A marketing brief for an agency needs six things: the result you want, the customer you want it from, what you sell, what you have already tried, the budget, and who approves the work. Leave out the solution. Say what has to change and by how much, and let the agency propose how.
By Avi Vatsa, CEO, Exchange Four Agency. Avi leads the team that installs and runs AI-leveraged revenue systems for owner-led companies. His background spans law, technology, and marketing; he also co-founded Dialora, an AI voice-agent platform for automated lead capture and booking. (Marketer of the Day #1411)
Why does the brief decide how the engagement goes?
Because it is the only document both sides write from. A proposal answers the brief. A scope of work lists what the brief asked for. A report measures against it. If the brief is vague, every one of those inherits the vagueness, and the first argument about results is really an argument about what was asked.
The gap between how owners and agencies see this is wide. In a 2015 study by the ANA of 126 member companies and 105 agencies, "just 27 percent of agencies, versus 58 percent of clients, reported that clients provide clear assignment briefs." The ANA's president, Bob Liodice, said of the same study: "We are pleased to see that at the core, client/agency relationships are sound." The relationships were sound. The briefs were the weak point, and the client side did not see it.
The study is from 2015, so treat the percentages as a picture of the gap, not a current measurement. The gap itself is easy to recognise: you think you were clear, and the agency is guessing.
What goes in a brief?
Six parts. Write each in a few sentences, with a number wherever you have one.
| Part | What to write | A weak version |
|---|---|---|
| The result | The change you want and the figure that proves it, with a date | "Grow our brand" |
| The customer | Who buys, what triggers the purchase, and who you do not want | "Small businesses" |
| The offer | What you sell, the price range and the margin you keep | "Our services" |
| What you tried | Each earlier effort, how long it ran and what it produced | "We did some ads" |
| The budget | The monthly figure, split between fees and media if you know it | "Flexible" |
| The approvals | Who signs off, and how many days they need | "We will review" |
The result line carries the most weight. "Add booked jobs" is a direction. "Add a number of booked jobs a month, from paid search, at a cost per booked job you can afford, by the end of the second quarter" is a target an agency can accept or refuse. If you cannot write the number, say so in the brief and ask the agency to propose one. That is honest, and it tells you quickly how an agency thinks.
What should you leave out?
The solution. Owners often brief in tactics: "we need a new website", "we need more social posts", "run Facebook ads". A brief written that way hires hands, not judgement. If the real problem is that leads go cold after the first call, a new website will not fix it, and an agency that was told to build one will build one.
Leave out three other things as well. Do not paste in a competitor's work and say "like this". Do not ask for a fixed list of deliverables before the agency has seen the numbers. Do not hide the budget to see what they offer. An agency that does not know the budget will propose to the largest number it can defend, and the comparison between proposals stops meaning anything.
How do you test the brief before you send it?
Give it to someone who does not work in your business and ask four questions. Can they say what success looks like in one sentence? Do they know who the customer is? Do they know what has already failed? Do they know what not to propose? If any answer is no, the agency will have the same trouble, and you will pay for the guessing.
Then read it as the agency would. Is there a figure for the result and for the budget? Is the date real? Is every claim about your own numbers something you can show if asked? A brief with an invented number in it makes the first month about defending the number.
What do you do with the answers?
Treat the brief as the standard for every document that follows. Hold the proposal to it: how to review a marketing agency proposal shows what a proposal should commit to and what it leaves out. Turn the agreed result into a scope of work that buys results, not activity. Use the brief again in week one, as the first item in the onboarding checklist, so that access, tracking and the target are agreed together.
When the work is reported, check it against the same page. How to read a marketing agency report shows how to test the numbers against your own records. If the brief and the report talk about different things, one of them has drifted, and it is cheaper to find out in month two than in month eight.
The test of a good brief is short. If the agency disappeared tomorrow and a new one picked up the document, could it start without a meeting? If so, you wrote a brief. If not, you wrote a wish.