How to write an effective copywriting brief

Any successful project comes down to the initial brief. A good brief can set your project on the right course, while a bad one will guarantee it crashes and burns. 

When it comes to copywriting projects your brief becomes your one source of truth. It’s what your freelancer will refer to throughout the time they spend on it, and it’s what you’ll use to evaluate the success of their output. But the only way that can happen is if you have an effective, comprehensive brief to begin with.

Sometimes there are aspects of a project that we don’t think about until we’re asked. They might have a quick answer, or they might need a bit more thought. That’s why having a great briefing template on hand will help speed up any briefing process.

Now this is something that your chosen copywriter should be able to walk you through and offer some advice. It might be that they have a briefing form ready to use. Just in case they don’t, or to help you with your planning, here are some essentials that you need to include in your next copywriting brief.

What to include in your copywriting brief

Every project will have its quirks which makes it difficult to create a one-size-fits-all template. That doesn’t mean there aren’t commonalities between projects which need to be communicated. 

Here are the main details that you need to include in your next copywriting brief.

Project overview

This section is your opportunity to provide a narrative of the context around the project. 

• Why now? 

• What’s its aim? 

• What does success look like? 

• Is it part of a wider campaign or an isolated project? 

• Who are the key stakeholders?

You get the idea. Use this section to provide as much wider information so the project makes sense to an external freelancer.

Content you want

This section should be the easiest one to complete! List all the content outputs you want to receive, and be detailed so instead of social media posts itemise them i.e. 2 Facebook posts and 1 Instagram caption.

Length 

This isn’t always applicable, but in terms of long-form content it’s helpful to have a steer around length. There’s a big difference both cost and time wise in producing a 500-word mini blog and a 2,000 thought leadership article.

Topic (with as much detail as possible)

Providing detail about what topic you want the content to be on, supplying some articles that might have inspired or could inform the content and, to me this is the most important part, giving a steer to what you want the conclusion to be. 

If I’m writing a blog about DEI in the workplace, knowing that the article needs to be pro-DEI and support further measures makes it far easier for me to frame the content properly. 

The more detail or supplementary information you can provide here increases the chances of the end content ticking your boxes.

Timeline

Are we talking days? Weeks? Months?

When do you need it by - and I implore you here to be realistic. There’s nothing more frustrating as a freelancer than being told something is a rush job only for the client to sit on amends for weeks because it’s no longer a priority. 

Of course you can give some options, “I’d really like it by Y but if it’s not until X then that’s ok”. As long as both X and Y are realistic!

Target audience

Providing an understanding of who the content is for is essential. Again this is a section where detail is so handy. We want to know who they are, what their job title is, who they work for, what they’re interested in. In short - anything you have related to your ideal customer, we want it.

Keywords

Not every firm has a list of target keywords, but if you’re serious about your SEO chances are you know exactly what words or phrases you’re targeting. 

Sharing that information with your copywriter means the copy can be optimised from the start, rather than trying to shoehorn them in later.

Tone of voice

Whether this is a full document or a few sentences, we want as much information about your tone of voice as possible. It’s no good telling your copywriter that you want to sound professional, so does everyone else. Professional isn' t a tone of voice guide, it’s common sense. 

If you don’t have a formal tone of voice guide first of all - make one. Secondly, take 15-minutes to think about it and share those thoughts in your copywriting brief. 

Any extra information

This section is for anything that doesn’t fit into the above categories. As a copywriter I’d always prefer to be given too much information rather than scrabbling around trying to find things. If you think it could be relevant, share it, and this is the section to do that.

Looking for great copy?

Of course, a great brief on its own isn’t going to create great copy. You need a great copywriter to bring it to life. That’s where the freelancer or writing service you choose makes the difference. Working with a freelancer is a handy way to access skills you might not have inhouse or to pick up the extra work when you’re at capacity. 

Get in touch to chat about your project and how we could work together.