The Marketing Design Checklist: Everything You Need Before Launching a Campaign

TL;DR

A marketing design checklist should be finalised before the first design brief is submitted. Define the campaign goal, message hierarchy, channel plan, asset matrix, copy, specs, owners, approvals and handover requirements upfront. Google Ads responsive display alone supports up to 15 images across three aspect ratios, which shows how quickly one campaign becomes a production system. If assets are still being discovered mid-design, fix the campaign system before asking for faster turnaround.

Google Ads currently recommends landscape, square and vertical imagery for responsive display campaigns, with multiple assets available within each format. LinkedIn has its own landscape, square and vertical specifications. Email introduces another set of constraints. Then there are organic social posts, landing pages, sales collateral, video cut-downs, localisation and final handover.

That is why a marketing design checklist should start before production, not at the point where someone asks a designer for “the campaign assets”.

The expensive part of a badly planned campaign is rarely one missing banner. It is the chain reaction: a landing page appears late, the email needs a separate crop, paid media asks for another ratio, sales wants a PDF and the video needs subtitles for a second market. Each discovery creates another brief, another dependency and another review cycle.

This checklist is designed to expose those requirements before creative production starts.

What should be decided before campaign design begins?

Before building a campaign asset checklist, define the system those assets need to belong to.

A designer can make an individual ad look good without this information. What becomes difficult is making 20, 30 or 50 outputs feel like parts of the same campaign while still working properly in different environments.

Complete these decisions first:

• Campaign objective: What should the campaign change or generate?

• Primary audience: Who is the campaign designed for?

• Offer: What exactly are you asking the audience to consider, buy, book or download?

• Primary CTA: What is the most important next action?

• Message hierarchy: What needs to be understood first, second and third?

• Proof: Which claims, data points, testimonials, product details or demonstrations support the message?

• Campaign concept: What creative idea or visual territory connects the assets?

• Channel plan: Where will the campaign actually appear?

• Markets: Which countries, languages or audience variations are involved?

• Dates: When does each channel go live, and which assets depend on others?

• Approvers: Who signs off copy, brand, design, legal and final production?

• Success measures: Which assets or variations need to be identifiable for reporting?

Then create the asset matrix.

This distinction matters. A list saying “LinkedIn ads, email and landing page” is a media plan. A usable creative plan says exactly which formats, variations, copy states and final files are required inside each one.

What belongs in a complete marketing campaign creative checklist?

Use this as the master campaign design checklist before opening individual briefs.

Treat this table as the starting inventory rather than an automatic shopping list. A campaign does not need every item.

The useful question is: if this channel is in the campaign plan, have we identified every creative state it needs before production begins?

What should be on the paid and organic social design checklist?

Paid and organic social may share a campaign concept, but they should not automatically share the same asset.

Paid creative has to survive different placements, crops, calls to action and testing plans. Organic content often has different pacing and more room to explain the idea.

For paid social, check:

• Campaign concept/master visual

• Primary static ad

• Landscape version where required

• Square version

• Portrait or vertical version

• Carousel cards

• Carousel cover and final CTA card

• Video ad

• Short video cut-downs

• Video thumbnail or cover

• Retargeting creative

• Alternate hooks

• Alternate headlines

• Alternate CTAs

• Product or feature variations

• Audience-specific versions

• Final ad copy

• Tracking or naming references for each variant

For organic social, check:

• Campaign announcement post

• Supporting feed graphics

• Carousel

• Story/Reel assets

• Reel cover

• Quote or proof graphics

• Product/detail posts

• Reminder content

• Launch-day post

• Post-launch follow-up

Do not assume one “social resize pack” solves everything. LinkedIn’s current single-image specification, for example, supports landscape, square and vertical treatments, with different delivery behaviour depending on the format. Check the live LinkedIn advertising specifications when production begins rather than relying on a dimensions document saved six months ago.

The more useful briefing instruction is therefore not “resize this for LinkedIn”. It is “create the LinkedIn paid set required by this media plan”.

That gives the designer context rather than dimensions in isolation.

What should be on the email, landing page and display checklist?

These three channels are often connected, which makes missing assets particularly disruptive.

The ad generates the click. The landing page continues the argument. Email may introduce, reinforce or recover the same campaign. If each is briefed separately without a shared visual and messaging system, consistency becomes harder to maintain.

