Online marketing planning: Actual / target status, briefing and agency

In a world dominated by online platforms such as TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, it is crucial to think outside the box. Holistic online marketing combines e-commerce, advertisements, campaigns and social media to generate more reach and sales. But how do you find the right agency in this environment? My tip: A good, short briefing with actual and target status. This helps you and your brand to communicate precisely and ultimately saves time and money. Here are my recommendations for finding an online marketing agency and for a good agency briefing that suits your brand and your product.

Planning online marketing: Why digital marketing at all?

Good marketing in 2024 involves more than just TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. We talk about online marketing as a whole. This is where e-commerce, advertisements, campaigns and social media marketing come together. Everything that brings you more reach and more sales online. Online marketing agency recommendations are of course worth their weight in gold. Especially for e-commerce, because then you can map your sales completely digitally, similar to other pure digital models (e.g. online coaching).

My recommendation for a good agency is to use search engines and click through to pages 2 and 3. Everyone ranks 1, 2 and 3 in the search results. Maybe you know the typical image of a heatmap. 90% of people stay on-page, they don’t scroll.

Here we are, welcome to online marketing!

Everything is connected. This example also shows you how important Google Ads is for e-commerce. Extra tip! Learn more about Google Ads and bidding strategies in online marketing here.

Why online marketing?

In e-business you have to scale! You can increase your sales online so easily, you have fewer barriers than companies that only advertise offline. Other cities, other states, even other countries, everything is just 1 click away. The tasks of an online marketing agency are diverse.

What I always recommend is a good little agency briefing:

What do you really need?

Good agency briefing

We often get requests like:

❌ “Hello, need support with Instagram”

Short and crisp is good, but a short description of the actual / target situation is better. Simply put:

  • Is = Who are you? What is it about?
  • Should = How can we support you? What goals do you want to achieve

This helps you to define your own goals precisely once again. Even if it’s just a small cheat sheet of 5 or 6 key points.

What belongs in a good agency briefing?

Let’s say I want to find a good online marketing agency. How should I write my brief so that the agency knows who I am and what I need?

A good agency briefing should contain the following points:

  1. Clearly describe who you are and what your company does: Questions like, who are you? What are your goals and values?
  2. Explain exactly what your current situation is (current status): Ask yourself, what marketing activities are you already carrying out? What has worked and what hasn’t?
  3. Share your goals and expectations (target state): What do you want to achieve with our support? What specific goals do you have in mind, be it more reach, higher sales or improved brand awareness?
  4. Define your target group: Who are your target customers? What are their needs, problems and wishes?
  5. State your budget and time frame: How much do you want to spend on your marketing? What time frame have you set for the realization of your goals?

Your advantages?

This helps you to precisely define your own goals once again, giving you clarity and focus. By writing the brief, you solidify your own thoughts and goals. This helps you to define more clearly what you need from the agency and what results you want to achieve.

A detailed briefing minimizes misunderstandings and reduces the need for follow-up questions from the agency. This saves time and ensures that the project progresses more quickly.

It also shows – even as an agency – that your request is really serious. Especially on days with many requests, you will get a faster response and can scale faster.

More marketing ideas in the blog!

The best SEO agencies in Germany or good social media agency recommendations, in the blog I have many more exciting articles, directly from our agency with many tips and ideas for your marketing 2024.