How to Brief a Copywriter So You Get It Right First Time

Have you ever opened a piece of finished copy, felt your heart sink, and struggled to explain exactly what was wrong with it? Nine times out of ten the problem was not the writer. It was the brief. Or rather, the absence of one.

A good brief is the single biggest thing standing between you and copy you love on the first go. It saves rounds of edits, awkward conversations, and that draining feeling of “not quite, but I cannot say why”. Learning to brief a copywriter well is one of the highest-value skills you can pick up, and it takes far less time than the rewrites it quietly prevents.

Here are the six things every brief needs. Miss one and you will feel the gap later.

The core six elements of a brief

One: the single job this piece must do. Start with purpose, and be ruthless about keeping it to one. Is this page meant to get people to book a call? Reassure existing customers? Explain something complicated? A piece that tries to do five jobs does none of them well. Tell your writer the one outcome that matters most, and let everything else be secondary.

Two: who is actually reading it. Not a demographic. A person. The more real you can make the reader, the better the writing. What do they already believe? What are they worried about? What would make them roll their eyes and close the tab? “Small business owners” is a start, but “a founder who is proud of their sustainability work and terrified of sounding preachy about it” gives a writer something real to aim at.

Three: what you want them to feel and do. Copy works on two levels at once. There is the action you want, and there is the feeling that makes that action possible. Spell out both. Maybe you want the reader to feel calmly reassured and then request a quote. Maybe you want them to feel gently challenged and then read the next article. If you only ask for the action and ignore the feeling, you tend to get words that are technically correct and completely flat.

Proving your points with details

Four: the proof and the details. This is the part people skip, and then wonder why the draft feels vague. Give your writer the raw material. The statistics, the customer quotes, the one specific example that makes a claim believable. A good writer can shape all of it beautifully, but they cannot invent your results, and you really do not want them guessing. Hand over the facts and you get copy with substance instead of fluff.

Five: tone, and a few words to avoid. Describe how it should sound, and give examples if you can. Warm but not soppy. Confident but not boastful. Then, just as usefully, tell your writer what to steer well clear of. Every organisation has words that make it wince, whether that is corporate jargon, tired industry buzzwords, or a phrase a competitor has worn out. A short “please never say this” list is a small gift that prevents a lot of friction later.

Practical considerations for your copy

Six: the practical bits. Finally, the boring essentials that quietly cause most of the chaos. Word count, or at least a rough length. The deadline, and whether it is real or merely hopeful. Where the copy will live, because writing for a printed leaflet is not the same as writing for a phone screen on a train. And who has final sign-off, so you are not ambushed by a stakeholder appearing in round three with strong opinions and a red pen. Sort these upfront and the whole thing runs far more smoothly.

Keep your brief concise and clear

A brief does not need to be a novel. Half a page that genuinely covers these six things beats five pages of waffle every time. The aim is clarity, not length. And if you honestly do not know the answer to something, say so, because a writer would far rather have an honest “we are not sure yet” than a confident guess that sends them off in the wrong direction for a week.

Brief well and you will be amazed how often the first draft comes back very nearly right. If you would like a simple template to work from, or a writer who asks the right questions when your brief has a gap in it, that is exactly what we are here for.