A campaign brief you can build in one afternoon

A campaign brief should help people make decisions. If it is a collection of vague ambitions—more visibility, better engagement, more growth—it leaves the designer, media buyer and salesperson solving different problems.

Use the eight fields below to make one campaign coherent. You can complete the first version in an afternoon. The aim is to decide what you will test and why; the market still has to provide the evidence.

1. Write the business outcome

Complete this sentence: “We want [type of customer] to take [specific next step], because it can produce [commercial outcome].” Avoid combining followers, enquiries and purchases into one success measure. They can support each other, but they are different jobs.

For a service business, a useful outcome might be qualified consultation requests. Define qualification in plain language before any leads arrive, and record it consistently.

2. Describe the buying situation

Describe a person’s problem and context, not just age or job title. What happened that makes them look for help now? What have they tried? What are they concerned about? What would make the purchase inappropriate?

Use actual sales questions, search queries and support conversations. Remove personal information when sharing research with a wider creative team. If you are making an assumption, write “hypothesis” next to it so it can be tested.

3. Make the offer precise

State what is included, the relevant price or pricing basis, who it suits, and what the next step involves. A promise such as “transform your business” is hard to evaluate. “A review of your current landing page and a prioritised improvement plan” is easier to understand when that is what you genuinely provide.

4. Match proof to the promise

List the evidence available: real work, a documented process, a relevant demonstration or a customer statement used with permission. A visual can demonstrate design quality. It cannot, by itself, substantiate revenue growth.

If you do not have a relevant performance case study, teach the method and show a worked example clearly labelled as illustrative. Useful reasoning can build credibility without borrowed results.

5. Give the visitor one next action

Choose the next step that fits the buying decision: view the product, ask a question, request a quote or book a consultation. Link to the page that fulfils that promise. Do not send a specific service enquiry to a homepage and expect the visitor to reconstruct the journey.

Test the link, form, confirmation and internal notification on a phone. Check the process after the submit button as carefully as the advert before it.

6. Define one creative experiment

Test one substantial difference. For example, compare an explanation of the customer’s problem with a demonstration of the service process, keeping the offer and destination consistent. Write the expected effect: “The demonstration should improve qualified enquiry rate by making the service clearer.”

If you are running an informal comparison rather than a randomised platform experiment, call it directional. Different audiences, delivery times and auction conditions can explain a difference. Do not declare a winner from two clicks.

7. Set the measurement and decision rules

Record the budget ceiling, primary outcome, acceptable cost and review date before launch. Decide what causes an immediate pause: broken tracking, wrong geography, an incorrect price or a failed enquiry route. Separate these operational faults from ordinary performance variation.

For performance, wait for enough relevant outcomes and the normal conversion delay. If you reach the agreed spending limit without enough evidence, write “inconclusive” and decide whether another test is commercially justified. A deadline does not create statistical certainty.

8. Name the owner of the next step

Someone must answer the enquiry, check qualification, update the record and report what happened. Set realistic working hours and an escalation path. A campaign cannot compensate for a contact form nobody reads.

A worked service example

Imagine an office furniture supplier that wants enquiries for workplace refits. Its audience is not “everyone who likes furniture”; it is organisations planning a move or renovation. The offer is a consultation about layout and supply, supported by authentic product specifications and completed installations.

One creative could show a cramped workspace and explain the planning mistakes. Another could show the supplier’s layout process. Both lead to the same page explaining scope, delivery area and consultation steps. The sales team marks whether each enquiry concerns a real project, then follows its progress. This is a hypothetical brief, not a DZ Boost+ client result.

Use the brief again after launch

At the review, add three lines: what happened, what you learned and what you will change. Keep the original hypothesis visible. Over time, this record becomes more valuable than a folder of disconnected adverts because it explains the decisions behind the work.