How to write a brief for marketing that sells

“If you don’t say what you want, you won’t want what you get”.

There’s a skill to writing a marketing brief. If you get it right your supplier will deliver first time – no surprises. If you get it wrong (or worse still don’t provide one at all), it costs time and money to put it right.

At Clear Thought we love writing briefs. It’s an integral part of our service. And we take extra care to make them engaging, relevant and factual, because a boring brief makes for an unmotivated supplier. And, ultimately a disappointing end result.

Even when a customer provides us with a good brief, we talk it through with them and make sure we all agree with the requirements. And if we disagree with an objective or output, we don’t mind adding our penneth and making specific recommendations to help get it spot-on. We can also work with you to re-write it if necessary.

TOP TIPS: When preparing a brief avoid jargon, lingo and acronyms. Include facts (no assumptions or embellishments). Use plain speaking English and include as much detail as possible. It’s easier and quicker for your supplier to cut out the superfluous rather than have to fill in some gaps. Whether you need a creative brief, web brief, copy brief or even an event brief – here’s a useful checklist to help make sure nothing gets missed:

1. YOUR PRODUCT/BACKGROUND: Include a brief summary about your company, its products and its services. Set the scene a little and try and include something about your brand, its personality and philosophy. Pricing and sales processes should also be mentioned. Will there need to be any initial research, or do you already have some research that findings that will help?

2. COMPETITION: Talk about competitor products and services. What marketing activity are they doing and are they doing it better? Include examples and/or weblinks.

3. WHAT: What is your required output? I.E. what type of activity are you looking for (an ad, a DM campaign a new website, a conference)? Think about how the deliverable will be used – in print, on a website, in a salesperson’s briefcase, etc.

4. WHY: Why are you doing this activity? What objectives are you trying to achieve (raise awareness, collect data, increase sales, get someone to do something…)?

5. WHO: Describe your target audience – who you want to talk to. Are they businesses or consumers? Describe why you think they need your product or service, and why you think they might not be buying (barriers). Try and describe the role of this person in their organisation, or what type of consumer they are. What do they read? What do they listen to?

6. WHEN: Is there as seasonal reason for undertaking this piece of activity? Are there any key milestones or deadlines that need to be met?

7. HOW: How are you going to measure the effectiveness of this activity? What will success look like? Can it be piloted or tested first?

8. LIKES & DISLIKES: It’s always useful to list some activities or brands that you have already seen and liked. Even if just website (competitor or otherwise).

9. MANDATORIES: It’s essential to provide a ‘call to action’ plus any brand/tone of voice guidelines, or list any assets that must be used or avoided. Ts & Cs or legal requirements too.

10. BUDGET: It’s much easier for a supplier to respond to a brief if they know how much you would like to spend.

There are some simple equations you can use to work out how much you should invest, but saying there is ‘no budget’ either means you expect it for free, or the sky’s the limit! Wouldn’t that be great?

If you are not 100% comfortable in briefing marketing suppliers, we can help. Clear Thought has hands-on experience both sides of the desk and can help both parties work together for a great result. We’re experienced in talking their language, and we have a number of briefing templates that mean you’re never starting from a blank sheet of paper.

Alternatively, if you already have a brief you would like us to look at, we’d be happy to come along and talk to you face-to-face. A bit of clear thinking usually improves the results you get.

There’s nothing worse than paying for a piece of work that just doesn’t do the trick. Agencies want to meet the brief… so if you get the brief right there should never be a wasted penny spent with marketing suppliers. And, in small business marketing, every penny counts.

By Cheryl Crichton | Associate Clear Thinker | Clear Thought Consulting Ltd | www.clear-thought.co.uk

How to create professional sales tools from your desk

Every business needs sales and marketing collateral. Stationery, product literature, case studies, press releases, direct marketing, customer comms… the list goes on.

Whether you choose to go paperless (PDFs and downloads) or use hard copy (traditional print), it all takes time and money… graphic designers, photographers, copywriters, printers, web developers…

There is a way to save time and money…

This year we’ve helped two clients make the most of their marketing budget with powerful use of collateral templates. For one client we helped create almost 100 pieces of collateral from just four professionally produced Microsoft templates. So, if you’re looking for ways to create marketing content on a budget, here’s how…

1) LOOK AND FEEL: As part of a major re-branding exercise we asked one of our favourite designers to create some examples of typical pieces of collateral (a case study, a product sheet, a letterhead and a newsletter).

2) GUIDELINES: We then made sure that they were included in the brand guidelines with detailed instructions on their make up (colours, fonts, use of imagery etc).

3) IMAGE LIBRARY: The designer also recommended some Royalty Free imagery and icons which now make-up a library of images that can be used across the templates. We had these images re-coloured to fit the brand.

4) COPY: We had one of each type of document professionally written (always recommended), along with some tone of voice guidelines. We also created a spelling conventions checklist, which is now used with the tone of voice guidelines in-house to write copy.

5) CONVERSION: We then worked with the client to take these designs and guidelines to a Microsoft template specialist who emulated them exactly in Microsoft Word. These initial four designs were turned into ‘click and type here’ templates that anyone could use. This also included styling tables, charts and flow diagrams into the style sheets. Everything was locked down and pre-formatted, so the brand could not be compromised.

