# M365Marketing — Starter BRD > **What this is**: A starter BRD. Sections 1–3 are filled in to the level a real stakeholder might hand to an analyst. Sections 4–8 are intentionally underspecified — they are the exercise. > > **How to use it**: Apply the [eight-section template](brd-template.md) and the transcript-driven elicitation loop (Appendix E § Section 2) to complete it. Compare your completed BRD against the [M365Marketing completed exemplar](m365marketing-completed.md) (same domain, direct comparison of Sections 4–8) or the [AIRS exemplar](airs-exemplar.md) (different domain, shows the eight-section shape holds across contexts). --- ## Business Requirements Document ### M365Marketing Campaign Allocation Dashboard - **Project**: Marketing-spend allocation dashboard supporting weekly campaign decisions across the M365 product-marketing portfolio - **Stakeholder**: Director of Product Marketing, M365 - **Date**: 2026-06-03 - **Priority**: High ### 1. Executive Summary The Director of Product Marketing for M365 manages a marketing budget across twelve concurrent campaigns spanning paid search, paid social, display, content syndication, and field-event channels. The decision the dashboard supports is the weekly Monday-morning reallocation: which campaigns get a budget increase this week, which get a budget cut, and which stay flat. The dashboard replaces a Friday-afternoon analyst-built spreadsheet that has consistently arrived after the Monday meeting starts; the timing mismatch has led to reallocation decisions based on stale data three of the last six weeks. ### 2. Business Context The marketing team uses a combination of the platform-native reporting from each ad-spend platform (Microsoft Advertising, LinkedIn Campaign Manager, Meta Ads Manager, etc.), the CRM lead-to-opportunity reporting, and the marketing-attribution model the team runs in a separate analytics warehouse. The Friday spreadsheet pulls from all three sources and reconciles them by hand. The pull-and-reconcile work takes the marketing analyst the equivalent of one working day each week, which is the bottleneck behind the timing mismatch. The Director wants the spreadsheet's content available by Monday 8 AM in a self-refreshing dashboard, with the analyst's hours reallocated to attribution-model improvements and campaign post-mortems. ### 3. Key Business Questions ***Channel performance*** 1. Which paid-channel campaigns are pacing above or below their planned weekly cost-per-qualified-lead and by how much? 2. Which content-syndication campaigns are driving the highest velocity from initial download to qualified pipeline? 3. Which field-event campaigns have produced the most qualified pipeline relative to their per-attendee spend, trailing six events? ***Segment targeting*** 1. Which customer segments (industry, company size, geography) are driving the highest qualified-lead volume per dollar across each channel? 2. Are any segments oversaturated — receiving impressions or contacts at a frequency that historical analysis shows depresses response? 3. Which segments are underweighted relative to their share of the total addressable market the M365 sales team is targeting this quarter? ***Spend allocation*** 1. If the Monday meeting decides to reallocate 15% of the weekly budget, which campaign-to-campaign moves produce the largest expected lift in qualified pipeline? 2. Which campaigns have hit their planned budget cap for the quarter and need either a cap increase or a planned ramp-down? ### 4. Success Criteria [PLACEHOLDER: Run the elicitation loop. The Monday-meeting timing is the testable success criterion (dashboard available by 8 AM, used in the meeting that runs at 9 AM); other criteria need elicitation. Each criterion should be measurable — "the team finds it useful" is not measurable. See the AIRS exemplar's Success Criteria for the level of specificity expected.] ### 5. Stakeholder Requirements [PLACEHOLDER: The Director is the request stakeholder. The marketing-analyst whose Friday spreadsheet this replaces is likely a primary user (operates the dashboard during the Monday meeting). The twelve campaign leads are likely secondary users. Confirm usage frequency, venue, and any mobile-during-event requirement.] ### 6. Data Requirements [PLACEHOLDER: Document the data sources (Microsoft Advertising, LinkedIn, Meta, CRM, attribution warehouse), refresh frequency (likely overnight to be ready by 8 AM Monday), historical horizon (the trailing six events for field-event analysis suggests at least 12 months), sensitivity, and known quality issues (the cross-platform reconciliation is itself a known quality issue — name the agreed reconciliation rules here).] ### 7. Deliverables [PLACEHOLDER: Power BI dashboard most likely, but confirm — the marketing team may have an existing analytics platform preference. Confirm the access method (the marketing-analyst needs editing access; the Director and campaign leads need view access; the wider M365 marketing org may need a read-only published-app version). Mobile requirement is plausibly yes (Director may review on phone before the Monday meeting). Target go-live should account for at least two weeks of pre-Monday-meeting trial use.] ### 8. Constraints & Assumptions [PLACEHOLDER: Document constraints (the Monday 8 AM availability deadline, the cross-platform reconciliation rules, the attribution-model contract) and the assumptions being treated as true without separate verification (the analyst's reclaimed hours go to attribution-model improvements; the platform-native reporting will remain available through the dashboard's planned lifetime).] ### Approval | Role | Name | Date | Signature | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Stakeholder (Director of Product Marketing) | | | | | Data Owner | | | | | Analyst | | | | --- **Practice prompt**: Compose a realistic transcript (a Monday-after-the-Friday-spreadsheet-was-late conversation between the Director and your analyst persona) or use a real one. Run the loop. The output should be a draft BRD with Sections 4–8 populated. Two iterations is typical.