Regardless of what form of marketing activities you are interested in, cooperation with an agency or a freelancer usually starts with a brief. This is how SEM, SEO, digital, video, social media and even PR agencies work.

Marketing brief – definition

There is no one fixed form of how such a document should look. Most often, a marketing brief takes the form of a text document (doc / pdf), but it can also be a power point presentation or even a video recording (although it is a rather unpopular form). It is crucial that the brief contains all the necessary information about the planned activities / campaigns and the terms of cooperation.

Why make a marketing brief?

If we were to shorten the answer to this question to one sentence, it should be written that the brief is there to enable the achievement of the assumed goals. In marketing, almost nothing is binary. There are many different ways to approach the same topic or problem, and it is rarely the case that only one solution is correct.

The advertising brief allows the agency with which you may be cooperating to better understand what exactly you expect, what is your goal and what are the conditions for future cooperation (therefore the brief should contain, among others, information on the planned budget and scope of activities).

Let us take an example. You run an online store and your goal is to have more customers. There are many different ways to achieve this goal, from SEO to social media advertising to affiliate marketing. Will only one solution be right? Of course not! But maybe you, as the principal, have some requirements in this regard. For example, you may want to limit yourself to a performance marketing solution. This is the key information for the agency cooperating with you! Therefore, it should be included in the brief.

On the other hand, the brief is an extremely helpful document for you as well. It helps to focus on a new marketing project and rethink it thoroughly. It may turn out that in the brief, the agency will ask you for information that you did not even take into account (e.g. actions taken by competitors or previous marketing campaigns). Then it is definitely worth sitting down on this topic calmly and collecting more data. It often turns out that you gain a completely new view of your project and you may want to make some changes before sending an inquiry to the agency.

What should an advertising brief contain?

The brief actually consists of a list of questions prepared by the agency and the answers given by the potential client. We can distinguish 6 most important elements of each professional marketing brief. The general assumption is that the more information there is in the brief, the better. Here’s what to pay attention to:

Information about your company

The market context is crucial here. What industry and model does the company operate in, who its recipients are, what its products / services look like, who is the competition, in which countries it operates, how many employees it has, how it stands out on the market, why customers use its services, etc.

Information about your products / services

In the previous point, we were moving on a higher level of generality. Time to get down to the details. What products do you offer? How many are there? How do they stand out? What are their strengths and weaknesses? What do customers praise and complain about? What opinions / reviews does your product collect? Has it undergone any changes recently? How do you promote it? What does the sale look like?

Information about customers

You may have heard the concept of persona. This is a fictional character that has the most important characteristics of your customers. It can be said that this is such a model client created for the needs of marketing activities. In the description of the persona, it is good to include as many elements as possible that may be important for the campaign. Personas most often have a profession, a favorite way of spending time, everyday problems and challenges they have to face, a specific income and education, and sometimes even interests. The persona must be as specific as possible, but you cannot overdo it. Determining what such a persona eats for breakfast in most cases does not make much sense.

Information on the planned marketing campaign

What is the project about, what do you want to achieve, what activities you have taken so far, what marketing problems / challenges your company is facing, what the campaign is to be based on, what channels and solutions you expect, etc.

Budget and project duration

The agency needs to know how much money you have for all of this. Completely different tools will be in motion with a budget of $ 10,000, and completely different with a budget of $ 100,000. Accurate information on the subject of the budget allows for better planning of activities and their intensity. The duration of the project is also of great importance. Again, a campaign with a $ 100,000 budget for two months will be different to a campaign that is scheduled to run for a year with that budget.

The purpose of the campaign

It’s just tempting to write “more sales”, because that’s the ultimate goal of any business. But on the other hand, many marketing campaigns have different, or at least more specific, goals. This could be, for example:
– reaching a new group of recipients,
– building an image / recognition in a new communication channel,
– market education about a new solution / product,
– entering the foreign market,
– building and strengthening a specific image that the company wants to achieve.

That sounds a bit different, doesn’t it? Defining a goal is extremely important because it determines how the results will be measured. If your goal is to reach a new group of recipients, the measure of success will be the increased number of orders from people / companies meeting the given criteria.

