Briefing your marketing manager: a 4-minute system
How to write a brief that gets the agents moving in the right direction the first time, without scheduling a meeting.
Briefing your marketing manager inside In-House is faster than briefing a human at a traditional agency. The catch is that the structure matters more, because there is no meeting to absorb the ambiguity.
This guide is the four-line structure we recommend. It works for any brief: a new campaign, a one-off post, a website change, a product launch.
The structure
Every brief should have:
- The outcome. What does success look like in one sentence?
- The constraint. Budget, channels, deadlines, anything off-limits.
- The voice. Tone notes, references, must-include lines.
- The success signal. How will you know in 14 days if it worked?
That’s it. Four lines, send. The agents will come back with a plan inside an hour.
A worked example
Bad brief (paraphrased from a real one):
Can you do a campaign for our new menu launch next Friday? Want it to feel premium. Standard channels. Let me know.
Good brief, same launch:
Outcome: Drive 25 bookings against the new tasting menu in opening week. Constraint: $400 ad spend, IG + Facebook only, no email blast (we just sent one). Launch is Friday 6 pm. Voice: Confident but warm. Reference the Sunday brunch menu copy from March, not the launch announcement from January. Success: 25+ bookings tagged to the launch by next Friday close of business, or we cut the spend in half.
The second brief takes 90 seconds to write and saves you two rounds of clarifying questions. The agents will draft against it, your account lead will reply with the plan, and you’re approving content the same day.
What not to put in the brief
Skip these, the platform infers them:
- Posting times (the agent picks your highest-engagement windows)
- Caption length and hashtag count (we have your brand voice setup)
- Image specs (we resize automatically per channel)
- Audience targeting (the Ads Agent maintains your audience profile)
If you find yourself writing detailed creative specs, that’s a sign your
brand voice setup needs more examples. Add them at /branding. The brief
should be about the outcome, not the output.
When you need to escalate
For anything strategically significant (a rebrand, a new positioning, a pricing change), tell your marketing manager in chat. Say you want a strategy review and describe what changed in the business. They will queue a revised plan for your approval.
You can also tap Request a strategy review from the quick replies on your home screen chat, or open Messages and ask directly. Reviews are async-first: describe the shift in chat, and the updated plan lands in Approvals when ready.
Reply to your marketing manager from inside In-House if you spot something missing. We update guides every fortnight.