Client Brief: What is it and How to Write it? (Steps Included)

Good communication is just as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after. – Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Communication is key to a stable, ongoing, and healthy relationship. This is even more important in the context of a business where poor communication can lead to disastrous results and can cost a ton of money. If goals, a roadmap, or strategy is not effectively communicated within the organization, it could lead to chaos and confusion. Take a look at these stats:

56% of the budgets allocated to projects are at risk due to poor communication.
Ineffective communications are the primary contributor to project failure one-third of the time and have a negative impact on project success more than half the time.
High-performing organizations (those completing an average of 80% or more of projects on time, on budget, and within goals) create formal communications plans for nearly twice as many projects as their lower-performing counterparts (which complete fewer than 60% of projects on time, on budget, and within goals).
28 percent of employees said poor communication was the primary cause of failure to deliver a project on time.
Companies risk $135 million for every $1 billion spent on a project and new research indicates that $75 million of that $135 million (56 percent) is put at risk by ineffective communications.

As you can see, whether you are communicating internally with your team or working with an external agency or client, clear communication is key to project success.

It’s one thing to communicate with agencies and external partners and set up a face-to-face meeting to discuss project goals. However, getting everything in written form solidifies whatever is being discussed and makes sure everyone is on the same page.

This is where a client brief comes in.

Writing a client brief helps you create an outline of your needs and goals when planning your tasks around a project. It is a crucial document that is written prior to the commencement of a project to convey project goals to an agency or organization you have decided to work with. Let us explore client briefs in detail…

What Exactly is a Client Brief? (Definition and Meaning)

A client brief is essentially a recorded document that helps in guiding and animating any project. The client brief, written by a client, explains the ins and outs of a project to the agency who’ll be working on it. It acts as a blueprint for your project that helps synchronize all stakeholders involved in the project and bring cohesiveness to the group.

The aim of a client brief is to convey what business problem they need help with, describe their overall brand persona, and define the end result they expect. This document thus, aligns all contributors with the project requirements, expectations, and overall strategy.

An employee communicating with his client

Since the client may not have enough experience with creating such documents, agencies often help out the client to understand and describe their problems effectively. It is a collaboration between 2 parties joining hands to successfully deliver a project.

Why Write a Client Brief?

A client brief is a two-way communication between a client and the external party who will be working on the project.

The client brief outlines the scope and aspirations of the project, making sure that both the client and the agency know what is expected of them and what the end result should look like. It helps manage expectations and keep both parties grounded with what was agreed upon before starting the project. The client brief helps with the following points:

1. Removes Ambiguity

A client brief reduces the ambiguity and misunderstandings related to a project, eliminating the need for expensive revisions.

Once the document is created, communicated, and agreed upon, both parties can refer back to it at any point during the project completion phase and stay on track. Having a centralized location for all goals and information is essential for agencies to do their work as per the client’s needs and deliver the project to perfection.

2. Leads to Better Output

Over 79% of clients and agencies agreed that it’s difficult to produce good creative work without a good brief. The client brief is the starting point from where everything begins. The agency uses the client brief to understand a company, their functioning, brand position, target customers, financial situation, and more. This, in turn, helps them come up with creative and effective solutions to the client’s problems.

The better a client describes their brand and business issues, the better the agency would be able to work on them and come up with great output. This is why it’s essential that the client spends enough time drafting a brief and collaborates with the agency to create a robust document.

3. Saves Time and Headaches!

Having everything thought through and agreed upon can benefit both the client and agency. Once the client has written their brief and effectively communicated it to the agency, the agency can go on and do their work more freely. However, that is not always the case. Research suggests that 99% of agencies and 98% of clients agree that “sloppy briefing and moving goalposts wastes both time and money”.

Client brief helps in saving time Not taking out the time to write a detailed client brief would ultimately cost you more of your time and money. If you are sloppy while creating such documents or failed to articulate your goals effectively, the project will ultimately require costly changes.

Since 75% of agencies and 55% of clients agreed that the briefs they work on are often changed once the project has started, it’s important to get it right the first time, even if it takes you a bit more time than you anticipated.

How to Write a Client Brief? Follow these Steps!

Once you are clear about your objectives and goals and are ready to begin writing the brief, use the following steps to guide you:

Step 1. Describe your Brand

The first step to writing a client brief is to communicate what your brand (what do you do, your core operations, how long have you been in business?) is all about to the agency.

Understanding your mission, vision, and story behind your brand helps the creatives analyze your business and create suitable strategies. This section can also include your most important company goals, values, and the tone of your brand. Make sure you articulate all this information correctly to help out the agency working on your project.

Step 2. Project Summary

The next step is to write a detailed section about what needs to be done, when, and by whom. This section will talk about business challenges and how the project you need the agency to complete will resolve those challenges.

Only when the agency has a clear-cut understanding of the objective of the project will they be able to work on it properly and deliver the desired results. If you’re unable to articulate the challenges and goals of the project, work with the agency, and ask for their suggestions. This will ensure an easier workflow and make sure that everyone is on the same page.

Step 3. Target Market

Before you come up with strategies to implement the project, you need to clearly describe your target market and your intended audience. This part is important for you to drill down the specific types of consumers and describe their wants and needs.

Once the agency has an idea about your customer, their demographics, age, gender, geography, etc. they can do their job with much more precision. You can also include customer pain points and their solution in this section. If your team has already developed a detailed buyer persona, this would be a great place to add those notes here.

Step 4. Map Out Competitors

This section should include all your businesses in your niche that are targeting the same customer as you are. You can learn from their strategies, keep a tab on their campaigns, decipher their most successful products, and learn from their failed attempts.

Add a list of all your competitors here to make sure the agency or external organization working on the project can quickly grab an idea of the type of businesses they are up against. While you add your competitor’s list, another great idea would be to add your strengths and weaknesses as a brand and how you stand out from the competition.

Step 5. Budget

Don’t forget to discuss the budget allocated for the project with the agency to keep tabs on your expenses.

Allocating a specific budget will ensure that you don’t overspend and use your resources well. While this may sound limiting, a budget keeps all stakeholders humble and focussed and often brings out cheaper, creative solutions to problems.

6. Share Your Brief

Once you are done drafting your brief, it’s time to share it across the teams you’ll be working with. Be willing to answer any question or entertain any feedback they have. This will further solidify your relationship with them, boost support for the project, and ensure that all team members are on the same page.

Use Bit to Create Client Brief Easily!

If you are looking for a document editor to create and share your client brief easily, you’re in luck as we are going to introduce you to a tool that’s going to help you do just that!

Bit.ai is the most advanced end-to-end document solution for teams to communicate externally and internally. Create, manage, and track all of your team’s documents from one place. A perfect collaboration tool, Bit allows teams to create and collaborate on documents, bringing all their work under one roof. No more back-and-forth emails and the chaos that comes with it!

Simply create a workspace, add your team members, and start creating your workplace documents like client briefs, project proposals, training documents, blog posts, guidelines, marketing collateral, and more quickly! You can further share these documents with external clients, partners, agencies, etc, and get detailed insights on how they interacted with your documents! Cool, right?

Our team at bit.ai has created a few more templates to make your business processes more efficient. Make sure to check them out before you go, your team might need them!

Final Words

We hope you are now equipped to write that amazing client brief. A clear client brief allows agencies to work on a client project with a clear objective and motive. Keeping both parties in check with their expectations, a client brief ensures smooth project execution.

If you have any further questions or need additional tips regarding your client brief, you can always tweet us @bit_ai. Cheers!

Further reads:

Client Brief: What is it and How to Write it? (Steps Included)

What Exactly is a Client Brief? (Definition and Meaning)