All content should serve some kind of purpose. Either brand awareness, lead generation, product exposure, supplying a website with traffic. There are many possibilities, and you, being on the serving side, should specify in detail what needs to be delivered. Best if in an organized fashion, in a written, good copywriting brief.
If you don’t properly brief your copywriter, the outcome won’t be what you expected. Because you didn’t specify what you wanted.
1. With a bad brief comes grief
After a third round of amendments, redoing the headlines and reminding your copywriter that you’re using British English and not American English, you tend to wonder what went wrong along the way. Well, I hate to break it to you, but it’s likely that you didn’t properly brief your copywriter before the work started.
Some elements, like English spelling, might not seem like a big deal to you when starting cooperation with a copywriter – but it’s exactly these types of details that should be included in a copywriting brief.
A brief should be written down, not communicated orally
Usually, it’s very easy to avoid this type of time-wasting email ping-pong. If briefing copywriters is something new to you, try writing down a list of rules, do’s & don’ts, industry faux-pas that should be avoided.
We tend to assume others know what we know and prefer to briefly talk over what our requirements are. Writing them down and sending them over email is a must. A “quick chat on Google Meets” won’t cut it.
A good copywriting brief is your responsibility
When it comes to copywriting briefs, the better your input, the better the copywriter’s output. In a nutshell, this means describing:
- why you’re creating this content,
- who is your target audience,
- your product itself, and
- technical requirements reflecting your industry.
If you can’t write down responses to the above, you can be sure nobody will be able to do this for you. So if your brief will be a one-liner “article about e-commerce platforms in the United Kingdom for our company blog”, you can be sure that you’ll spend a lot of time rewriting the copy or re-briefing your copywriter again and again.
Long story short, it’s worth spending one hour to describe what you want from the content, instead of spending three, four or more hours on redoing what should have been properly done in the first place.
“Good copywriting briefs = Good copy”
2. Why you need this piece of content
To put it bluntly – what are the objectives lying ahead of this piece of content? This will define the structure, length, tone of voice, expected response of your audience.
Content goals vs its environment
For example, if you’re in the IT industry, trying to acquire traffic in an ongoing manner, you’re aiming for an evergreen piece of content that will always be attractive to a specific group of users.
This requires the content to be SEO-specific, answer a popular topic that has lots of searches online. And since it’s an online piece of content, it should be full of headlines and short paragraphs – users scan content before actually reading in – take a look at a study on how users read on the web, held by the Nielsen Norman Group from 1997. It was right then, and it’s right now.
Supply your copywriter with the proper tools
Assuming that you hired a copywriter that doesn’t create SEO-friendly content on a daily basis, you’ll have to supply that person with a list of keywords that will drive search engines to your website. Tools like Google Trends, Semrush or Senuto will come in handy when researching topics and cherry-picking phrases that should help drive organic traffic.
You may also be working with an SEO agency that will provide you with keywords and their key data. It’s crucial to include these keywords in your copywriting brief – especially if SEO is important for the content you’re creating.
Copy is only a part of the puzzle
Also, keep in mind that the right keywords, proper length of an article and its general readability are only half of the work – backlinks are key to driving traffic to your website.
You can have the perfect article on headless e-commerce platforms, but if no one is linking to that article, it’s very unlikely to get large amounts of traffic organically. Depending on your business objectives, you’re going to need totally different types of content.
Include any internal or external links you want in your copywriting brief. You should also determine if you want them to be “follow” or “no-follow” links, if your copywriter will also be publishing the copy on your site, as part of their tasks.
3. Describe your business
Nobody knows what you’re selling better than you. Even if the copywriter you’ve hired has lots of experience in your industry, it’s highly unlikely that they know your product inside out.
If you want your audience to fully grasp the USPs of your product, understand the technology or whatever is attractive about it, this knowledge should be passed on to your copywriter.
Screening your website usually won’t be enough for an external entity trying to help you deliver your KPIs…particularly if it’s your website copy that needs to be improved or re-written entirely.
Is it an elevator pitch, product roadmap or business strategy?
Depending on your product, the way you describe it to your copywriter will differ. For many organizations, it’ll be an onboarding presentation describing the business, for smaller start-ups it’ll be a one-pager product roadmap. The more details you pass on to your copywriter, and include in a copywriting brief, the more knowledge can be translated into the content you’ve ordered.
In some cases, the process of creating marketing briefs is the beginning of a whole series of events that drive the creation of a marketing strategy, that should define what type of content you need. And we’re back at square one!
What makes your product special?
Based on the market research, demand for the product or service you offer, you’ve pinpointed why people need what you’re selling and most likely you’ve made your offer in some way unique – creating Unique Selling Points, that should define your company’s main messages.
These USPs, alongside market or industry research, should be condensed into a list of points that are to be mentioned in the content. If you share a 90-slide presentation about the industry in general, your copywriter will bill you for the time that’s needed to go through that material.
This also comes down to respecting your supplier – if presented with a two-page brief instead of 7 attachments with partially outdated data, you’ll get much more points for being a great customer, and the quality of the content you’ll receive will go up accordingly.
Also, it’ll take much less time to create, hence saving you money – once again.
Who’s your audience?
This should go without saying but I’ll say it anyway. You have to explicitly explain who your target audience is in each copywriting brief- best if explained with personas, which we can address when creating your content. What they want from your product, why they’re interested in it, which USPs are created for which one.
This will help your copywriter create the proper tone of voice that should resonate with a specific type of audience while ensuring each piece of content targets the pains and needs of the intended personas. Also, this will help understand the product context and the business background in general. It’s all coming together, isn’t it?
It all comes down to saving you time & money
Creating a good copywriting brief shouldn’t feel daunting – what should concern you more is the time and money you’ll spend when you aren’t explicit about what your needs are with a given piece of content.
Knowing why you need this content, why your product answers specific needs, what types of challenges your business addresses, and who the end-users are – and having all of this written down on about two pages, best in bullet points – your copywriter will precisely craft content that’ll address all the above, saving you a lot of time and money on follow-ups.