What is creative strategy? Creative strategy is a great way to align your business, your brand and your marketing to help take your business to new heights.

How? Read on…

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Creative Strategy in Marketing Explained

What is Creative Strategy? Creative strategy is a strategy that is created by a team, usually consisting of copywriters, an art director and a creative director. These professionals come together to create a strategy that is going to help the marketing campaign meet the specific goals that the company has set out.

A creative strategy is made to help explain to all concerned how a specific marketing strategy is going to meet the goals and advertising objectives of that business.

In other words, a working creative strategy definition can be thought of as:

  • Understanding your target audience,
  • Defining the actions you want to your users to take,
  • Creative marketing strategies which can be used to achieve this.

This means that an effective creative strategy involves a mixture of  setting concrete goals and, coming up with innovative and creative marketing approaches to meet them.

A creative strategy is going to differ from business to business and is also going to be different dependent on what goals are set to be attained and on what the overall aims of a campaign are.

What is Creative Marketing?

So, what kind of creative marketing approaches can you use to achieve your aims? More important, what is creative development in marketing? The most important types of creative marketing strategy are:

  • Content Marketing – Including video, blogging, podcasts, ebooks and webinars.
  • Branding – Creating a coherent identity for your brand in terms of visuals, voice and value.
  • Products and Services – It’s crucial to take a crucial approach to position your offerings for your target market.
  • Customer Experiences – This applies equally to online and in-person customer and user experience.

Creative Marketing Teams 

One company can have the same goal as another company but the creative approach of their team is going to differ and their ultimate plan may be different as well. Creative strategy gives a company the chance to really help their team bond and to really bring the company together under one united front.

Creative strategy in marketing can differ from company to company and even from team to team within the same company. The ultimate goal of creative strategy is to brainstorm and to really get ideas from all sides to create something that is unique, eye catching, and different.

Using a Creative Approach in Advertising

Using a creative approach in advertising is always a great way to bring a team together and to really challenge them to create something special.

We have all seen the same cut and dry advertising campaigns that really do nothing to excite us and we have also seen campaigns that are unique, different and that really make us want to either buy the product or to look into the company further.

What is Creative Strategy in Advertising?

Using a creative approach in advertising can do a great deal for any company. For starters, it can help your team come together and can help you to get a feel for what your team is capable of. Creative strategy helps to make the process easier and helps to really create a campaign that is goal driven but that is going to excite those that see it as well.

Let’s consider display advertising as a creative strategy example.

Like any other form of advertising, display is a competition for users’ attention on online platforms, like Google or Facebook. As such, a creative approach is absolutely critical to the ROI of an advertising campaign.

Indeed, the role of creativity in advertising cannot be understated.

Nike creative advertising strategy screenshot
Major brands use creative strategy to boost the ROI of their display ads. Image credit: Facebook Ad Library.

Achieving Goals With a Creative Approach to Advertising

Using a good solid creative strategy can mean the difference between an advertising campaign that is going to attain its goals and one that may not really do what it set out to do.

Creative approaches can differ from company to company with some focusing on things like image and visuals while others may focus on a catchphrase or on a song, these differing approaches are part of what makes the creative process so interesting and helps it to be so effective as well.

With a varied and vibrant creative team, companies can get incredibly versatile and useful creative strategies that are going to appeal to a great deal of potential customers as well as potential buyers.

Creative Strategy Importance

There are a few different factors that you should consider when you start to work on a creative strategy. These factors are directly related to the importance of a great creative strategy.

For starters, creative strategy gives a team the chance to talk and to share ideas. Creative strategy opens up the floor to a great deal of ideas and opens the floor to the exchange of ideas. We all know how boring it can be to try to come up with ideas on your own but with the help of a team, you can bounce ideas off of one another to come up with something seriously interesting that you may not have thought of on your own.

Another great factor of importance is that a creative strategy helps to drive an advertising campaign. Without a creative strategy in place you can end up not knowing where your advertising campaign is going, you can get your overall ideas and goals confused, and you can even lose track of what your team was trying to accomplish.

Creative Strategy as a Plan

A creative strategy is sort of like an itinerary or a plan of what is going to happen so that you can see what is going on.

Another reason that creative strategies are important is that they provide a visual representation of what the advertising plan is going to accomplish. It can be difficult to understand what this or that means when it is explained in words but with a visual representation, it can be much easier to really see what is going on.

It can help those that may not be able to understand with words to know what is going on and what the end goal for any advertising campaign really is.

Lastly, a good creative strategy provides a benchmark system so you can really see what the advertising campaign has accomplished so far, what it is set to accomplish, and how the course of the campaign is going to unfold as it progresses.

It really provides a plan for what is going on so that you can see what is happening and what is going to happen as well.

Creative Strategy Benefits

The first benefit we’ll look at is this: it allows teams to express their ideas and hash out a plan before anything really begins. Instead of having to guess where an advertising campaign stands or what the next steps are, you can look to your creative strategy to see where the campaign is.

Another benefit is that a creative strategy provides much needed organisation to the somewhat hectic advertising process. What might seem like a really difficult process can be greatly simplified by having a creative strategy in place.

This sort of organisational tool can make a huge difference and can help smooth out wrinkles and make for a much smoother transition from each phase of the advertising process.

Brilliant Ideas and Creative Strategy

Another benefit of a creative strategy is that it allows the creative team to really flex their muscles and come up with some brilliant ideas. There is some amount of freedom when it comes to the overall process of a creative strategy team and this really appeals to a large number of people.

Those that were quiet and reserved may have a bigger part in the team that you thought possible and they may end up having ideas that you were never aware of that truly work for the overall advertising process.

A creative strategy offers a chance for those that are looking to express ideas, those that have ideas to share, and those that may work better in a team to really voice their opinions and do something that they may not have been comfortable doing on their own before.

With the right creative strategy team and the right creative strategy in place, anyone can get their advertising campaign on track and can get the most out of it.

Summary: Creative Strategy…Your Next Step

There are lots of great books out there on the topic of creative strategy. You can also find tons of great resources online that can really help you organise your team and find out what is going to work well for your team.

No matter what you hope to accomplish, having a good book or guide about creative strategy can help point you toward the best end result so that you can get the most out your advertising campaigns and out of your team. Good luck!

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