Email campaign assets

Check whether you need:

• Campaign header or hero

• Product or service imagery

• Supporting illustrations

• Feature graphics

• Testimonial or proof modules

• Offer graphics

• CTA treatment

• Footer campaign graphics

• Launch email

• Reminder email

• Follow-up email

• Mobile-friendly versions

• Image alt text supplied alongside the final build requirements

Avoid designing an email as one large flattened poster. Your campaign message should still be understandable when images are unavailable, and individual components need to behave sensibly on smaller screens.

If your team uses Mailchimp, its current guidance says template image requirements vary by builder and recommends designing around the actual content area rather than uploading unnecessarily oversized assets. Review the current Mailchimp image guidance before exporting final email creative. (Mailchimp)

Landing-page assets

Check:

• Desktop design

• Mobile design

• Hero visual

• Primary headline and CTA

• Supporting product visuals

• Feature/benefit sections

• Social proof

• Testimonials or logos

• Data or results visualisation

• Form design

• Confirmation or thank-you state

• Campaign-specific illustrations/icons

• FAQ treatment

• Footer or secondary CTA

• Social-sharing image

• Final image exports

• Developer-ready source/design file

One of the most common planning mistakes is treating the landing page as a URL that will somehow exist when the ads are ready.

It is usually one of the campaign’s larger creative dependencies. If the page introduces new messaging, screenshots, illustration, proof or product graphics, those assets can affect email and paid creative too.

Display advertising assets

If Google Display is in the media plan, decide whether you are building responsive assets, uploaded static ads or both.

As of September 2026, Google’s responsive display guidance recommends 1200 × 628 landscape, 1200 × 1200 square and 900 × 1600 vertical images, with up to 15 images supported across the available ratios. Google’s responsive display guidance should be treated as the live production reference. (Google Support)

Also check:

• Logos

• Brand-safe crops

• Headlines

• Descriptions

• CTA

• Small-format legibility

• Background treatments

• Alternate campaign visuals

• Retargeting variants

The master campaign concept should be flexible enough to survive all of these, not only the largest hero execution.

What should be on the sales, video and print asset checklist?

Marketing campaigns rarely remain entirely inside the marketing team’s channels.

A strong launch generates internal requests too: sales wants something to send prospects, partnerships needs a PDF, an event needs signage, and the founder wants a version of the campaign video for a presentation.

Planning those assets early is usually easier than reverse-engineering them from whatever happened to be designed first.

Sales collateral

Consider:

• Campaign one-pager

• Sales presentation slides

• Full campaign deck

• Product/service overview

• Case study sheet

• Comparison graphic

• Data sheet

• PDF lead follow-up

• Proposal inserts

• Event or webinar deck

• Editable source version

The important question here is not simply whether sales needs “a PDF”. Define its job.

A one-page follow-up sent after a call has different information density from a downloadable lead magnet or a presentation that someone will speak over.

Video and motion

Check:

• Main campaign video

• 16:9 version

• Square version

• Vertical 9:16 version

• Short cut-downs

• Paid media cut-downs

• Organic social cut-downs

• Animated logo/end card

• Motion graphics

• Captions

• Subtitle files if required

• Thumbnail/cover frames

• Audio and music requirements

• Voice-over

• Localised versions

• Final masters

• Compressed web/social exports

• Editable project/source files

Do not leave format planning until the main edit is locked. A composition designed entirely around a wide frame can become awkward when the same footage needs to work vertically.

Print

Check:

• Flyer

• Brochure

• Poster

• Direct-mail piece

• Event signage

• Pull-up banner

• Exhibition graphics

• Leave-behind

• Packaging or inserts where relevant

Before final artwork, confirm the printer’s specifications, size, bleed, finishing, stock and colour requirements. “A4 flyer” is not enough information to safely prepare a print-ready file.

How should resizing, localisation and final handover be planned?

Resizing is production work. Localisation is creative work.

That distinction prevents the assumption that every adaptation is a five-minute export.

A simple resize may preserve the same hierarchy and copy. A localisation can require new line breaks, different typography, alternate screenshots, currency changes, regional disclaimers, new photography or an entirely different composition because translated copy is longer.

Add these checks to the campaign asset checklist:

• Every required market

• Every required language

• Approved translations

• Currency

• Date format

• Regional product names

• Regional offers

• Local legal copy

• Market-specific screenshots

• Market-specific photography

• Local CTA wording

• Copy expansion allowance

• RTL layouts where relevant

• Local reviewer

• Final language sign-off

Then define handover before production finishes.

