Marketing creative is a blanket term for ALL of the messaging & visuals a marketing team uses to promote a product or service. It's the written copy & images in a print ad or direct mail piece, the audio in a radio ad, the video in a commercial, infomercial, etc. Sometimes it's a standalone creation: a one-shot effort at driving a prospect to immediate action. Other times, it is only a role player in a much larger promotional effort or campaign.

When companies find their marketing footing, they usually settle into a few favored ways to promote their offerings. For example, a company might lean heavily on television commercials or email marketing as the bulk of THEIR way to market, typically going with what seems most suitable for their particular kinds of offerings. This is often a double-edged sword:

• finding an effective way to market your offerings is a solid win.
• not regularly experimenting with alternatives can lead to a creative rut.

Relatively successful marketers can get creatively bored with the limitations of whatever way(s) has been THE way for too long.

Creativity and boredom is a terrible pairing. The latter will slowly suck the originality & spark out of the former. The very same rut can eventually bore prospects & customers too. When it gets to that, you REALLY take notice because that will show in revenue. Don't wait for your own creativity engine to empty. Refuel now!

Fresh and new sells better than tired and old. It is important to creatively mix things up to avoid the rut of creative boredom.

Even if a new test doesn't yield a better result than the staple, part of the benefit is simply exercising the creativity of TRYING something new. By testing new approaches, some of the freshness can re-invigorate marketing minds... if not outright contribute something new to the existing way of marketing.

Marketing talent must be regularly tested. Only by trying new things- even at the cost of some flops- can quality discoveries that DO work be realized. Never conducting a "mad experiment" will minimize flops... but also miss all BIG strides forward. There are no home runs if you only swing for base hits. And if the marketing team isn't taking risks big enough to sometimes miss, from where do you expect to get your next big thing?

APPLYING MARKETING SCIENCE FOR EFFICIENT BUSINESS GROWTH

Many higher-performing companies embrace applying the science side of marketing in how they determine their marketing budget, upcoming promotional thrusts and so on. One of the foundational concepts of marketing science is measuring the impact of marketing creative as effectively as possible.

To illustrate a number of points, let's use an example of a very specific kind of marketing called direct response (hereafter DR). DR is typically a standalone promotional effort that seeks a specific action- very often "BUY NOW!"- from prospects. It is one of several types of marketing creative where it is ALWAYS possible to fully measure the results as tangibly as possible and with great accuracy.

Whether you are a marketer or not, you know DR in the role of prospective buyer. Many of those unsolicited offers in your mailbox and inbox are a form of direct response. DR is also popping up between scenes in your favorite show quickly pitching some seemingly wonder product and concluding with a strong pitch to call a phone number to order now... "...but wait, if you act within the next __ minutes, we'll DOUBLE the offer! That's TWO...". Yes, that's also DR. It's a HUGE revenue driver- HUGE!!!- especially in the B2C space.

Let's suppose you open your mail box and find a promotion for a credit card. You've probably seen plenty of these over the years. The one you found today motivates you to actually get the card it offered. Your buying action may have been coincidence- perhaps you just decided you needed a credit card and this was the first offer that came along- but, whatever the cause, this DR worked when many prior credit card offers did not.

The credit card DR marketer tracks conversions: how many people they mailed actually took the offer. The response rate- the number of people who favorably responded- is measured against established creative known as a "control" piece- an existing promotional piece that has the best response rate in the marketer's DR arsenal.

If the control piece typically gets 1% of recipients to take the offer but this new one yields ANY better, the latter is likely to become the new control. Further testing that shows it is indeed a stronger performer will crown it as the new control promotion.

Since this new offer clearly drove the most customer conversions, shouldn't the credit card company use it forever? No, they should use it only until the NEXT piece of new creative outperforms it... and thus becomes the new control piece. Good marketing will always test new creative against the control, diligently- and FOREVER- searching for better response rates. Why? Instead of spending money & resources on creating new marketing creative, why not do what many companies mistakenly do and stick with the SAME marketing creative for years and years?

One reason is that ALL marketing creative eventually tires, meaning prospect conversions begin trailing off. In the case of the credit card offer, it did really well this time... so well it knocked out the former champ. However, a few mailings from now, it probably won't perform as well. If the company kept using it anyway they would eventually see response rates decline toward zero.

The promotion itself doesn't change. It's the prospects that change. Perhaps the promotion pushes some hot button of current interest to one segment of the market? Before that segment has been completely sold the company must find another hot button to push to keep the sales momentum rolling. New creative is always testing other angles, hot button benefits, etc.

A bigger reason of tiring is simply exposure. Think of the Superbowl commercial you just deemed THE BEST ONE. Superbowl commercials are often considered the pinnacle of standalone marketing creative. Many millions of dollars are poured into making that 15, 30 or 60-second spot. Many more millions are spent to run it during the big game. The company it pitches will probably run it a fair number of additional times in the weeks after the game. And then, you will probably never see it run again. Why? If it is "THE BEST ONE"... the PINNACLE... why not let it be THE commercial for many years?

