A Marketing brief is the blueprint for your digital house. The more detailed it is, the faster we can build it and the fewer renovations you’ll need afterwards. In this post, we’ll explain what information to include to save time and maximize your results.
What is a Marketing Brief and why is it so important?
A Marketing Brief is a foundational document that gathers all the relevant information about your company: your needs and goals, your audience, and your current online presence. It serves as the communication bridge between your company and the agency executing the strategy.
Why is it so crucial to invest time and effort into it?
- It aligns expectations: It ensures you and the agency are on the same page since day one, preventing misunderstandings and unpleasant surprises.
- It saves time (and money): It allows us to start working immediately, without wasting weeks in endless discovery meetings just to gather basic data.
- It enables a 100% personalized strategy: Generic SEO yields generic results. With a good brief, we can design a customized plan that targets your weaknesses and leverages your real strengths.
- It’s the foundation for measuring ROI: By clearly defining your goals and starting point, we can accurately measure the impact of our work and your return on investment.
What happens if you DON’T create a good brief? Skipping the briefing phase or doing it superficially is like sailing without a compass. You might be moving, but your chances of reaching your destination are slim.
- A generic, aimless strategy: Without a deep understanding of your business, we’d have to rely on standard tactics that don’t connect with your audience or solve your real problems. The result would be a bland strategy, unable to differentiate you from your competition or make any impact.
- Wasted time and resources: Imagine we spend a whole month optimizing product pages that aren’t a priority for your sales… A briefing prevents this by focusing all efforts on those areas with the highest growth potential for your company.
- Ineffective investment: This is the biggest risk. Without a brief, you’re making a blind bet. The budget you invest in SEO will likely fail to deliver the results you expected, leading to frustration and the mistaken belief that “SEO doesn’t work for my business.” The problem isn’t SEO; it’s the lack of initial direction.
In short, a comprehensive brief isn’t a bureaucratic hurdle; it’s the first and most important investment in your SEO project. It’s your guarantee that every dollar and every minute invested will be working from the start to achieve your specific goals.
What should the perfect Marketing brief include? (a step-by-step guide)
Now, let’s get down to business. Here is the structure we use to ensure we get a complete picture of your business.
Tell us about yourself
This is the “Hello, nice to meet you” of your project. We want to get to know you so we can provide what you need.
Company information
- Business activity: What do you do exactly? Don’t just say “e-commerce.” Do you sell handmade shoes? B2B software? Legal consulting services? Be as specific as possible.
- Geographic area: Do you operate only locally, nationally, or internationally? Which cities, regions, or countries? This is vital for a local SEO strategy.
- Business sector: What industry are you in? The competition and strategies in the fashion industry differ from those in the industrial sector.
- Evolution in recent years: How has your company grown? Have you launched new products or entered new markets? This gives us very valuable historical context.
What problem do you want to solve or what do you want to achieve?
This is perhaps the most important question. Why are you reaching out to us now? What is your top priority?
- “We’re not selling enough online.”
- “Our competitors are outranking us on Google.”
- “We’ve tried doing SEO ourselves but aren’t seeing results.”
- “We want to position ourselves as experts in our field.”
- “We’re launching a new product and need visibility.”
The more honest you are here, the better we can help you.
Explain your business to us
Now, let’s go deeper. Understanding your business means understanding exactly what we need to work on.
What is your flagship product or service?
Where does 80% of your revenue come from? Describe it in detail. What is your sales process? What are your unique features?
What other products or services do you currently sell?
Tell us about your complete portfolio. Sometimes, a hidden gem in your catalog can become a great source of traffic.
What is your competitive advantage?
Why should a customer buy from you and not someone else? Is it the price? A superior quality? Exceptional customer service? Record-fast delivery times? This will give us clues on how to approach your content and key messages.
We want to create the best strategy for you
We already know you and your company; now it’s time to learn about your market.
Target audience profile
Who is your ideal customer? “Anyone” isn’t an answer; let’s dig deeper.
