At some point you’ll probably work with an external marketing person; an agency, a freelancer, a social media manager, or a copywriter.

The quality of that relationship and the results you get depends enormously on how well you brief and manage them.

What a good marketing brief includes

The context

  • Who you are and what you do
  • Your target audience
  • Your brand strategy (the work you did in Module 1)
  • Your tone of voice

The project

  • What you need (be specific)
  • What success looks like
  • What you don’t want
  • Examples of work you admire

The practical stuff

  • Timeline and key dates
  • Budget
  • How decisions get made (who approves the work)
  • How you’ll communicate (email, Slack, meetings)

Managing the relationship

Be decisive with feedback: Vague feedback like “I’m not sure I love it” wastes time and money. Be specific: “The headline doesn’t reflect our tone – it sounds too corporate. Can you try something warmer?”

Stick to agreed timelines: If you’re late providing assets, information or feedback, you lose the right to complain about delivery dates.

Protect your brand: You’ve done the hard work building your brand strategy and style guide. Make sure anyone working on your behalf uses them.

Review results: Don’t just check that deliverables were delivered. Check whether they worked. What did the post achieve? How did the campaign perform?

Remember, they aren’t magicians and can’t bring results in the first week. In our experience 3 months is an ideal initial timeframe. That provides enough time for them to figure things out and you can see how they manage the ads. If you’re not getting results in 3 months, it’s time to review their work. 

Agencies and freelancers typically work on monthly retainers which should be spelled out. Ad-spend is seperate to this cost, so it might look like $2,000/month for the marketer and $2,000/month of ad-spend. 

Exercise

Write a brief for a hypothetical social media manager using the structure above. Even if you’re not hiring right now, this exercise will sharpen your thinking about what you actually need.

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