A Founder's Guide to Briefing a Performance Marketing Agency

Most briefs sent to agencies ask for a plan before sharing the numbers a plan depends on. Cost per lead, close rate, average deal size, current channel mix — an agency that doesn't ask for these before proposing anything is guessing, however confident the proposal sounds.

Start With the Numbers, Not the Wish List

A stronger brief hands those numbers over first, states the actual constraint — budget, timeline, an internal team's bandwidth — and asks the agency to respond to that reality rather than to a template. The founders who get the best proposals are, almost without exception, the ones who made the numbers easy to find.

The Five Things Worth Including

1. Current Cost Per Lead and Cost Per Qualified Lead

Not one number — both. The gap between them tells an agency more about your funnel than almost anything else you could share.

2. Close Rate by Channel, If You Have It

Even a rough estimate is more useful than none. An agency that knows one channel closes at twice the rate of another can propose a budget shift that pays for itself before any new spend is added.

3. Average Deal Size and Sales Cycle Length

These set the pace at which any new plan can reasonably prove itself. A 90-day pilot means something different for a business with a two-week sales cycle than one with a six-month cycle.

4. The Real Constraint

Budget, timeline, or internal bandwidth — usually all three to some degree, but one is almost always the binding one. Naming it saves an agency from proposing something technically excellent and practically unworkable.

5. What "Success" Actually Means to You

Not a KPI target pulled from a template, but the plain-language outcome that would make the engagement feel worthwhile in six months. Agencies build very different plans around "more leads" than around "a repeatable system I can hand to a hire next year."

What to Be Wary Of

Any proposal that arrives before those numbers were requested is usually a sign the plan was written before the business was understood — a template with your logo added, not a response to your situation specifically.

Putting This Into Practice

If you're weighing whether to brief us or another team, our strategy and consulting work starts from exactly this list before a single recommendation gets made — whether the brief is for performance marketing specifically or a broader system. You're welcome to send the numbers first and see what comes back — reach out here whenever you're ready.