A marketing brief gives the people doing the work a shared description of the task. It should be short enough to use during decisions and specific enough to prevent avoidable guessing. The purpose is not to document everything about the business. It is to explain this project, the evidence behind it and what the team needs to deliver.
Open with the problem and desired change
Write what is happening now and why it matters. Use an observable statement where possible, such as customers repeatedly asking which service fits their situation. Then describe the change the project should support. Keep a deliverable, such as a revised service page, separate from the business outcome it is intended to help.
Include the evidence that led to the project and any important uncertainty. A brief can say that the team suspects a page is unclear and wants to test that assumption. It should not turn that suspicion into a proven cause of lost sales without supporting records. This distinction helps the team choose appropriate work and measurement.
Describe the customer and the offer
Identify the relevant customer situation, service area and decision they are trying to make. Use facts known from the business rather than a fictional personality profile filled with unsupported preferences. Explain what the person needs to understand before taking the next step and where they will arrive from.
Summarize the approved offer: service scope, meaningful exclusions, price presentation if relevant and the action the customer can take. Link to detailed source information rather than copying several pages into the brief. Name the person who can confirm facts when the writer or designer encounters a gap.
Set boundaries and define the deliverable
List the specific outputs, such as one service page, an enquiry form revision or a short email sequence. Identify what is outside the project. Include the existing assets or templates that should be reused and any brand requirements the work must follow. This keeps a modest improvement from becoming an unplanned redesign.
Record constraints that affect execution: budget, available staff time, required access, launch dependencies and approval deadlines. If a date is a preference rather than a fixed external requirement, say so. A realistic brief makes tradeoffs visible before the team has invested in a direction that cannot be delivered within the available resources.
Illustrative one-page brief
Project: clarify one fictional repair service page. Problem: customers cannot tell which items the service covers. Audience: local owners checking repair suitability. Offer: an assessment request, with acceptance confirmed after review. Deliverable: revised page copy and one clear enquiry action. Exclusions: pricing-system changes and a full site redesign. Owner: service manager. Evidence: approved scope, visitor-route test and final mobile review.
Assign decisions as well as tasks
Name the person supplying facts, the person producing the work and the final approver. Identify who can resolve disagreements about scope or timing. A task list without decision ownership can leave a writer waiting for feedback from several people who assume someone else has final authority.
Agree on how feedback will be collected and when it is due. Keep required corrections distinct from optional preferences. If the approved offer or scope changes, record the change in the brief and reassess affected work. The brief should remain the current source of direction instead of becoming an abandoned document once drafting starts.
Define acceptance and the later review
State how the deliverable will be checked: factual approval, working destinations, required content, readable mobile display or a controlled enquiry reaching the intended inbox. Choose evidence appropriate to the actual project. A screenshot of a form does not prove submission delivery, and a completed page does not establish a sales outcome.
Add a separate review question for after the work is used, such as whether customers still ask the same scope question. Record an owner and date for that review. Keep the one-page brief concise by linking to detailed test records and assets, while retaining the decisions that someone needs to understand the project at a glance.
- Problem and evidence.
- Customer situation and approved offer.
- Deliverables, exclusions and constraints.
- Fact owner, producer and approver.
- Acceptance evidence and later review question.
Your next step
Draft the brief using the five headings above. Have the fact owner and final approver read it before assigning production work, and resolve any disagreement about the deliverable first.
