Business Benefits
Align your team on a product’s features, audience, and value proposition.
Start with basic project information at the top of the brief to give a background for anyone working on the campaign who may not be familiar with its context.
Details to include:
- Company background.
- Timeline of the marketing campaign.
- Who is requesting the work.
- Date of the brief creation or update.
- Who will provide final sign-off for the campaign.
Summarize the product in 50-150 words, with a focus on its basic features and functions.
This summary should quickly explain the product’s core functionality to anyone not familiar with it. For example, a summary about an email marketing software might list features like its visual interface, CRM database integrations, reporting capabilities, and templates to create new email messages.
Use the product summary to explain how the project fits into the larger business vision, strategy, and other products. This helps readers understand the context of the marketing campaign they are creating.
Summarize the product’s target audience in 3-6 bullet points, focusing on the problems they have that this product would solve.
Draw from your buyer personas and existing research about your audience’s demographic, psychographic, and behavioral data. Focus specifically on pain points that would cause them to seek out a product like yours.
If no buyer personas or research exists, talk to product managers about their understanding of the audience. Product design was likely audience-driven, so their insights can help you complete this section.
Write a one paragraph statement that outlines the key marketing message for this product.
This is the key message all pieces of the marketing campaign need to convey. It provides an explanation on how the product can become the solution to the audience pain points outlined above. For example, an email marketing software looking to reach floor level sales staff who are not familiar with coding or email design could outline just how its solution makes designing, writing, and sending emails that follow current best practices easier than its competition.
List 3-6 product value propositions that tangibly expand on the key message.
These value propositions become your messaging pillars across different marketing tactics. Each should stand on its own, expanding on the key message to explain exactly how your product can satisfy audience pain points. For example, an email marketing software focusing on ease of use could have four value propositions focused around:
- Easy onboarding.
- Ease of designing email.
- Intuitive, visual reporting.
- Training opportunities to keep up to date with best practices.
Write a one sentence summary of the overarching goal of the marketing campaign resulting from the brief.
This goal will be the guiding principle of the campaign, driving anything from creative development to success metrics. For example, the goal of launching a new email marketing software might be: To establish [solution X] as a serious player in the competitive email SaaS market, resonating specifically within [Industry Y or Target Audience Z] due to its features A, B, and C.
Using the core goal as a guide, outline 5-7 specific KPIs that include advertising, lead, sales, and other business targets involved in this specific marketing initiative.
All KPIs should be time based and specific enough to be measurable. Potential metrics include:
- 50 new subscriptions within the first month of launching the product.
- 100 new monthly leads and a 30% lead conversion rate within the target demographic.
- Reducing monthly churn by 10% within the first 6 months of launching the campaign.
- An industry market share of 20% after the first year in market.
List your anticipated channel strategy and tactics, with one bullet per tactic.
On each bullet, include the channel, tactic, owner, and date of execution. Examples include:
- Website: Create landing pages for key conversion pages | Jane Doe | May 15.
- Email: Create onboarding emails for new leads and subscribers | Jane Doe | May 30.
- Social media: Paid campaign to announce the new product | John Doe | June 30.
Combined, these bullets create a channel roadmap that helps everyone working on the project to understand the larger context and campaign framework.
Outline the scope of work required in executing your channel strategy, including asset creation, timelines, and available budget.
For each tactic listed in the previous step, include a bullet on who will create the assets, the timeline required from asset creation to launch, and the budget available. Then, end this section with a summary of the overall timeline and budget. For example, a paid social media campaign to announce the product may require three graphics for separate ads along with copywriting, and a budget of $5,000 is available to run the campaign. These details can help you create the timeline for creation that allows the campaign to start running on time.
Format the product marketing brief to be an easily skimmable overview document.
For example, Shopify’s product marketing brief for product launches uses a word based template for all main sections. This formatting allows for easy review by other stakeholders before pushing the brief to your implementation team. It also helps the brief become an easily reviewable document for everyone in the project before, during, and after implementation.
Last edited by @hesh_fekry 2023-11-14T15:35:35Z