How to write an effective website creative brief:

Your website creative brief is going to be a one to two page document that is going to clearly define your audience, your visions and goals, and your company strategy, for your marketing campaign.

Your creative brief should always start with a summary of the project you are embarking on. Include the reasons why this project is necessary and what you are hoping to accomplish with this current project. There are literally hundreds of different reasons to embark on a marketing campaign, your reasons can only be chosen by you. One of the most common reasons is the release of a new product within an already existing company.

If you are undertaking a new marketing campaign for the release of a new product then in your creative brief you will need to outline the direction you hope for the campaign to go in. For instance is the greatest energy of your campaign going to be spent in advertising your upcoming project, targeting your consumer base, or are you going to be marketing more through your public relations committee focusing less on advertising and more on getting your company into the light of the media?

What do you hope to have accomplished when this current marketing campaign comes to an end? Obviously if you are releasing a new product you are going to hope to gain recognition for that product and boost the number of sales you open that product with. Possibly your campaign is targeting an upcoming event though, and if so your end goal will be gaining greater attendance. Whatever your goal is for the end of your campaign, make sure it is clearly stated in your creative brief.

You will also want to include in your creative brief what has and hasn't worked in the past for your campaigns. Lay out the reasons why it has worked, and focus on making those points strong points this time, and lay out the reason why it has not worked, so that those avenues won't be pursued again.

Once you have laid out your goals and what you have learned from your past experience, focus on your audience. It will help your team in their individual jobs to know exactly who they are campaigning to. Include what your audience has expressed interest in, in the past, whether through their feedback or through their purchases. Include also what your audience has expressed need for. If you have not had personal feedback stating what more they are in need of than it can be helpful in your creative brief to state your competition and what they are currently selling more of, or finding more success in than you are. In this way you can know more what your customers are looking for and be able to help your whole team identify with your audience.

Once you have identified your audience state how you want them to respond to your campaign, and what your strategy is for convincing your audience of that response. Your creative brief will be an outline of your ideas; your individual team members may be able to expand on your ideas to make them more effective in their own areas of your company.

Make sure to include in your creative brief all details of the upcoming offer or promotion. Put in dates it will be released, current and future pricing, specials you will be running, every detail about the release so nothing gets left out.

And finally put in your companies contact information. How will your audience get in touch with you? How will they recognize you? Do you intend to have a company phrase or logo that follows your campaign? Your team will need to know this information to be able to put together an effective campaign.

Your creative brief should be released to everyone in your company who is involved in any way in the upcoming marketing campaign. If you follow what we have outlined here you should have an effective creative brief.