The expected results and the way they are measured are also important. Firstly, the result must result directly from the set goal, and secondly, it must be adjusted to the expected activities. You cannot measure strictly image-related activities with the use of measures used in performance marketing.

In marketing, the term KPI (key performance indicator) is often used, i.e. key performance indicators. Such a KPI can be, for example, a certain number of new customers over a specified period, or a lower cost of acquiring a new customer.

Communication method and additional guidelines

This is a key issue in the case of large, international companies that have specific guidelines on how their brand and products are to be presented: in what context, in what channels, in what form. If your company has any requirements that are absolutely necessary, regardless of what will be done, be sure to mention it in your brief. These requirements most often relate to the presentation and use of a logo or a specific color, but it can really be any element.

The most common mistakes when creating a brief

Errors in creating a marketing brief happen quite often and usually result from a misunderstanding of the purpose of this document. What should you avoid when working on your brief?

Too little time spent creating a brief: let’s be honest, marketers are busy and often have little time for additional explanations, especially when something is obvious to them. However, spending extra time will translate directly into the quality of the proposal you receive, and then the campaign.

Too many threads / goals: the assumption should be: one brief, one campaign, one goal. If you overwhelm the agency with several different goals (not yet having much in common) and hundreds of ideas about what to do, there is no chance of successful cooperation. You must make the assumption that the brief is supposed to relate to one topic. If you want to achieve several different goals, or run several different campaigns, make several different briefs.

Performing agency work: by writing a brief, you become a patient and your agency becomes a doctor. The patient doesn’t tell the doctor how to treat, right? Likewise, you, as a customer, should not unnecessarily impose specific solutions that may not fit your problem at all. Give your agency scope for action and listen carefully to what it has to say.

Lack of accurate data: if the collection and analysis of marketing data in your company is limp, it may turn out that creating a brief is bordering on a miracle. In this case, go back to point zero and start by organizing your data. Both sides will benefit from this. Only with hard data in hand, you can proceed to constructing a campaign idea.

Too generic: if you answer “women aged 20-60” when asked about the target group, it is a bit too little. Then you need to consider, perhaps together with the agency, how you can specify the information they need to prepare a campaign proposal.

It is true that articles or films on a given topic remain on the servers and usually, even many years after the original publication, they are still available, but the harsh truth is that very often they simply do not interest any recipient anymore. Their online use-by date has passed – such is the fate of the vast majority of news, reviews, sports reports, political commentaries and materials from hundreds of other categories. The Internet generates enormous amounts of information that we simply do not need – even those that recipients consider up-to-date and valuable at a given moment, in the vast majority of cases, will soon lose their recipients’ attention. The circle of digital life in all its glory.

There are, however, individual pieces of the Web that enjoy unflagging interest. Such content is called evergreen, in keeping with its name being evergreen and flourishing recognition, and hence – also organic traffic to the site. A post, website or movie called evergreen content generate visits all the time. There is no trick to it, although of course such an article must be created in accordance with good SEO practices and full of properly selected keywords. The most important thing, however, is that its content does not expire, while remaining up-to-date despite the passage of time.

In the case of portals on pop culture, evergreen articles will be, for example, journalistic materials about timeless book or film classics, which are considered a canon in a given field. However, in the tech industry, for example, things are a little more complicated. Both software and hardware change so dynamically that such texts very quickly become obsolete. An article about the best programs for a given task one year after publication may be simply based on outdated data, ergo useless for the user. From the website administrator’s perspective, a guide to a specific version of a given application loses its potential when customers migrate to the updated edition of the program.

Please note that seasonal content is not classified as evergreen content. The Google Trends chart for the phrase “presidential election” shows a huge increase in interest every 4 years, but in the periods between the elections, few users search for material on this topic. A similar situation occurs with other cyclical events – the football world championship, the Nobel Prize Gala, Golden Globe Awards or death anniversaries of famous people.

Evergreen content – examples

– Diet items – what to eat to lose weight, how to gain weight, etc .;
– Recipes for popular dishes – from scrambled eggs, to chili con carne, to preparing lobster;
– Training articles – sets of exercises for a specific audience and for a specific purpose;
– Dictionary content – definitions and translations of words or phrases;
– Various types of guides – e.g. gardening, renovation, computer;
– User manuals for specific tools.

