How to Make a Great Project Brief
Project briefs are essential to communicating scope, what criteria each deliverable must meet, timelines, and overall expectations from each project team member. In my experience, I’ve worked with project briefs over various industries including healthcare, IT, nonprofits, education, financial institutions, and more. The broad majority of project briefs include the following:
Project name
Client name
Client background
Key stakeholders (approvers, sponsor)
Deadline
Objective of project + larger goal
Target audience
Competitors
Budget
In this blog, we’ll run through three different examples of briefs and how while they all share some components, the brief should be tailored to the need.
Project Brief #1: Email Marketing Campaign
As a marketer, you will often receive requests for one off emails. I would not consider this a campaign (some people do). If I intake a request for multiple email touches, this is considered a campaign in my eyes. So let’s say I’m managing an email campaign and I have a copywriter, designer, and digital marketing specialist I need to present a brief to.
My brief would consider all the aforementioned elements, plus:
Primary + secondary demographic
Key message
Attitude for messaging (i.e. snarky, calming, easy going)
Primary CTA
Deliverables (email header, images needed for different sections, any landing pages we need to create or redirects that must be set up)
Project Brief #2: Website Strategy Project
Website strategy projects take a lot time and require a lot of brainpower. In most of the website strategy projects I’ve led, I’m given a small team of digital strategists, perhaps a UX/UI designer, a developer (if I’m lucky, I’ll get a frontend + backend dev or one full stack dev), and search engine optimization specialist. If I were creating a strategy brief for all of them, this brief would include the shared elements, plus:
Deliverables
Milestones
Examples of websites they resonate with (I would ask the client for a list of websites, even if irrelevant, that they particularly enjoy and a quick reason why they like them)
KPIs
Benchmarks of KPIs (so we can measure our progress)
Project Brief #3: On-Page SEO Project
An on-page SEO project is similar to a website strategy project, but likely with a smaller team. I’d expect an SEO specialist, a UI/UX designer, and perhaps a developer. My brief would include the shared elements and:
CMS (I want to know what content management system they’re using)
Current tech stack (what are you using for a CRM? Form plugins? Email automations? Reporting? Etc.)
Deliverables
Milestones
KPIs
Benchmarks of KPIs
Closing
Project briefs are the staple of a strong, well scoped project where the team feels empowered and motivated to complete their work. By providing your team with the necessary elements in each brief and tailoring the brief to the task at hand, you can get your work done faster and better.
