You’ve created a brand. You’ve even crafted thoughtful content that projects the right message. Or does it? Does your target audience want to read witty blogs or serious tech-speak? Would creative animation, GIFs, or shareable images have more impact? Does your audience primarily use handheld mobile devices or a stationary desktop?
Integral to every campaign is smart, creative mapping to your persona base to determine what effectively hits your audience, how it hits your audience, and where it hits your audience. A large part in getting all three of these in place comes down to your creative offerings. Having captivating images to showcase your brand’s messaging can take your campaigns to new heights — if you have the right tools, skills and experience within your team.
Why Do I Need Creative Services in my PR or Content Marketing?
The average human attention span has dropped to 8.25 seconds — less than that of a goldfish. Creative services can help surmount this challenge by producing effective visuals that grab an audience’s attention and holds onto it, enabling targeted messages to be absorbed. Eye-tracking studies have shown that internet readers pay close attention to information-carrying images, so the use of infographics and other informative visuals can boost engagement.
Creative services also enable brands to respond nimbly to the evolving audiences. For example, buyers are doing their own research on mobile devices, but more than 60 percent of customers will leave a branded website if it is not mobile-friendly. Creative services can repurpose content specifically for mobile users, creating visuals that can be instantly tweeted or shared.
Case in Point: Carbonite
Carbonite, a provider of automatic cloud backup solutions, went to where the conversation was happening on Twitter and harnessed tweets and hashtags while sharing “May the 4th” custom images that attracted and engaged Star Wars fans. Carbonite gained 500,491 impressions from the campaign, 59,319 clicks, 351 retweets, 36 replies and an engagement rate of 14.3 percent from the campaign. See full case study here.
Increasing engagement rate and making sharing easier is crucial to marketers because tweets with images receive 150 percent more retweets than those without images.
Bring Your Brand to Life
Bringing a brand to life is a process. It could be an interactive email drip campaign or action-oriented landing pages to accompany a PR push, cascaded across social channels and traditional news outlets. Whichever approach, capitalizing on a great story, campaign, or current event starts with analytics and understanding the target audience.
Once the audience is identified, creative services can play to what they respond to the most. Do animations resonate with them or do they get the most out of stock and copy images? Consumers who watch a product video are 85 percent more likely to purchase that product. So, is using videos the optimal approach to reach the audience?
Start defining optimal presentation and delivery, and cement a brand image that really works for your audience, not your company. Creative services combined with analytics gives a visual story and a heightened understanding of where your brand is and the direction it needs to head.
Learn more about integrated marketing and PR, read: Implementing an Integrated Marketing and PR Strategy for Healthcare Brands.
Case in Point: CloudBees
CloudBees, a provider of service solution for web applications, used podcasts to go beyond iTunes exposure and promote the company via social media. The brand began with an analysis of the audience base to clarify the approach. The concept of a podcast series with notable guest speakers to educate listeners seemed a viable way to position CloudBees as a resource for all things CD and DevOps.
As a result of this campaign and strategy, the company had more than 900 downloads in the first six weeks, more than 800 website visits, 70 company mentions on DevOps Radio within the first month, 12 interview requests from DevOps Radio, and three aired podcasts. See full case study here.
As the CloudBees experience shows, the skillful use of visuals can make your brand resonate with your prospects and customers. For appropriate campaigns, AB testing will help you determine which types of creative content your audience responds to.
Pulling It All Together
Creative services can result in heightened brand awareness, storytelling and your ultimate competitive advantage when it comes to cohesive messaging. Make sure you are setting the groundwork and research in place before you embark on these creative strategies and campaigns. Line up which target audience you want to reach, how you want to reach them, and where to find them. For every device and preferred channel utilized by your target audience, creative services are crucial to digital content that is optimized, dynamic, and measurably powerful.