Of course, this is only the tip – an article can be called an evergreen when its topicality (and thus the potential interest of the recipients) does not pass with time. It does not mean, however, that once written text should not be updated. While the assumption of evergreen is long, eternal topicality in mind, expanding the content with new data will always be desirable – both by recipients and by indexing robots. However, a well-written evergreen text does not require frequent completion, saving you time.

For this reason, evergreen content articles cannot define, for example, the vast majority of purchase guides with product proposals. Of course, guides “what to buy – [month, year]” can also generate valuable traffic and increase conversion in a given e-store, but it certainly contradicts the idea of evergreen.

Apart from several industries, current trends and store supplies are changing so dynamically that such texts have to be updated very often – even every few weeks.

How to write an evergreen article?

The main source of traffic for this type of content is organic traffic from search engines. In online marketing, intuition is very important, but it loses to something much more powerful – data analysis.

A. Keywords
The selection of appropriate keywords that will be placed in the text will be a priority, making it easier for users to find the article. So you have to answer the question: what phrases do people who are looking for content on a given topic enter into the search engine? If the topic has already been raised on competing websites – let’s not hide it, it probably is – you can analyze the content and structure of the text using various tools, and use the collected data to build your own project. Tools such as Google Trends, as well as Ahrefs, Senuto and Semstorm will be useful for this.

B. Adapt the text in line with good SEO practices
The article must be filled with valuable keywords, but in addition to the content, the form is also important. In order for it to fulfill its role, i.e. not only generating traffic, but not causing the reader to immediately turn off the card and turn to other sources of knowledge, it should be presented in an attractive structure. It consists of the entire visuals – text layout, division into paragraphs, used graphics, font and its color and many other factors.

C. Linking
Even the best-written and presented text will not make it to the top of the search results if it is not linked to it from various sides – especially in a competitive industry, where many other players are waiting for high positions. If the article is indeed very valuable from the user’s perspective, many links will naturally appear, harnessing the social power of the internet. Usually, however, even this is not enough to lift a subpage where it should be – at the very top. For this reason, it is worth using the help of professional positioners with experience, resources and skills in link building.

D. Copywriting and sales decency
When writing articles that are evergreen content in mind, it is easy to overdo it and turn to clickbait to encourage users to read even more. Sure, the main assumption of blog articles is most often, in addition to collecting traffic, encouraging – directly or indirectly – recipients to buy products, use the services of a given company or build brand prestige. However, evergreen’s article must carry not only sales, but also substantive value.

E. Protection against obsolescence
It is worth avoiding references to current events – although a country or the world is commenting on a matter, sensation or behavior at a given moment, in a few months the public’s attention will completely change its direction. References to a currently popular series or a political dispute are very catchy and often the most justified in terms of marketing, but in the long run they harm rather than help. It is hard to find a greater signal that the text was written a long time ago than an outdated joke or a saying that was only popular in its time.

TikTok is still considered a new and fresh medium, although it was founded in 2016 – less than 5 years is a very long time in this world. However, this does not change the fact that for years TT has remained a bit disregarded in the western world, mainly due to the initial product targeting mainly on the Asian market. Whatever the reasons, 2020 definitely belonged to TikTok. In the first quarter of this year, it was the most downloaded application in the world.

TikTok – what is it about?

TikTok is a mobiles application for androids and ioses, thanks to which we can publish short films in various forms. In 2017, the company managing TT, ByteDance, acquired the competitive Musical.ly application for nearly a billion dollars, which also allowed for the publication of short videos, and the available tools allowed for their simple editing – including synchronizing the character’s mouth movement on the video with the lyrics (the platform offered a large database of available songs thanks to an agreement with Warner Music Group and Apple Music). A few months later, Musical.ly was officially merged with TikTok.

The convenient and fast mechanism of editing and sharing films made the platform extremely popular, mainly among the youngest users of the Web, i.e. Generation Z. As a generation from an early age familiar with the use of computers and smartphoness, they consume content slightly differently than the previous generations, which had to slowly learn the internet world. The average age of Facebook users is growing, so it seems natural that the youngest generation of internet users is looking for a field of expression elsewhere – in mid-2020, according to Statista, nearly one third of TikTok users in the US were under 20 years old, and over 60% were under 30. It should be noted, however, that TikTok itself does not officially confirm the data on the structure of its community and such data should be treated as an estimate.

