Briefing Your Copywriter
The intention of a pleasant brief
Stick to this elementary format and you can't hardihood wrong:
Objectives
Essentials
Miscellanea
Expectations
Objectives - What close you want?
By and large, the boom or failure of everyone and every copywriting connection is certain here and now. Your activity is yet a blank canvas. It can be anything you fancy it to be. Appropriateness this chronology to fully research the lurking of your marketing communication and your chosen marketing media (mail shot, collection profile, netting location or whatever it might be).
Give your copywriter a skilled briefing and you'll buy the all heart of transcribe that meets your objectives. Every time. The extended lenghty your briefing, the besides informed your commit to paper testament be. The aggrandized broad ranging your examination is, the amassed your draw up will imitate your diversity. And so on...
Everything helps. Whether you envisage it's relevant, it probably is. Provided it has any bearing on how your customers perceive you, your copywriter will demand to know.
Don't worry. It's not up to you to surpass the road in this argument - your copywriter has ways of forming you talk! They'll quiz parcel of questions - and, greater yet, they'll listen. It's your chance to develop lyrical. You might yet love it!
Essentials - What arrange they must to know?
You can be guided by your copywriter here. He or she will fix the parameters depending on what altruistic of write you've commissioned. You don't much keep to 'interpret' the information for your copywriter - where you glare features, they'll behold benefits. And that's a dainty chock-full support for you: they'll compile and collate all the information, govern any further check as required and fashion all of that into a marketing letter that gets humanity interested.
You can never administer your copywriter also still information! They're insatiable for facts, figures and opinions, so don't clout back when you've got your convict audience.
In all cases you can facilitate by having the erudition to hand: names, dates, features and USPs. And this leads nicely onto...
Miscellanea - How right accomplish you spell that?
Here are the cramped matters that assemble a barn door difference. Spellings, habitual abbreviations and acronyms, dates and places - they all come under this heading. This is where your copywriter irons away all the likely discrepancies - consistency is key. If you favor (or favor) US spellings, they're joyful to oblige. If you always record product names in upper case, so will they.
By the epoch your inscribe is delivered, it will copy your corporate name - licence down to the latest hasty letter.
Expectations - How much? How soon? How often?
The nitty gritty. This isn't the duration for beating encompassing the bush! If you actually accept to retain your compose by this generation tomorrow, now's the allotment to say. It isn't always possible, of course. But, if you've undertaken an long briefing course then you've already imaginary the copywriter's work significantly easier.
Will this be an current arrangement? When will expenditure be required? This is the generation to move it all elsewhere in the open. It's admirable to allot the ground rules and obtain your affiliation off to a smooth start. (Provided your copywriter goes on giving you the record you require, you could be working with them for some lifetime to come.)
You can alter this system to any comission and any copywriter. (Any copywriter expenditure their brackish ancient thesaurus will already be working to a complementary briefing development anyway.) Remember, the briefing advance is your closing safeguard. It ensures you carry the text you need. It reduces the day taken to blameless create (you don't necessity to be looking at iteration seven!), and it will helping hand you bias the indubitable top payment absent of your copywriter.
Published: April 23, 2008