"We need someone to do our TikTok."
"We need SEO."
"Can you run our Google Ads?"
Business owners send briefs like these every week, and somebody always quotes on them. Too many of those engagements end a year later with twelve monthly reports and no clear change in revenue.
The supplier usually did what was asked. The brief was the problem.
Hire for an outcome instead. That means a commercial result, like more booked consultations or more repeat orders, written down with today's baseline and a budget. Then leave the choice of tools open and let the evidence pick the channel.
A channel is a guess dressed up as a plan
When you hire a channel, you have already made the biggest decision without examining it. You have decided this one tactic is the best route to growth for your business.
Usually that decision came from somewhere flimsy. A competitor is doing it. An article said it was the future. Someone at a networking breakfast swore by it.
Maybe it is the right channel. Nobody checked, though, and the person you hired to run it has no reason to question it, because questioning it would cost them the work.
If you hire a TikTok agency, you will get TikTok. Whether TikTok was ever the answer is a question nobody in that room is paid to ask.
None of this is a dig at specialists, who are brilliant at running one channel well. The trouble starts when you ask a specialist a question outside their specialty. A plumber will not tell you the real problem is the roof. They are not being dishonest. You called a plumber.
How channel briefs fail
Success gets defined by the channel. Views, followers, rankings, impressions. The supplier reports what the channel can measure, which is rarely what the business needs.
Accountability disappears. If leads do not rise, the channel supplier can fairly say that was never their job. The website and the sales team belong to someone else.
Channels get stacked. Each disappointing channel gets another one bolted on beside it. Two years later you have four suppliers sending four dashboards that nobody has ever joined up.
The real constraint is ignored. Often the bottleneck has nothing to do with traffic. The offer is weak, or enquiries wait two days for a reply, or the website leaks. Adding a channel pours more water into the same leaking bucket.
The first failure is the sneakiest, because channel metrics feel like progress. Rankings go up. Followers go up. The report is green. Meanwhile the number that pays the bills sits still, and it can take months for anyone to notice. We unpacked that trap in vanity metrics are quietly bankrupting your marketing.
What an outcome brief looks like
Start with what the business needs to be true in twelve months, then work backwards. The brief has five parts.
The outcome. Something commercial that you can count. Booked consultations, repeat orders, enquiries for one service line, or a higher average order value.
The baseline. Where that number sits today, and how you know. If you do not know, measuring it becomes part of the job.
The economics. What a new customer is worth to you, and what you can afford to spend to win one. Without this, nobody can tell a good result from an expensive one.
The constraints. Budget, team capacity, sales capacity and seasonality. Add anything else the plan must respect.
The open question. Ask the supplier to recommend the channels and explain why, including the ones they would leave out.
That last part is where the brief earns its keep, because asking which channels someone would skip forces them to show their reasoning. A supplier who recommends everything has not thought about you at all. One who says "we would not start with TikTok for you, and here is why" has.
How to write one in an hour
You do not need a strategy day to get started. You need an hour and honest numbers.
- Write the one number. Pick the single commercial result that would make the next twelve months a success. One number, not five.
- Find today's figure. Your booking system or your accounts will have it. If it is a rough estimate, say so.
- Work out what a customer is worth. Take the average first purchase, how often people come back and roughly how long they stay. Even a rough figure changes the conversation.
- Set the spend ceiling. This is what you can afford to spend to win one customer and still make money. Every channel has to beat it.
- List the constraints. How many new customers you can serve, when your busy season falls, who answers enquiries and how fast.
- Write the open question. "Given this, how would you get us there, what would you do first, and what would you deliberately not do?"
That fits on a page. For a proper template to hand over, how to brief an agency so you get what you paid for walks through it line by line.
Diagnose before you prescribe
A good consultant, agency or hire will not start with a channel. They will start with questions.
Where do your best customers come from now? How long does it take you to reply to an enquiry? What happens to leads that do not buy straight away, and what is the biggest reason people say no?
The answers often point somewhere unglamorous, like fixing follow up, rebuilding one landing page or emailing past customers. Reply time alone is a common culprit. Researchers writing in Harvard Business Review about online sales leads concluded that most companies are not responding nearly fast enough. Fixes like these never appear in a channel brief, and they can do more for the number than any new channel.
