A solid digital marketing strategy is essential to any business hoping to succeed in the online world, but a poorly planned campaign could see you losing money. Everything comes down to your digital marketing brief, it’s the blueprint providing you with the necessary structure to meet your desired goals. Be it a goal to increase sales, create lead generation or awareness, a typical brief should include background information, objectives, target audience, key dates, budget, potential challenges and more.

It can be a rather challenging task, you will need a thorough understanding of certain concepts that may not be your area of expertise and it can be very time-consuming. However when done correctly, will enable you to align your marketing goals with the digital agency you decide to hire, as well as all stakeholders involved in the business.

In today’s blog post, we’ll be taking you through how to write a digital marketing brief that will ensure you see the desired results and aren’t left feeling as though you’ve been misunderstood.

What is a digital marketing brief?

Simply put, it’s the guidelines for your marketing strategy. It outlines the game plan and goals for the strategist, tells the creative team how to complete a project and keeps stakeholders in the loop about the campaign objectives and anticipated outcomes. Examples of digital marketing include:

• Email Campaigns
• SEO (search engine optimisation)
• Social Media
• Content (i.e. blogs and articles)
• Paid Advertisement

A variety of these may be in the overall brief and together make up a project, throughout you should consider your company story and your target audience. Let’s delve into the questions you need to ask when building up a digital marketing campaign brief template.

What’s your story?

As either an agency working on behalf of a company or as the business itself, one of the most important details often overlooked when creating a plan is to outline the story behind the brand. Providing background information allows for a deeper understanding of the overall identity and can get you asking the important questions, such as what is the mission and objectives of the business? Think about the tone, language and messaging that should be put across to the customer with each communication, building on the brand identity.

Take this one step further and use visuals to represent the brand in a mood board – are there certain colours you should utilise that form part of the history or logo? Is there a luxurious feel to the company they want to get across in their marketing? Visuals can be a fantastic tool for delivering this message – after all, a picture tells a thousand words!

What do you want to achieve?

What it all boils down to! What are you looking to get out of your digital marketing? Be very specific when it comes to relating this, the clearer you are the more likely you are to achieve the desired outcome. Without a defined message, it’s difficult to meet your targets – think of KPI and setting SMART goals, these are two very effective methods that will allow you to fully understand and measure your marketing efforts.

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Who is your target audience?

Create a full buyer persona to truly understand who your target audience is. Once you have this, strategising will become a simpler process as you’ll be able to focus your efforts on what works for your demographic. Your buyer persona should detail:

• Age
• Location
• Job Title
• Education
• Hobbies
• Salary
• Search Terms
• Where They Shop

And anything else you feel is relevant and will reveal who this ideal customer is, but understand you will need to complete a buyer persona for each separate target group. Think also about what emotions you want to evoke in these different audiences, and give meaning to why a customer should choose your company over another. Remember, emotional connection sells.

What current channels are you using?

When writing a digital marketing brief, it’s important to detail the current tactics you have in place along with the results. With this information, a digital agency will be able to understand what has been successful and offer up experimental solutions you may not have thought of. Often, when you have a defined audience and succinct company message, it will become clear what channels may be most effective for you.

What is the timeline of the project?

Timing is imperative when it comes to marketing, miss the mark and you may find you’ve wasted both time and money. Therefore, having a target date of when you want to complete the project is key – perhaps your product or service sells best seasonally, or there is a major event or holiday ideal for your business to take advantage of. Without agreeing on a deadline, you could struggle to achieve your overall goals and the process could become turbulent.

Once you’ve agreed on these deadlines, ensure there are appropriate resources in place and you have set realistic end-sights. Are you looking to have gained 15,000 newsletter subscribers? Or, perhaps you want to have reached £10,000 in sales – whatever your end goal is, this should be at the very core of your brief, and remain achievable.

What’s the budget?

Many businesses are looking to expand their marketing budgets by up to 40% year on year, but do you really need to set aside a huge budget to see results? When curating a strategy, think realistically and utilise the funds available wisely rather than opting for a non-set budget. You’ll be able to deliver on your goals if you plan ahead and choose where to spend – by using a digital marketing brief you’ll actually be able to structure spending more!

Who are your top competitors?

In every industry, in every specific niche, there are competitors you should be targeting. Knowing who your competition is, and understanding your differences will provide a new opportunity for you to take advantage of. In your written plan, you can uncover these and therefore craft campaigns focusing on your strengths and their weaknesses. Getting ahead of your competition will see you attract new potential clients, and see you joining the next level of businesses in the market- you should always be looking to grow.

When will you reevaluate the brief?

Implementing a plan shouldn’t be the end of communication, it can be wise to provide necessary dates to have feedback or reports by. In doing so, you set a level of expectation and again back up your deadlines to ensure the final goal can be met. Furthermore, if you are experimenting with new strategies or looking to slightly change how you interact with your target audience online, it’s essential you evaluate the success at each stage. Measuring success throughout, rather than just targeting an end goal, will enable you to understand exactly which factors have led to this improvement. Should you continue with something less effective, you may have missed out on an opportunity to find the most effective method.

The bottom line

When it comes to writing a successful digital marketing brief, it’s important to include all the above information in a format your team will understand. Remember this will be seen by a multitude of different people that work in a different way so consider using visuals alongside bulkier explanations. By using this template structure, you’ll have provided key information and whilst further questions are bound to come up during the process, by having this plan from the offset, you’ll avoid unnecessary stress and can confidently trust the final outcome will be the desired one.

Are you looking for an agency to take your online presence to the next level? The team at Delivered Social are experts in web design, SEO and content creation – working with you to provide the right solution to help you reach your business’s full potential. Contact us today at hello@deliveredsocial.com and we’ll be happy to discuss how we can help you.