- B2B or B2C: Do you sell to businesses or end consumers?
- Demographics: Think about the customer you’re targeting and describe them in detail: age, gender, location, profession, etc.
- Search intent: What does your customer search for on Google when they need what you sell? Do they use technical or colloquial language?
- Pain points: What problem do your customers have that leads them to need your product/service?
Who are your main competitors?
Name them. What websites do you envy for their ranking? Don’t worry, we’ll do a competitor analysis, but we want you to name two types of companies:
- Your direct offline (and online, if you know them) competition.
- Those companies that, without selling the same thing as you, are capturing your audience’s attention with interesting content or have caught your eye with how they handle their online presence.
What are the target keywords for your business?
If you already have an idea of which terms you’d like to rank for, list them. This is an excellent starting point for our research. If not, don’t worry—that’s what we’re here for.
History
To know where we’re going, we need to know where we’re coming from.
Are you currently working on, or have you worked on, online marketing before?
Have you run Google Ads campaigns, email marketing, social ads? Tell us what you’ve done, what worked, and what didn’t.
Have you worked on SEO before? What results did you get?
This is critical. If you’ve worked on SEO before, we need to know:
- What was done exactly? (content creation, link building, technical optimization)
- Who did it? (agency, freelancer, in-house staff)
- What were the results? (increase in traffic, conversions)
Heads up! If there have been bad practices (Black Hat SEO) in the past, it’s essential for us to know so we can fix them.
Data access
The most technical part, but just as important. We need access to data to make an accurate diagnosis.
Access to Google Analytics
This is your website’s dashboard. It lets us see current traffic, user behavior, conversions and much more. It’s essential.
Access to Google Search Console
Our window into Google. Here, we see the keywords people are using to find you, your impressions, and possible crawl errors. It’s the thermometer for your site’s SEO health.
Access to your CMS and Hosting Panel
To implement the technical and content optimizations we define, we’ll need access to your CMS (WordPress, Shopify, etc.) and, in some cases, your hosting (cPanel, Plesk, etc.). Security is paramount, so you can create specific user accounts with limited permissions for us.
Did you know that at SEO Alive, we have our own project management tool? Your SEO strategy includes and SEOcrawl subscription so that you can continuously view the status of the strategy, the next planned actions, and their results.
Available Resources
Our strategy must be ambitious yet realistic. At SEO Alive, we adapt to your resources to maximize results.
Do you have a defined budget for this strategy?
An approximate number helps us scope the project. A strategy with a budget of $500/month is not the same as one of $3000/month. Being transparent about the budget allows us to prioritize the actions that will give you the highest ROI.
Do you have in-house staff to implement the actions we define?
Do you have a copywriter, a community manager, or a web developer on staff? With this information, we’ll determine whether we need to act as consultants or assist you with implementation, which will impact both the approach and the cost of the service.
What specific goals do you want to achieve with SEO in 12 months?
Let’s think medium-to-long term. SEO takes time. What would you like to have accomplished in a year?
- “Increase organic traffic by 75%.”
- “Generate 50 qualified leads per month through the blog.”
- “Rank on the first page for the keyword [my main keyword].”
- “Increase online sales by 40%.”
These goals should be measurable, realistic, and aligned with your business objectives.
Is there anything else you’d like to tell us?
This is the catch-all section. Include any additional information you consider relevant that didn’t fit in the sections above: an offline marketing campaign you’re about to launch, a rebranding, a future expansion… All context is welcome.
We hope this guide has helped you understand that behind an Marketing brief there is no bureaucracy, but strategy, efficiency, and a desire to get it right. At SEO Alive, every question in our brief has a purpose: to create the most powerful and effective strategy possible for you.
Ready to get started? If you have all this clear, you’re more than ready to tackle the brief. And if you still have questions, that’s okay! We’ll guide you.
Do you have any questions? Leave them in the comments! And if you think this post could help a colleague, feel free to share it.