As a platform based mainly on mobiles solutions (it is possible to use the web interface on computers, but the vast majority of users “tick” on smartphoness), TikTok is with users almost anywhere and at any time. It can be considered that TikTok and its mechanics are to some extent a catalyst for the implementation of the Stories format in subsequent social networks – after all, relations were introduced not only a few years ago by Instagram and Facebook, but – quite recently – also by LinkedIn and Twitter. TikTok movies are, in a sense, an extension of this form of communication – fast, dynamic and fleeting.

Pre-publication video on TikTok can be freely edited and processed thanks to built-in tools and filters. The short form of the films (up to a minute, if we use films created directly in the app; films uploaded from external sources may be longer) means that post-production does not require much effort, and watching the video itself is not time-consuming. It is on TikTok that challenges, i.e. various types of challenges, are experiencing their second Internet youth – sometimes sensible, sometimes less of course. We can also find here millions of home music videos, dance routines, charity actions, but also films with painful accidents or vulgar quarrels. Great opportunities to interact with videos posted by other users make the online life on TikTok very dynamic and engaging. According to a study by Businessofapps, in 2019 the average TT user spent nearly an hour a day on the application.

TikTok’s advertising and marketing potential

Due to the large community and the implemented advertising system, TikTok is an application that allows you to promote your own content and display it to a wide audience. As a “new” medium, based on slightly different solutions, it is a field with huge promotional potential, not yet fully exploited by marketers. The number of brands using ads on TikTok, however, is steadily increasing. With Shopify integration, advertisers can also easily promote their products in the app.

The individual TikTok ad formats and their specifications are described in an article on our blog: dimensions of graphics in social media.

TikTok allows brands to collaborate in two ways. The first is the traditional auction model using TikTok Ads Manager, based on very similar principles as, for example, Facebook’s advertising manager. Another solution is the reservation model, under which all activities are planned and agreed with one of the partnership managers cooperating with the platform – this is a solution dedicated to larger campaigns.

Like Twitter, TikTok promotes the most popular hashtags, which are called Trends on this platform. It is an excellent tool for using real-time marketing and “hooking” to the most dynamically growing topics – in short, TikTok seems to be a good place for the brand to always be there where something is going on.

TikTok and controversy

As is usual in the world of social media, several technological and ethical questions arose. TikTok has received heavy financial penalties from the US and South Korea for collecting personal data, separate proceedings are underway in other countries. The platform also struggles to some extent with the difficulty of verifying certain content, especially considering the fact that teenagers are a large proportion of users. In social media, great responsibility comes with great marketing power.

Our statistics

We have recently decided to perform an internal audit regarding the SEO services we provide. This study aimed to see what percentage of customers are not staying with us for longer. So we took to the workshop a little over 200 recently signed page positioning agreements. Our analysis showed that in the last year, 4.8% of clients for various reasons did not decide to continue cooperation with our agency. To check this statistics, we also examined the period of the last two years. The result showed that only 4.04% of customers left us at that time.

Why do customers resign?

The percentage result (4%) presented in the previous paragraph was an impulse to take further actions. Inside the agency, we asked ourselves the most probable reasons for clients giving up cooperation with us. Our audit brought the following conclusions:

A. No payment (10.18%) – this group includes customers who have not paid their debts, and we terminated the contract in these cases.

B. Lack of cooperation on the client’s side (25.66%) – in each case of cooperation with us, cooperation on the client’s side is an obligatory record. Its intensity is always dependent on the type of website, the access, rights and authorizations provided to us, and the number of guidelines that are sent at the very beginning of the contract for many projects. Therefore, this group includes clients who for various reasons did not want to cooperate with us, did not implement the suggested changes or did not provide us with the legitimacy to take certain steps. Therefore, it can be concluded that in this case the client did not give us the opportunity to implement the intended activities, which meant we had to terminate the contracts signed. Our work cannot be carried out when we do not have the tools to do it. Often, clients belonging to this group stop talking themselves. In such situations, we usually wait patiently and try to act, but if there is no response from the other side (and often it is even required) despite repeated attempts, we terminate the contract.

