How to Brief an Agency Properly

Agencies will rarely tell you this, but the difference between a project that goes well and one that drags is usually settled in the brief — long before any work begins.

Lead with the problem, not the solution

“We need a new website” is a solution. “Our enquiries have halved and we think people cannot find our service pages” is a problem, and it might have a cheaper answer.

Say what success looks like

Be specific enough to be measurable. “More leads” cannot be checked. “Twenty qualified enquiries a month from the UAE” can, and it changes what gets built.

Give the real budget range

Withholding it does not get a better price. It gets proposals that miss, and weeks lost to revising them. A range is enough.

Name who decides

The most common cause of delay is not knowing who signs off. Name one or two people at the start.

Include what has already been tried

Tell the agency what did not work before. It saves everyone repeating it, and how you describe a past failure tells a good agency a great deal about what actually went wrong.

Keep it to two pages

A brief nobody finishes reading is not a brief. Problem, audience, success measures, budget, timeline, decision makers. Everything else can come up in conversation.