Our experts demystify the creative campaign planning and launch process – helping you build a creative strategy that works for your business.

Do you feel like creative campaigns are inaccessible for your business? Due to budget, people, or fear of making the jump?

In our latest workshop, ‘Investing in and Delivering Creative Campaigns that Work for your Resource’, our experts explore the common misconceptions around launching a creative campaign, along with key considerations for investing in, planning, and delivering a creative strategy that works for your business.

Our experts:

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In this Article:

  • Defining the idea of a creative campaign
  • 4 things to know before investing in a creative campaign
  • Ready for launch? Measuring success and external support

READ OUR KEY LEARNINGS FROM THE SESSION BELOW, OR WATCH THE FULL WORKSHOP HERE

Defining the idea of a creative campaign

In today’s digital age, there is greater emphasis on quantity than quality when it comes to advertisement consumers are frequently bombarded with brand messaging across various platforms, these messages are ignored or forgotten.

A creative campaign is a way for brands to cut through the noise and connect with their intended audience on an emotional level – leading to an increase in awareness and brand loyalty.

With the ever-changing routes and approaches for delivering marketing campaigns – below our experts define the idea of a ‘creative campaign’ in the current global landscape.

WATCH THE FULL WORKSHOP PLAYBACK

4 things to know before investing in a creative campaign

#1 - Not all types of creativity are right for every sector

Adam Britton says, “creativity can be used across all sectors, but not all types of creativity are right for every sector or business – it must be aligned with the brand image and most importantly its values to ensure authenticity.”

Creative advertising often requires a team to come together and build ad campaigns for various platforms to share a core message or idea.

Adam Britton highlights the risk of non-collaboration during this process, “it's about being creative, not just at the start but throughout. You can begin with a great creative idea, which is then given to a production team to execute but at this stage the idea can disappear.

Going forward, it’s about getting creatives and performance people together from the start to help identify where and how you find those results and ensure that the initialised idea is portrayed to the right audience through the right type of creative.”

Read our Creative 101 article: Getting your Ads Noticed with Better Static Imagery and Graphic Design

#2 - How does your audience resonate with your brand?

Unfortunately, research suggests that only 16% of advertising is both recalled and correctly attributed to the brand, which means 84% of marketing budget is wasted! Yet creative campaigns are proven to be more result-driven, delivering an ROI 11 times higher than non-creative campaigns.

Adam Britton highlights the importance to, “identify how and where your audience resonates with your brand and then build a media plan around that to ensure you're building a creative campaign on a specific channel(s) that will produce the best outcomes and maximise ROI.

Jamie shares a set of questions that you should answer before building a campaign to adapt your creatives in accordance with your audience:

  • Who is your audience?
  • Where are your audience – online or offline?
  • What platform(s) work best for your audience?
  • What experience does audiences have on specific platforms – relaxed or highly engaged?

View our Round-up: Brand Loyalty – Why it Matters, How to Measure, and Routes to Success

#3 - What are your KPIs?

Jamie highlights the importance of recognising your KPIs from the start to help steer your creative campaign, “What do you want to achieve? Or what do you expect from this campaign, be upfront about whether this is a long-term or a short-term play.

For example, let’s say I want 10,000 signups to an event by the end of the week, that would make me build a very different creative campaign than one solely for the purpose of gaining brand awareness.

Therefore, in line with this you should ask yourself:

  • What is your position in the market?
  • Who are you competitors?
  • Are you new or established within your sector?
  • What are your campaign goals – is it brand awareness? Is it recall? Is it a longer-term goal?
  • Is your service or product complicated?
  • Do you want a sign up or a download that might steer you towards certain online channels?
  • And where do your KPIs sit in the sales funnel?”

Read: Building an Integrated Digital Marketing Campaign Across your Performance Channels

#4 - Know your timeline

Jamie highlights before going live with a creative idea, “you need to think ahead, and be reactive to what's working – test an idea across all relevant platforms before you hit go.

For example, think about what would the TikTok version of this idea look like? Or What would a radio ad and OOH campaign look like?”

Jamie adds, “timing is key, you need to have enough variance up your sleeve, to keep that bonfire going once you’ve gone live with your initial creative ad. This way if your initial creative is a slow burner, you can be responsive and schedule an ad on TV as soon as.”

Adam Britton, Managing Director at Trunk BBI on Types of Creativity

Ready for launch? Measuring success and external support

Measuring Success

Adam Worrall says, “the beauty of paid media is that it's trackable, meaning there's a way to benchmark your goals and understand where your activity is sitting against them in terms of performance.

For example, from a metrics standpoint, if your goal was brand awareness across a YouTube piece of activity, we can identify what metrics to focus on and what does success looks like, such as, an increase in engagement rates or percentage of video views.”

Adam Worrall adds, “the longer a campaign develops, the more data we have to optimise performance, and really understand how audiences are resonating with it, this information can then be leveraged across other areas of a business and wider marketing strategies or vice versa – meaning you’re getting the most out of your data.

This all comes back to attribution modelling and reporting – making sure that the activity that you're running is achieving the goal that you set out to achieve in the first place."

View our Round-up: 5 Ways to Get More from your Marketing Data

External support

Adam Worrall says, “an agency can help identify what channels will work best to achieve your specific goals or objectives. We're a team of paid media specialists, so we're very much an expert on understanding which channels to leverage to generate a certain outcome with an intended audience.

If we have a clear brief and can be given a good understanding of what the objectives are, then that's where we can come into our own in terms of offering that specialism.”

Learn: 5 Things to Include when Writing a Digital Brief

Jamie highlights on seeking external support, “It should be honest and open at the beginning, in terms of what are your goals? What is your budget or media spend? Ideally, if you've got a decent budget behind your campaign, you can unlock different things for your creativity, in terms of the platforms you can look at.

As an agency we want to feel pride, your success is our success. Of course, I want a big budget to play with but ultimately, it’s about achieving your KPIs and your long or short-term goal or objectives.

Adam Britton adds on Jamie's point, “there should be common goal between both the brand and the agency, the success of the campaign is for both.

Furthermore, establishing trust at the beginning by being honest and open about your budget is so important because you could waste so much of that spend in going backwards and forwards.

If you're investing in a creative strategy this year, make sure you're getting the most from your time. GO! offer cost-free agency recommendations, pitch management, and more - get in touch to get started.

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