C. No work results (33.19%) – our industry is often unpredictable and everyone who has ever dealt with SEO knows about it. It should be emphasized that it is 33% but only with 4% of clients who terminate contracts, i.e. about 1.3% of all clients who signed contracts with Paraphrase-Online.com during the period. In this case, customers were not satisfied with the results of the work. This allegation most often relates to monitoring the position of selected phrases. It is worth adding that often this problem is the result of customer expectations regarding the inclusion of phrases in monitoring (it is a permanent element of every contract) for which the given page already has high positions. Some customers are very attached to this model of work analysis and it is difficult to argue here the positioner’s actions by increasing website traffic or visibility in global terms. There are also customers who have positions in the top 5, but terminate the contract because they want to have the top 1-2 themselves, which is not always feasible due to the search engine. Many of the clients qualified for this group also did not fully follow the guidelines we sent or simply refused to develop content on the site. Such cases constituted up to ⅗ of this group. Also noteworthy is the fact that 5% of all customers who resigned from working with us return to us years later.

D. Too high costs of the service (9.73%) – customers often stated that despite good positions, they are not fully returned from the investment incurred for the development of this channel and, however, prefer to spend their budget on testing other solutions. In this case, as the history of all contracts implemented by us shows, clients from this group often come back to us after several years of attempts to develop their e-business through other channels.

E. Closing of the site, change of management, bankruptcy of the company, end of contract (21.24%) – this is a group that indicates other reasons for leaving. The most common of them include situations in which the customer removes the page, the company declares bankruptcy, the owner or management board changes, which is focused from the beginning on cooperation with another entity. We have also qualified to this group in which the client after the end of the one-year contract decides not to extend the cooperation with us without giving a reason. This is most often associated with the reasons presented above or with the company’s strategy of testing the effects of cyclical change in positioning agencies.

Sweet kiss of the positioner – bitter kiss of the client

In our experience, the most important stage of cooperation is the time shortly before signing the contract and the first weeks of cooperation. Before signing the contract, the client receives from us all information regarding the implementation of SEO activities in the scope of the contract. He is also notified of what we will need from him to make the cooperation run smoothly. The first weeks after signing the contract are extremely important. During this time, we examine the site in detail and send precise guidelines to the client. Usually, after this initial stage, the client accepts our strategy and thanks to structured cooperation we operate in accordance with the assumed strategy. Unfortunately, as it happens in life, not all situations are perfect. There are clients who at all costs do not want to take certain steps or accept our guidelines or the changes we introduce. Such events limit or completely prevent us from taking effective action to increase website visibility. In our cooperation model, such a tug of war can end with us terminating the contract with the customer. The key is to understand our strategy at the negotiation stage, because our goal is not to sign contracts and unilaterally benefit from them. Cooperation is extremely important in our concept. If the customer does not want to make our changes, and there is no other way to achieve success, then this agreement does not make sense.

Visit to the dentist

To better illustrate this, let’s imagine that a John has a dental package purchased in a known network of dental offices. It includes monthly dental inspections, stone removal, sealing, root canal treatment and tooth extraction. One beautiful June morning, John’s wife Rachel prepared her husband’s unusual yet beloved seasonal meal – a fresh, peeled watermelon. Due to the fact that for several weeks it was extremely hot, before serving the dish Rachel decided to cool the juicy fruit. As soon as Mr. John sank his teeth into the red pulp, a terrifying moan sounded in the dining room. The reason for this cry was pain – something our hero has never experienced on such a scale before. Immediately after the incident, he went to the dentist, from whom he had a package purchased. He told about the situation and asked for a full oral examination. The dentist immediately stated that the cause of the pain was a small defect in the upper left trio and suggested putting the seal on immediately. John, who had never had dental problems before, refused to perform the procedure, without giving a reason for giving up the routine procedure. Time passed and John, in connection with permanent pain, became more and more unbearable man. He stopped dealing with his wife, whom he blamed for the whole situation, and at work he could not focus on everyday duties. He decided to go to the dentist again and agree to put on the seal. However, during the second review the doctor excluded this procedure. The condition of the tooth deteriorated enough to require root canal treatment. John was afraid of this option again and stated that he was not able to decide at this moment about such (in his opinion) a radical step. Before John left the office, the dentist asked him to rethink the proposal, because the procedure is included in his package and thanks to him he can get rid of unwanted ailment once and for all. The weeks went by, and John’s pain was gone thanks to decoctions of fenugreek and leek. Unfortunately, in December the pain returned with redoubled strength, and there was a huge swelling on the gums. John, contrite and completely deprived of the will to fight for interference in his teeth suit, he went to the dentist for the third time. This time the specialist was ruthless and said that in this situation the only option is to pull out the tooth. This time the patient realized that he had no choice but to submit to the will of the dentist. The tooth was removed, and John, in order not to scare his relatives with his incomplete smile, had to put on an expensive and not covered by the implant package …

