A digital marketing brief is an essential component to align your marketing goals with your client’s objectives. A brief should outline the key elements that will go into your strategy to help you achieve your overall goals.
But before you go into the nitty-gritty details that go into a digital marketing briefing, you need to keep in mind that from a client’s perspective all they really care about is money! Managers will be concerned with four general areas that will highlight the effectiveness of your efforts. They want to spend money on marketing so they make more money. They don’t really care about how you do it – they just want to know their ROI is paying off.
For those who do not possess a deep understanding in marketing, it can be hard to justify certain decisions. But yo you, every last detail matters – as it should! But before you delve into the details, you would first need to answer four crucial questions that will shape the outline of your digital marketing report.
Here is what you need to address
How Much Money is Being Spent?
Sometimes, a company may give you X amount of dollars and tell you to allocate it however you see fit. Other companies will permit a fluctuation in what you can use if you have their card on file. Either way, they want to know how much money is being spent, and on which channels.
Your digital marketing report should therefore cover things like Facebook Ads, prizes for contests and giveaways, SEO on your blogs, etc. There should be a total dollar amount spent per digital marketing segment, as well as a total for everything at the end of the month. This won’t necessarily deter them or send them away – they just need to be able to identify what is being spent in order to quickly make business decisions based on the findings.
How Many People Are Being Reached with That Money?
Now the managers know what is being spent, the next question in their minds is going to be how effective are those dollars being spent? Should they be skeptical of you? Are you doing a good job, or are their dollars being wasted on campaigns that are not performing as well as expected?
Your marketing report should articulate the number of people who have received your marketing message through social, email, etc. With these numbers, companies can start to decide if they want to continue on with your services if they feel the investment is worth it. As we will review in the coming chapter, there are different sections in the report that can help you highlight your marketing value even if some numbers are lagging.
How Effective Have Marketing Efforts Been?
This is where the client is going to expect some information on leads. Are leads being generated? Are they closing? Are they converting into numbers that translate into a higher bottom line for the client?
Be sure to highlight in the report the number of new leads, the people who received your marketing message and pursued your service/product further, the number of new customers, or the people who went from being leads to actual investors in the business.
This is how the client will compare if the money being spent is translating into the results they desire.
What is the Financial Return on the Money Being Spent?
Is it all worth it at the end of the day, or could the client go on their merry way and attempt their digital marketing on their own?
The digital marketing report should cover the cost per lead and the cost per customer. What does it cost, at the end of the day, to turn one of the leads into a cold, hard, paying customer? Can you ramp up your efforts so your client can make more money?
Be sure your marketing report articulates this in an obvious way for the client. You have to remember that digital marketing monitoring is not their forte – that’s why they hired you instead!
As mentioned before a digital marketing brief is essential for any business looking to compose a report. You need to be able to outline exactly what your client has asked for to show them why they should stick around! If you are interested to learn more about what makes up a report check out our ebook: Digital Marketing Reporting Explained.