The following is a guest article from Lorraine McMeeking at StudioNorth
The scenario
You’ve been asked to plan a six-month campaign to boost top-of-funnel lead generation — and the campaign should be in-market by next month.
With no time to waste, you book meetings with your internal team and (potentially) your agency. You have a good sense of what’s needed, so you decide to push forward without formalizing your plan.
Sound familiar? We know it can be done — as healthcare marketers, we spend many of our days working at an accelerated pace. But just because it can be done doesn’t mean it should be our default approach.
Take a minute to breathe. Then, take time to organize your thoughts in a campaign brief. Your future self will thank you, as will your stakeholders.
Did you know … while 80% of marketers believe they have a handle on writing briefs, only 10% of agencies agree with this assessment. [1]
Creating a unified vision
What is the risk of building your campaign without documenting your vision in a brief? Simply put, while your campaign will come together, without initial alignment it may also lack cohesion and miss the mark.
A well-written brief ensures everyone understands the goals, target audience, and desired messaging. Your brief creates a shared understanding of the campaign’s purpose, fosters collaboration, and establishes a sense of ownership among your internal team and your agency partner.
Three ways your internal team benefits
1. Enhanced strategic planning
Clearly outlining the campaign goals and defining your target audience helps your team identify the most effective marketing channels, make informed budget allocation decisions, and plan an accurate timeline for execution. Your campaign brief should reduce the likelihood of wasted efforts and guide your stakeholders to focus on activities with the highest chance for success.
2. Efficient content creation
Messaging can be challenging, even when there is a clear understanding of the audience and goals. Imagine the challenge your content team may have without this information. Your campaign brief provides valuable context, helping your content creators tailor their work to the audience and campaign theme, ensuring consistency across all touchpoints.
Pro tip: Engage your more junior team members in the brief creation process. This is a great opportunity to demonstrate the value of these documents and prepares junior members for successful planning when they have an opportunity to lead a campaign or other large project involving multiple stakeholders.
3. Streamlined project management
Your internal team can use the campaign brief to assign ownership of specific tasks, create their deliverables, and establish communication protocols. It ensures that everyone is aware of their role and deadlines from the outset, minimizing the potential for confusion and misaligned expectations.
Three ways your agency benefits
1. Agency alignment
Regardless of how long you’ve collaborated with your agency, a well-developed brief helps them propose campaign strategies and creative concepts well-aligned to your vision. This will save you valuable time and resources, especially when it’s a campaign you are moving quickly on.
Pro tip: Don’t overlook the agency team members contributing “behind the scenes” to your deliverables. Your client team will use the campaign brief to inform them and may even develop an internal brief based on yours. Consider the information you need them to be aware of and tailor your brief to set them up for success.
2. Improved trust and collaboration
A comprehensive campaign brief can foster trust and improve collaboration with external partners. When they clearly understand your goals and expectations, your agency can be upfront about their capabilities and potential challenges. Open communication leads to a more collaborative and productive partnership, which is, ultimately, what you want to achieve to gain the best results.
3. Efficient resource allocation
Your campaign brief lets your agency partner allocate their resources more effectively — especially when faced with a quick-turn set of deliverables. With clearly documented campaign parameters, your agency team can assign the right people and align proposed strategies with your budget and expectations.
Next Steps
Writing your brief — what to include?
If your marketing team doesn’t have an existing template, there are several to choose from online, or you can build your own. You can also customize briefs for the specific needs of your campaign, along with the stakeholders involved. Some critical sections we recommend including:
Campaign overview
- Introduce the campaign and outline the primary objectives.
- Describe the problem you are aiming to solve or the opportunity you are trying to capture and why your audience will care.
Target audience
- Clearly define your primary and secondary targets. This helps your team create the right message and choose the most effective channels.
- Describe who they are. What are their motivators and barriers? Where do they go to get information? What types of content do they typically engage with?
Pro Tip: Include personas as part of or as a supplement to your brief, to support consistency across all campaign deliverables.
Campaign goals
- Define SMART goals for the campaign (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound).
- These could include brand awareness metrics, lead generation targets, website traffic increases, and more.
Messaging
- Consider the tone you want to convey. Is it intended to be humorous? Informative? Authoritative?
- While you may choose to stretch the boundaries of your brand to enhance the impact of your campaign, remember audiences want consistent brand experiences.
Pro Tip: A campaign messaging platform empowers your team to create high-quality content that compels your audience to act.
Competitive landscape
- Briefly outline who your key competitors are, and any marketing activity you are aware of that may compete with your campaign.
- This will help you and your stakeholders position your campaign in a differentiated way.
Campaign budget and timeline
- Outline how you will allocate your budget for internal campaign costs, along with the budget you are earmarking for your agency.
- Define the timeline to ensure everyone is working towards your launch date. If you are working under a tight timeline, prioritize the order in which your assets need to be completed.
Deliverables
- Define the assets (or categories of assets) that your internal team and agency will each be responsible for
- Once your stakeholders understand what you are looking for, they will be able to share recommendations for how best to approach and get down to work.
Call to Action
- Define what you want your audience to do as they engage with each campaign touchpoint.
- Keep your CTAs succinct and specific, and use actionable language (ex: download our eBook).
When you are pressed for time, it’s easy to skip over creating a campaign brief. But, by investing a little time upfront, you’ll be well on your way to achieving your goals and avoiding costly missteps.
Need help writing fantastic briefs? We’d love to talk and share how we support our clients with brief creation and more. Connect with us to start the conversation.
About the Author
Lorraine McMeekin, Senior Director, Strategy – Healthcare. With more than 16 years of experience in healthcare marketing, Lorraine leads the Healthcare Strategy practice at StudioNorth. Prior to joining the Studio team, she worked for various healthcare technology and Continuing Medical Education (CME) companies, focused on both the US and Canadian markets. Connect with Lorraine on LinkedIn
StudioNorth is a sponsor of Healthcare Scene.
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