If someone quotes on your brief without asking these questions, they are selling a service. Your problem has not come into it.
The same rule applies to hiring staff
The same trap catches businesses hiring their first marketer.
A job ad for a "social media coordinator" hires someone to post. A role built around "grow enquiries from new customers" hires someone to think. Give them the number and the budget, let them choose the tools, and you will find out quickly whether they can move it.
In the interview, describe your real situation and ask what they would look at first. The good ones ask about your customers and your follow up before they mention a platform. A candidate who jumps straight to a posting schedule is showing you exactly what you will get.
A worked example
This one is hypothetical, but the pattern is common.
Say you run an accounting practice in Canberra. Your brief was going to be "we need SEO." Instead you write an outcome brief. The goal is more new small business clients on annual packages. You currently win around four a month. A client on a package is worth several thousand dollars a year and tends to stay for years. You can serve about ten new clients a month before you need to hire.
Two firms quote on the SEO brief with keyword plans. A third responds to the outcome brief with questions. How fast do you reply to enquiries? What happens to people who ask for a quote and go quiet? Where did your best clients come from?
The answers are telling. Enquiries wait a day or two for a reply. Nobody follows up quotes. Your best clients were referred by other business owners.
So the recommended plan starts with a same day reply process, a three email quote follow up and a referral program for existing clients. SEO comes later, aimed at the services with the best margin. A channel brief would never have produced that plan, and every piece of it moves the number.
Make accountability real
Outcome based scoping only works if the measures are settled before the work starts. Get five things in writing.
- The primary number, tied to revenue, and how it will be measured.
- The leading indicators you will watch in the early months, before the main result has time to move.
- Who controls what. If your team takes days to call leads back, no marketer can fix that alone.
- The review points. A monthly look at the numbers and a proper review each quarter, with permission to change channels.
- What failure looks like, so a plan that is not working gets changed early instead of defended.
Some suppliers will offer performance based fees. Those can work, but only when tracking is solid and both sides trust the numbers. Shared measures matter more than the fee structure.
If you cannot measure the number today, fix that before anything else. We made that case in more budget will not fix a marketing plan nobody measures.
What changes when you hire an outcome
The conversation shifts from "how many posts did we do" to "did we get closer to the number."
Channels become tools you pick up and put down as the evidence says. Your supplier is free to tell you that the channel you wanted is a poor fit. You stop paying for activity that looks productive and moves nothing.
Your own decisions get easier too. When every dollar is tied to the same outcome, deciding where the next dollar goes is a comparison instead of an argument.
Rewrite your brief today
Take whatever brief you are about to send, or the one your current supplier is working from.
Cross out the channel. Write the outcome you need, the number it is today, what a customer is worth and what you can spend. Then ask the people quoting to tell you how they would get there, and why.
The right answers will tell you who to hire. The channel will follow.
That diagnose first, channel second approach is how our consulting work at LIQID NOISE starts. We begin with your number and your bottleneck, and only then decide which tools earn a place in the plan.
Frequently asked questions
What is an outcome based marketing brief?
It is a brief that describes the commercial result you need instead of the tactic you want. You set out the target outcome, today's baseline, what a customer is worth, what you can afford to spend to win one and your constraints. The last line is an open question asking the supplier to recommend channels and explain why. The channel choice becomes their job to justify.
How do I choose the right marketing channel for my business?
Start with diagnosis. Look at where your best customers already come from, how quickly you reply to enquiries, what happens to leads that do not buy straight away and why people say no. The answers often reveal a bottleneck that no new channel will fix. Choose channels only after that picture is clear.
Should I pay my marketing agency on performance?
Performance based fees can work, but only when tracking is reliable and both sides trust the numbers. Without that, they create arguments instead of accountability. It matters more to agree the primary number, the leading indicators, who controls what and when you will review progress. Get the shared measures right first, then consider the fee structure.
What should I ask a marketing agency before hiring them?
Ask how they would reach your target outcome, what they would do first, and which channels they would deliberately not use for you and why. Notice whether they ask about your customers and your numbers before recommending anything. A supplier who quotes without asking questions is selling a service, and your problem has not come into it.