6) CASE STUDY SCRIPT: We also worked with a professional copywriter to prepare a script and list of key questions to enable us to interview customers and get the answers we need to create an engaging case study. And, we always asked for ongoing permissions to use quotes, etc. at the same time to enable us to continually add to our arsenal of testimonials.

7) BRIEFING CHECKLIST: And finally, we left the client with a briefing check list and document ‘structure’ for each item, to ensure no content got missed.

There was some initial investment in setting everything up, but once done, any number of documents can now be created from each of the templates. With practice, 2 or three 2-page documents can be created in a day.

Here are some examples of documents we’ve helped clients produce using simple old Word, PowerPoint and Excel:

So, even if you’re a small business wanting to do your own marketing, you can produce brilliant marketing materials from your desk. Our golden rules for this are 1) Work with experts to get the first few done, 2) Develop checklists, etc. from doing this, and 3) Get Word and PPT templates produced by an expert (we like these guys www.creativetemplatesolutions.co.uk).

By Cheryl Crichton | Associate Clear Thinker | Clear Thought Consulting Ltd | www.clear-thought.co.uk

Move over short copy

Long copy rules. For many a year the short copywriter has been king – writing those catchy lines that grab attention, particularly in advertising. In an online world, this is less important than depth, quality and quantity. Well written articles picked up by relevant online journals, forums and bloggers are now much more powerful than the clever one-liner. Why? Search! Where advertising once ruled, search has become the first, or the very close second, port of call in a buying decision. Being referenced in many trusted online venues is essential – and this can only be achieved with decent long copy (preferably written with clear thought on SEO strategy).

By Bryony Thomas, Director at Clear Thought Consulting | www.clear-thought.co.uk

What to say when – managing marketing content through the sales funnel

Many businesses fail to move people through the sales funnel from awareness to action, not because they have their content wrong, but because they use it at the wrong time. By mapping your content against your sales funnel you can determine both the tone and quantity of information to make available to increase your chances of moving people through to a sale. This applies equally to decision-making processes that take 10 minutes or 10 months.

Many of us will have experienced a sense of ‘information overload’ where we simply switch off, or the frustration of wanting to know more about a product or service before we commit and not being able to find it. Both happen regularly, and when they do – you’ve lost a sale.

For almost every purchase we make, we run through a broadly similar decision-making process (I say almost, as the impulse bar of chocolate at the supermarket counter is quite a different process). Typically, and particularly for more complex purchases, our thinking will go something like this: ‘My laptop is heavy – I saw that ad for really light weight ones, who was it again?’ (Latent need); ‘There’s that ad, it’s X-brand’ (Awareness); ‘I’ll just check out their site’ (Interest); ‘Hmm, well the weight certainly compares well, but can I afford it, what are the other options?’ (Evaluation); ‘I’ll pop into Y-shop to see what it feels like and ask a little more about it’ (Trial); ‘I’ve researched the best price, I’ll get it from there’ (Purchase). Kotler and others have spelt out various different versions of this process, there’s bound to have been one modelled for most markets. So, our step-by-step decision-making process is something like 1) Awareness, 2) Interest, 3) Evaluation, 4) Trial, 5) Purchase.

Against this process you should map and measure your sales funnel, you’ll steadily whittle down your audience at each step, with interested parties moving through the funnel and those who either don’t want what you offer or who are turned off by your messaging going elsewhere. To maximise the conversion at each stage, marketers should consider two key elements; tone and quantity.

What do I mean by tone? As short-hand, think emotion. Against the sales funnel, there is an appropriate tone at each step. If you imagine a continuum from emotional to rational, typically your marketing material will need to start at emotional and move to rational through the funnel. Emotional appeals are most likely to really grab someone’s attention. If you hit a nerve, they notice you. However rational you are, e.g. ‘we’re cheap’, if they don’t feel a need for what you’re offering they’re unlikely to notice your communications in the first place. Successful emotional appeals, in marketing terms, usually hit on a negative feeling and say that you can take it away. This is called finding the point of pain. Once you’ve established that emotional appeal, your communications need to move into more rational territory, where proof is needed. As a sanity check on the tone of your marketing materials, map out each stage of the sales funnel and look at the material (offline, online, sales person, in-store, etc.) and assess the tone – are you too rational too soon? Are you trying to appeal to their emotions when they’re looking for proof?

Quantity, in regard to sales funnelling, is a fairly straight forward concept – start ‘short and sweet’ and then provide more information at each step. Where most organisations fall foul of this is on their websites. Home pages are often jam packed with information. Considering the journey a home page or a campaign landing page is only the second step on the sales funnel – they are still pretty emotional (what’s the benefit for me?) and they are looking for key messages. Again, map out your journey and assess the quantity of information you are serving at each stage, it should start small and increase at each step.

So, if you’re experiencing lots of web traffic, but low numbers of enquiries – or lots of footfall and low sales, think about the sales funnel. An initial assessment against tone and quantity will sign post where your blockage might be and put you on the path to a free flowing sales funnel that has a tangible link to your bottom line.

By Bryony Thomas, Director at Clear Thought Consulting | www.clear-thought.co.uk