Four Creative Benchmarks For Digital Marketing Success

Ad agencies exist to seize opportunities for brands across the customer journey, online and off. Creating unique, integrated brand programs that can engage effectively in a wide range of forms and contexts is the role of creative advertising in our digitally connected world.

Digital media is where people interact with brands. The devices we use are the portals to our media consumption and shopping. Whether business to consumer (B2C) or business to business (B2B), the tactics and creative methods we use to attract customers require our expertise for storytelling as well as factoring in how a brand comes to life in the media and technologies in which its narrative exists.

Journey mapping, creating a kind of blueprint of customer touchpoints, can give us a picture of our prospect’s world and reveal ways for the advertiser to intersect with it.

Creative people need to consider time, place, mindset and behaviors. And they need to build a coherent narrative across a connected customer journey that addresses all those touchpoints.

These four basic standards address the customer journey online, and ultimately they help creative marketers make successful campaigns.

1. Discoverable

Marketing online is a conversation with a customer. And search is the beginning of that conversation. Paid search and search engine optimization (SEO) may not seem like an opportunity to be creative, but SEO-savvy copywriters will tell you it takes more than the right long-tail keyword to compete in search engine rankings and seize the attention of prospects at the very start of their journey. It’s that creative (and keyword-rich) messaging that ultimately determines whether they decide to engage with your brand in the first place.

2. Click-Worthy

Those little banner ads stalking you across your media journey can be easy to ignore. They need to work hard to earn your click. That means the creative work, visually and verbally, needs to disrupt and make a strong impression. Data associated with your online behavior has made you a soft target for that advertiser because it’s assumed you’re already partly sold on what they’re selling. The creative task here is to get you the rest of the way there. This part of the journey needs to entice you enough to get you to click and give the advertiser a moment of your precious time.

3. Irresistibly Engaging

The landing experience is where marketers need to bring their creative A-game. Awesome video, engaging copy, images and interactivity, easy ways for visitors to take action—all keep your potential customer on the hook. The user, at this point, has granted you the privilege of their time by going to your site. If that experience doesn’t live up to expectations, then you may lose them forever.

• Engage meaningfully.

• Don’t under-deliver.

• Establish trust.

• Take them to the next step.

4. Share-Worthy

Let it be said again: Content is king. And content worthy of sharing is the best content.

Consider your mindset when making a high-value purchase such as a vacation, a new appliance or a B2B service that you’ll need to get approved by your company. Purchases that require more consideration often lead to a consultation with co-decision makers—a spouse, friend, co-worker or boss. An easy-to-share video, e-brochure or infographic, something created with the co-decision maker in mind, is another essential for marketers who want to keep prospects engaged and on the path to conversion. Quality content makes all the difference here. Obviously, this is not a job for amateurs.

I’ve written before that professional creative people today are like Swiss army knives—versatile and able to bring brand propositions to life across a wide range of media and contexts, from banner ads and social media to video and webpages. By holding the creative bar high and adhering to standards like the ones above for brand-worthy engagement, you’ll capture your customers’ attention and it’ll show in your campaign results.

To make your brand stand out in the crowded digital landscape, you need a team of skilled professionals who understand how to leverage these benchmarks and create campaigns that resonate with your customers. If you’re looking for expert guidance on your digital marketing efforts, contact us today to see how we can help you achieve success.