How to brief a digital marketing agency: a practical guide for small businesses
A good agency brief saves you time, money and frustration. It helps the agency understand your business, your goals and what success looks like, so they can start delivering from day one instead of spending the first month catching up. This guide covers what to prepare before you send a brief, what to include in it and how to make the relationship productive once the agency is onboarded.
What to prepare before you start
Before you write anything, gather the information that makes a brief useful. You do not need a polished document, just a clear picture of where your business is and where you want it to go.
Start with your business goals. What commercial outcome are you trying to achieve? More sales, more leads, more brand awareness, or a combination of all three? Be specific: "We want more website traffic" is a wish. "We want 30% more qualified leads from our website within six months" is a brief-worthy goal.
Know your numbers. What does a new customer spend with you on average? How much can you afford to spend to acquire one? Those figures shape every decision the agency makes, from channel selection to bid strategy to how much content to produce. If you do not have exact numbers, give a realistic range. If your budget is not yet set, the SEO packages start at 980 per month in the UK and digital marketing packages start at 849, which gives you a reference point.
Who is your audience? If you have customer research, share it. If you do not, write down what you know about the people who buy from you: what problem they are trying to solve, what they search for before they buy and where they spend their time online. Even informal notes are better than nothing.
What to include in your brief
A good brief fits on one or two pages. It does not need to be long, but it should answer eight questions:
- What does your business do and what makes it different?
- What problem are you trying to solve?
- Who are you trying to reach?
- What does success look like and how will you measure it?
- What is your budget range?
- What is your timeline and are there fixed deadlines?
- Who on your side is the main point of contact?
- What have you tried before and what happened?
That last question matters more than most people think. Sharing what did not work, and why, saves the agency from repeating your mistakes and gives them a head start on what to do differently.
What materials to share
Attach anything that helps the agency understand your brand. Your brand guidelines or style guide if you have them. Examples of marketing you have admired from other companies, and examples you have disliked with a note on why. Your current website analytics if you have access to them. Your best and worst performing content or ads.
You do not need everything polished. Raw data, rough ideas and honest feedback are more useful than a beautifully formatted brief that leaves out the important details.
How to give feedback
Once the agency starts producing work, your feedback determines how quickly things improve. Give one consolidated set of comments rather than having five people send separate emails. Start with what is working before you talk about what needs to change. Be specific: "the headline does not grab me" is less useful than "the headline does not address what our customers actually worry about, which is X."
The best client-agency relationships work like a partnership. The agency brings the expertise and the client brings the business knowledge. Neither side can do it alone.
Ready to get started?
Book a free discovery call at https://victory.digital/book/discovery-call to talk through your goals with the Victory Digital team. If you already know what you need, you can view our SEO packages at https://victory.digital/seo-packages or digital marketing packages at https://victory.digital/digital-marketing-packages.
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