Stages of SEO-destruction

So how does this translate into SEO? Unfortunately, quite a lot. Sometimes a customer who has a contract with us, avoids cooperation or refuses to accept even the simplest changes that aim to increase the visibility of the site. This is usually a straight path to problems. Unfortunately, often such situations can have a painful effect on the client’s business. That is why we as Paraphrase-Online.com do not wait until the “teeth” start to fall out. If we see that the customer does not cooperate with us previously agreed, we decide to terminate the contract. Our specialists are not for watching how a given site falls in visibility rankings, and subsequent competitors are ahead of it. We are here to actively work every day to increase the potential of the website in terms of SEO, which is why as many as 96% of customers decide to stay with us for longer.

5 types of customers

Based on many years of observations, we decided to divide customers into 5 types. We classified them in relation to the client’s adaptation to the set goals by accepting the implemented measures.

A. Partner – an ideal customer –This is a very aware customer. He understands that the agency is to help him achieve the given effect by undertaking the agreed actions. He responds positively to every cooperation or development proposal and tries to allow positioners the best working conditions. It should be remembered that he is not a conformist – he requires a lot, but at the same time understands that to achieve something, you need to put a lot of work into it. If you are heavily involved in the project and implement everything as agreed, then know that this customer will be very loyal and will stay with you for many years.

B. Visionary – to the goal at all costs –Customers of this type are only effect oriented. They are not interested in how and by what means you will reach his goals. In this case, you can even use illegal activities to accomplish your task as soon as possible. There is a high risk of contract termination!

C. Official – table and reports –It pushes targets into the background. According to its specificity, the measures we implement are the most important for it. He loves to send (preferably once a week) reports, statements and tables. Through constant verification of the implemented activities, the effects are only a distant mirage for him. It is only important how much and how well we carry out the package actions. Vive la package! Such a person often requires almost impossible reporting and translation from the modification of each line of code, which greatly complicates efficient operation. This customer will terminate the contract only if the agreed tasks are not carried out as agreed.

D. Individualist – everything in its own way –The funds turned out to be unreachable or failed for the client, and the presented goals are not satisfactory, so the client tries to introduce substitute activity, seeking solutions on their own. Sets new goals without informing the agency. His assumptions are unrealistic or do not comply with previous arrangements, and the measures are always considered inappropriate or too stripped down. Cooperation is difficult here, because reaching an agreement occurs only if you accept all customer requirements. There is a high risk of contract termination!

E. Rebel – for no reason rather than by choice –A rebel is a client who usually contests without reason the legitimacy of all actions, and all goals are pure abstraction for him. This type of contractor will not verify the activities carried out or settle you for the effects. In principle, it is not important what you do – at any time the day may come when the client will leave and will not give the reason for his behavior. If it already requires any results, these are the assumptions he invented and the work on the site is pointless and it is not worth wasting time on it.

Can you keep every customer?

In most situations this is possible, but sometimes you need to think about whether such activities should be a priority and whether they make sense at all. This applies to both the client and the agency. The statistics presented by us at the beginning show that a good work and a well-thought-out strategy can be reduced to an absolute minimum percentage of outgoing customers. In each case, partnership and care for mutual benefits are important. The parties appearing in a given contract should have the same goal – the success of the venture. At Paraphrase-Online.com, we try to meet the challenges posed by our contractors every day by implementing our proven strategy. Therefore, only 4% of our clients give up our services. In our opinion, with such statistics and the number of customers, there is nothing to be ashamed of.