Creating the Perfect Brief for an Agency

But to get the most out of your partnership, it’s fundamental to have a strong onboarding process. A well-prepared brief provides the foundation for an effective strategy. It helps your agency understand your business, goals, and challenges to craft the best possible plan of action for you. But there’s no one-size-fits-all approach – every business is unique.

Here are some tips for what to include when crafting a brief to help your digital marketing agency develop the most effective strategy for your needs, no matter what industry you operate in. 

Before reaching out to a digital marketing agency, it’s important to take a step back to clarify what you actually want to achieve. Are you looking for long-term growth? Do you have short-term goals that an agency can help with?  

Your focus might be on generating leads, increasing revenue, boosting brand awareness, or something else entirely. Whatever your goals are, the clearer you are about them, the better your agency can tailor their strategy to fit your needs.

To create an effective strategy, your agency needs to understand where you’re at right now. 

Tell us what you’ve already tried – SEO, PPC, social media, content marketing, whatever it might be. Do you have an in-house team handling any of this? Have you worked with an agency before? If so, what worked and what didn’t? For example, if communication was an issue in the past, flag that so we can establish what this working relationship will look like and allow for a smoother transition.

Who do you consider to be your biggest competitors? This helps the agency with research and strategy planning, whilst also giving them benchmarks for performance.

It’s also great to know what marketing channels are working well for you at the moment, what you consider to be your leading USP’s, new product launches coming up and your experience with past campaigns – what worked well and what didn’t. All this insight gives us something to work with alongside our analysis of the business. 

Understanding your target audience – both who they are now and who you want to reach in the future – is also crucial. It helps to determine the best online platforms to focus on, the type of content to create, and how to approach services such as PR and Paid Media. 

 A clear understanding of your current position overall and where you would like to be can allow for the agency to refine and improve your strategy efficiently.

Be upfront about your budget so your agency can propose realistic solutions. Marketing budgets vary within businesses, depending on industry, company size, and goals, so there’s no universal formula. Paid ads, for example, require continuous investment, while an SEO audit is more of a one-time cost per audit.

You should be open to discussing budgets, and as an agency, we should be able to recommend scalable solutions to work with your budgeting levels. Being open and transparent about this from the start will help to ensure you’re on the same page and working within a budget that makes sense for your business. 

At Flaunt, we take pride in being honest and transparent. We focus on delivering real value rather than upselling unnecessary work.

Digital marketing is an ongoing process, but setting realistic timelines helps manage expectations. When do you want to see results? Short-term PPC wins will look very different from long-term SEO growth, and if you want to launch a new website in time for a deadline, your agency needs to plan and resource accordingly. 

Also, make sure your agency knows who to contact within your team and how often you want updates. Do you prefer weekly check-ins or a more relaxed approach? Do you like using Slack, email, or a different project management tool? Outlining these details early on helps to keep everything running smoothly. 

From discussing communication channels, we can also set an expectation of how often you would expect updates and reports. Are there any critical deadlines? This will help to make sure your agency can allocate resources effectively and flag any potential issues in advance.

Sometimes, the best approach is to start with research before jumping into campaigns. Other times, it makes sense to dive right into execution and optimise as you go. Your agency should help guide you based on your specific situation.

Creating the perfect brief doesn’t mean having all the answers upfront. Instead, it’s about providing enough clarity for your digital marketing agency to craft a strategy that works while staying open to new opportunities.

Before kicking off any project, we like to start with an onboarding call. It’s a chance for both our team and yours to get to know each other, dive into your brand’s tone of voice, guidelines, backstory, and goals. A solid brief is important, but nothing beats a good conversation – those informal chats often uncover golden nuggets of insight that help us hit the ground running with clarity and confidence.

At Flaunt, we get that businesses evolve, and marketing strategies need to evolve with them. Whether you have a detailed brief ready or need help shaping your digital marketing strategy, we’re here to create solutions that fit your goals.