A clean handover should include:

• Clearly named final exports

• Web-ready files

• Print-ready files

• Video masters

• Compressed video versions

• Editable/source files

• Approved copy

• Fonts or font references

• Image and stock-asset references

• Version numbers

• Market/language labels

• Archive of superseded versions where necessary

At DesignGuru, working/source files are included, which matters when campaign assets need to be adapted again later rather than rebuilt from exported JPGs or PDFs. You can see the broader range of creative services available through DesignGuru, including digital ads, social media graphics, print, video, motion and web design.

How do you turn a campaign design checklist into an actual workflow?

A checklist only prevents omissions if it changes how work enters production.

We recommend using seven stages.

1. Lock the campaign system. Approve the objective, audience, offer, CTA, campaign idea and core messaging before producing dozens of outputs.

2. Build the asset matrix. List every channel, format, market and variation in one place. Give each asset an owner and deadline.

3. Separate master assets from adaptations. Identify the work that defines the campaign — for example, the hero visual, landing page or main video — and the outputs that depend on it.

4. Brief dependencies first. Do not produce 20 resizes while the core campaign visual is still likely to change.

5. Review the system, not only individual files. Approve the visual language, typography, image treatment, hierarchy and CTA behaviour across representative assets before scaling production.

6. Batch adaptations logically. Once the system is approved, move into channel variations, resizing, motion cut-downs and localisation.

7. Finish with a handover check. Confirm every line in the asset matrix has a final approved file, source file where required and clear storage location.

This is also where creative capacity becomes part of campaign planning.

One campaign can quickly move from a hero concept to social ads, organic posts, email graphics, a landing page, display formats, motion, print and regional versions. The bottleneck is no longer “can someone design an ad?” It is whether the team can keep producing and revising related work without losing campaign consistency.

DesignGuru is a creative subscription service that gives startups and SMEs a team of top-tier in-house designers covering design, video, motion and web on one flat monthly fee, with unlimited brief submissions, unlimited revisions and an average 48-hour turnaround, from £599 a month billed quarterly or £749 billed monthly.

The important operational detail is that unlimited briefs and revisions are processed through a queue rather than simultaneously. Standard tasks average 48 hours, while more complex work takes longer. That makes prioritisation important: establish the campaign system first, then move the production queue through the dependent assets.

Teams with frequent multi-channel campaigns can review the current DesignGuru pricing and plan structure to see whether the required mix of static, video, motion and web work fits their production needs.

When does a campaign need repeatable creative capacity?

If your launch requires one landing page and three ads, a good freelancer or existing in-house designer may be perfectly adequate. A subscription model becomes more useful when campaigns repeatedly expand into dozens of connected deliverables, revisions and adaptations.

Before adding creative capacity, check three things: whether your campaign system is defined, whether the complete asset matrix exists and whether approvals are organised. More designers will not fix missing decisions.

Once those foundations are in place, capacity starts to matter. A launch with paid social, organic content, email, web, video, sales material and localisation is not really one design project. It is an ongoing creative production queue.

That is the problem we designed DesignGuru around: giving growing marketing teams access to senior in-house creative capability across more than 200 services without needing to assemble a different supplier for every campaign format.

Build the checklist first. Then make sure your creative setup can actually deliver what is on it.

FAQs

What is a marketing design checklist?

A marketing design checklist is a pre-production list of every creative decision, asset, variation, specification, approval and handover requirement needed for a campaign. It should cover both what must be designed and what designers need before starting, including approved copy, campaign messaging, formats, deadlines, markets and final delivery requirements.

When should I create a campaign asset checklist?

Create it once the campaign strategy and channel plan are sufficiently defined, but before large-scale design production begins. The objective is to discover missing formats and dependencies early. Update it as media plans change, but avoid using ongoing discovery as a substitute for proper campaign planning.

What assets do I need for a marketing campaign?

It depends on the channels involved. Common campaign assets include paid and organic social creative, email graphics, landing-page design, display ads, sales collateral, video and motion, print material, localised adaptations and final source files. Start with the channel plan and work down to specific formats rather than copying a generic asset list.

What should be included in a design brief for a marketing campaign?

Include the objective, audience, offer, CTA, messaging hierarchy, approved copy, campaign concept, brand guidance, required assets, specifications, examples, markets, deadlines and approvers. For multi-asset campaigns, include the wider asset matrix so the designer understands how the individual brief fits into the complete campaign.

How do I stop campaign design from delaying a launch?

Define the campaign system and complete the asset inventory before scaling production. Prioritise foundational work first, such as the campaign concept, landing page or hero creative, then produce dependent adaptations once those decisions are approved. This reduces late-stage rework caused by discovering new requirements after dozens of assets have already been produced.