in this article. And one of the most important things that we should do before even approaching a brief is to consider what exactly we are trying to do. What is the challenge that we are trying to address? Having complete clarity is essential before we can go any further.
So let’s talk about some of the most important steps there are to take if our goal is to develop a great brief.
Identify the problem
One of the first things to be done here is to look at your place, the situation right now and then evaluate where you want to get. What is the change that you need? What are your objectives?
Your strategy is basically what connects your current state and your goals. So it’s necessary to understanding both very clearly.
The objectives can be very different; it all depends on what you think success is and what your main priorities are right now. Do you wish to increase brand awareness? Is your goal to generate more leads? Is reaching out to a new TA should be your main priority now?
Think about time limits for your objectives. The clearer you set the limits, the easier it will be to plan everything perfectly. Besides that, consider your budget and all the resources available to you. What are your limitations?
Doing research could be extremely helpful at this stage. You can look closer at your audience now. You might want to analyze all the data and stats available to you. They can help you form a very truthful picture of the real situation you are in right now and provide you with food for future insights.
Look for an insight
All the data and ideas that you might have from the first stage are undoubtedly important, but you can’t go any further if you don’t organize them first. You must be able to see all the categories you are working with. That will make finding insights much easier.
Many genius ideas appeared in somebody’s head after they asked themselves ‘What if?’. That’s how we should look at all the information we have and our objectives.
There are generally four areas of challenges for marketers. It could be just one of them, or some of them could affect your business in combination with another:
Identify your obstacles
This is an essential part of every planning in marketing. One has to be honest and identify possible and current roadblocks to change.
Now it’s time to focus on the understanding of the reason why we even have this problem in the first place. Other factors can be important too, but it’s very common that the main factor that is at the center of our problem has a lot to do with our audience. Maybe it’s what your audience thinks about the business is what you are trying to change. Maybe you see a very high traffic, but very little visitors convert. Why is that?
Why our sales are dropping?
Why we are seeing high levels of engagement, but very low conversion rates?
Why are we seeing very little engagement for our social media posts?
By asking questions like that and just being curious, you can find some surprising answers.
Maybe it’s because your message does not resonate with your TA. Maybe the product is not relevant to the people you are targeting. Maybe the content that you put out there is not interesting for them.
Build your strategy
Now it’s time to focus on the strategy itself. A good strategy requires clear objectives, understanding of the current situations and challenge, having a strategy statement, and the proposition.
A strategy statement is basically how you are going to address your challenge. And proposition is where we outline every detail of how you are going to bring your strategy to life.
Besides that, it’s necessary to assess risks that you can possibly stumble upon while executing your strategy.
Clearly communicate
This is the stage when one has to put everything together in a comprehensible manner. That’s when you are writing a brief. Basically, your goal here is to summarize all the insights and other information including your goals and measures you and your team are about to take. Whether you are working with an agency and relying on online marketing solutions, or do all the marketing internally you always have to have a plan. And brief is a perfect way to plan your strategy and make every step and aspect of it clear to everyone involved.
