3 Keys to Effective Creative that Actually Gets a Response
You’re right. The fact that you and your customers are exposed to 10,000 ads a day IS a lot to process. And whether you know it or not, your brand is in direct competition with each of these ads, fighting for the attention of your perfect customer, regardless of your business. As a result, your brand isn’t just up against local industry competitors. You’re also vying for attention with giants like Netflix, Apple, and Amazon.
In order to stand out, your customers expect you to lean into who you are as a brand and a business in a way that provides value by fascinating and informing. In fact, a study on advertising the Harvard Business Review revealed that creative ads have a greater positive impact on your ROI than ordinary ads. The study examined 437 advertising campaigns that were scored objectively for their creativity on a scale of 1 to 7 and the average was 2.98.
This study proved most ads are average. Even if you think, “My B2B strategy isn’t about creativity, it’s about the bottom line,” the fact is that highly-creative ad campaigns have a longer shelf-life and return twice as much revenue as “ordinary” ads.
What Makes an Ad Creative?
What’s the reason ads stick in people’s minds? Creativity. Effective creative differs from ordinary marketing because it stands out and provides value to a specific audience in a particular situation. Remarkable creative influences your target audience to slow down for a moment and engage with your brand. In this critical moment, they are more likely to welcome the solutions that your product or service brings into their life. Creativity for the sake of awards doesn’t improve your advertising ROI, but the kind of creativity that communicates your unique ability to solve a specific problem for your perfect audience does.
Developing effective creative is just the beginning. When it comes down to it, all creative ad campaigns must intentionally and thoughtfully employ the three components of purpose, audience, and platform.
Purpose
To stand out as a brand, it’s crucial to communicate the core values of your business. 83% of the maturing millennial generation want companies to give back to society. Depending on your business you may be encouraged to know that 66% are willing to pay more for brands that advocate for causes.
PH3 client The Jobs Partnership (JP) is a non-profit that offers free re-employment training to the 47% of people in Central Florida who struggle to afford the basic necessities for themselves and their families. JP’s mission is to inspire and equip people for success at work and in life because they believe a good job restores dignity and purpose while also diminishing poverty. They’ve trained thousands of students and placed them in short-term training programs and new positions with JP’s exclusive network of more than 200 educational partners and employers.
PH3 worked with The Jobs Partnership to develop their new brand architecture which clarified their purpose for each of their audiences and included the creation of their flagship training program’s name, logo design, and marketing campaign. We focused the campaign messaging around the personal testimonies of people whose lives were transformed by The Jobs Partnership—some of which later became volunteers in the program. The campaign helped The Jobs Partnership increase enrollment to its highest count in their 16-year history. Your company may not be a non-profit, but a lot can be learned by seeing at your purpose as your “cause.”
Audience
Of course, in order for creative to be most effective, it needs to reach the relevant eyeballs of your target audience. A few years ago a good targeting strategy was to put your ad in front of the right people at the right place at the right time. These days, hyper-targeting has reached a new level. Brands are able to grow faster than ever before simply through improved targeting abilities. You’re now able to anticipate your target audience’s demand based on interests and behaviors and reach them before their need arises so your brand is already at the top of their mind.
For example, PH3 built a social media presence from the ground up for the world’s leading B2B keg rental company, Global Keg. They’ve gained more than a 408,000% increase in engagement and a 6,382% bump in impressions within a span of 3 months. After developing a new website presence, we designed a custom audience across their social platforms. We used hyper-targeting strategies to segment audiences throughout North America and Europe who now engage with Global Keg's blog content for approximately 3.5-5.5 minutes depending on length. The push of content to their engaged following has increased the number of relevant eyeballs to the most website traffic they’ve ever received through timely, industry-focused content attuned to their brand's services and offerings.
Platform
It’s important to consider which platforms and distribution channels best engage your perfect audience. You’ve got your message and your audience, but when it comes to deciding on your distribution channel it can be difficult to determine the best places to put your message.
As an example, let’s look at PH3 client Dorado Beach Resort, one of the world’s most luxurious island destinations in the world. This exclusive tropical paradise has enjoyed a long history of hosting some of the most notable figures in American history including JFK, The Rockefeller Family, Amelia Earhart, and other A-list celebrities. We began working with Dorado Beach to develop their audience across digital channels and social platforms.
For Dorado Beach’s distribution channels, we launched a digital media campaign across a network of hundreds of contextually relevant web pages reaching affinity audiences. We also introduced search marketing to retarget previous visitors of the Dorado Beach website. On social, we targeted domestic and international travelers interested in Caribbean getaways and tropical vacation homes, with matching demographics and behaviors.
Our strategic approach to distributing fresh creative across social and digital resulted in attracting 15,000+ Facebook followers and a 67,600% increase in social engagement in one year. Deciding to make the investment in great creative, then honing in on your purpose, audience and platform are critical to significantly increase the return for your marketing budget. Could your brand, campaign or content marketing be improved to get better results? Find out what it's like to work with us.