What happens to its effectiveness after you have seen it only a few times. The novelty fades quickly. The funny part is no longer as funny because you know the joke. The special effects no longer tease your eyes as well because you've seen them. Etc. If they run it very often, you'll soon completely ignore it, which is the opposite of its purpose. If they run it too much, you may come to HATE it. Even the "BEST" can completely wear out its welcome if it is overexposed.

What was your FAVORITE song 1 year ago today... the one you were listening to over and over again. Is it still your favorite song? Do you still listen to it over and over again? No??? Why not? The song is note-for-note identical to the first time you heard it. Why doesn't it still dominate your musical interest today?

This "tiring" effect applies to ALL media... EVERYTHING. Since all marketing messaging works in media, it suffers the very same effect. And there is only ONE solution to counter it...

KEEP IT FRESH!

This leads to an important question: how fresh is your own marketing creative? How many times has your prospect pool been exposed to mostly the SAME promotion or campaign? If your marketing is not pretty fresh... and regularly RE-freshed... it's urgently time for ACTION!

It doesn't matter if it still seems to be working pretty well. All creative begins to tire with each exposure. It is inevitable. The best marketing minds know this and work on discovering new creative to outperform the existing... even before the good performer is really showing that weakening trend. Are you doing this? You should be!

FRESH MARKETING CREATIVE IS ESSENTIAL TO BUSINESS GROWTH

As should be obvious, the need for fresh marketing creative is ongoing... not only in DR marketing but in ALL forms. If you watch some of the classic TV stations, you may occasionally see TV commercials from yesteryear. At one time, they may have been the very best promotion their respective companies had. But all creative eventually tires. Prospects have seen that pitch, heard that particular angle, etc. A tired marketing message always loses effectiveness.

No prospect is interested in watching the same commercial over and over again- no matter how much they might like it the first time they see, hear or read it. To move them to buy, you must BE ORIGINAL... showing them something new and different than what you've shown them before. If it's...

• fresh, more will take a look... and others will take a second look.
• tired, you're wasting your money and your prospect's time.

Many companies with only in-house marketing talent can find it increasingly difficult to get good ROI on their marketing budget. Why? All creative marketers have a fixed range of style & ability, a limited scope of creativity. They can only come up with so many variations in how to pitch offerings before their overall creative capacity runs out of ideas.

Marketing needs FRESH infusions of creativity to come up with new ways of showcasing offerings. A great way for you to do this is to engage OUTSIDE marketing talent- like ours- to help your company hatch new promotional ideas. It can be very powerful to refresh your pool of creative marketers with some "new blood..." even that of a temporary nature like us. Different brains with new ideas can refuel the creative side of internal brains.

Regularly mixing in some new creativity means regularly refueling your creative core.

A great way to select that talent is by engaging them for fresh creative to test against your current control. This is a common practice in companies wanting to grow their business. Outside talent creative is objectively tested against in-house control and the results drive the option to expand the relationship. In very simple terms, it's a "PROVE YOUR WORTH" approach, like pitting a boxing challenger against the champ.

BI has very deep resources in just about all marketing mediums. We welcome- even encourage- prospective clients to test us with an engagement for some marketing creative to compete against established control. We've developed a great deal of creative in various mediums that became control. Test us and see measurable lifts first hand.

What if your business is only just getting started or doesn't really have marketing you consider a control yet? No problem! The best way to develop an initial control is to create a COUPLE of strong promotional candidates then use cost-efficient methods to test them head-to-head. Again, using the boxing metaphor, you have a gym full of seemingly great boxers. Who is the best one? If you don't already know, you could hold a boxing tournament, letting the lot of them go at it until one rises to the top as BEST. That analogy is a perfect one in showing a terrific way to finding an initial control in a startup business.

Whether new startup or long-established company, these head-to-head tests should carefully measure results. The best performer will become the control. Crowning a new KING is a great thing. You have fresh creative that you now know works well to ride for a little while. Use it in several campaigns and watch conversion rates. By the time it starts tiring, another challenger should be rising to take the crown. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

Basically, a "survival of the fittest" marketing promotional model is born: Creative vs. creative, tactic vs. tactic, campaign vs. campaign. All the swirling creativity trying to knock an established King control out spurs on even more creativity by your team. Everyone strives for brand new ideas to yield better results. It is the OPPOSITE of the creativity boredom scenario referenced at the beginning of this article.

END RESULT: a thriving marketing machine, infectious creativity always pushing for getting more out of marketing budget ROI. What follows ever-improving marketing effectiveness and efficiency? Sales & profit GROWTH.

We would love to bring you some fresh creative minds to help you grow your sales & profits. Try us!