How to Brief a Marketing Agency (Without Starting From Scratch Every Time)
Every new agency, freelancer and hire asks you the same questions. Here is how to brief them once, properly, and stop starting from scratch.
Most people try AI for their marketing once, get a draft that sounds like a press release written by committee, and decide it isn’t for them. Or they keep using it and spend as long editing as they would have spent writing.
The problem usually isn’t the tool. It’s what the tool knows about you, which, without help, is nothing. An AI model can only write in your voice if you give it your voice to work from. Here’s how to do that properly with ChatGPT and Claude, without needing to be technical.
Why AI drafts sound generic
Large language models are trained on an enormous amount of writing, so by default they produce the most typical version of whatever you ask for. Ask for “a LinkedIn post about leadership” and you’ll get the average of every leadership post ever written.
Short instructions like “make it friendly and professional” barely move the needle, because every brand thinks it’s friendly and professional. What changes the output is context: who you are, who you’re talking to, what you believe, and real examples of how you actually sound.
Step 1: Write down your foundation first
Before you touch any settings, you need source material. The most useful pieces to have written down are:
- A short brand summary. Who you are and what you do, in a paragraph.
- Your audience. Two or three detailed ideal client profiles, including their problems in their own words.
- Your values and beliefs. What you stand for and what you push back on.
- Your voice rules. How you sound, sentence length, words you use and words you never use.
- Real examples. Three to five pieces of writing or transcribed talks that sound exactly like you.
This is the step most people skip, and it’s the one that matters most. The tools are only as good as what you feed them.
Step 2: Set it up in ChatGPT
In ChatGPT, you have two good options. For personal use, add a condensed version of your brand summary and voice rules to Custom Instructions in your settings, so every chat starts with it.
For something more robust, create a custom GPT or a Project and upload your full foundation documents as files. Then give it a clear instruction, such as: “You write marketing content for [brand]. Always follow the voice guide and write for the audiences described in the attached files. When unsure, ask before guessing.”
Step 3: Set it up in Claude
In Claude, the equivalent is a Project. Create one for your brand, add your foundation documents to the project knowledge, and write custom instructions that tell Claude how to use them. Every conversation inside that project will draw on the same material.
A useful habit is to keep one project per brand or per major client, and to update the documents whenever something changes, rather than re-explaining yourself in each chat.
Step 4: Test it and tighten it
Once it’s set up, ask for something you’ve written before, like a recent email or post, and compare the result with the original. Where it misses, add a rule or an example rather than editing the draft and moving on. A few rounds of this make a noticeable difference.
- If it’s too formal, add examples of your casual writing.
- If it uses words you hate, add them to a “never use” list.
- If it misreads your audience, make your client profiles more specific.
And keep a human in the loop. AI is a fast first-draft partner, not a replacement for your judgment.
Your voice is the input, not the output
AI can sound like you, but only once your story, audience and voice are written down somewhere it can read. Do that work once and every tool, and every person using those tools, starts from the same page.
That’s one of the reasons every Satori Method Foundation comes with AI-ready versions of your documents and a live walkthrough of how to use them. Your Brand Foundation Hub becomes the brief for your team, your agencies and your AI tools.
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