In the marketing world, everything is based on a brief from client – or stakeholder/management.

However, most of the problems suffered during a campaign (or during a design process) occur due to an inadequate brief – missing important information, too much ability for project creep or unrealistic goals. So what information is a ‘must have’, ‘nice to have’ or a ‘would like’?

Deadline

Obviously, the final deadline is crucial. But what about crucial markers through the process? If you’re running a PPC campaign, the end deadline may be the event date, but when do you need to submit keyword choices, ad copy and budget? Who to? There’s a range of involved bodies that all may want different deadlines, which brings us on to…

Stakeholders

Who has a say in the project? Ideally, you’d want a single voice to have as a contact, otherwise 30 opinions will lead you round in circles. Find out the single person who’d have sign off, and listen to their views to save time, stress and workload.

Budget

You can’t get steak on salad money is a phrase I’ve heard before – that is to say, managing client expectations, ensuring you have adequate information provided to display an accurate proposal, which isn’t subject to significant levels of scope creep.

Contact Information

Not just for a call to action, but who is the point of contact for different areas of the project? Is it marketing? Sales? IT? Someone else entirely? Ensuring you have the most relevant person, and their ‘back up’ in case of a sick day or lack of response maximises the time you have with your contact.

Colour Scheme

Does it fit your brand? Will it look good in print and digital? Does it have any issues with accessibility? Ensuring you can provide proper reference points in various formats (RGB, CYMK, Pantone reference) will let your design team work much quicker and smoother.

Of course, that’s nowhere near an exhaustive list, but just a quick consideration of the requirements you need to consider. For digital projects you’d be looking at touch points, data capture forms, breadcrumbs, menu location, bandwidth, imagery, alt tags, meta data, storage, media used…and more.

Check you have answers to all of the questions you could think of to get the most out of conversations with vendors.

What crucial information do you tend to forget? Or under-emphasise?

Original Article

Find out more on the future of Content Marketing at our DLUK - Trends briefing on the 24th September 2015