As marketers, we feel the pressure to be creative. But depending on your company culture, too much creativity can mean your idea might get shot down. Too little, and you risk blending in with the competition.
Creativity is key to standing out and delivering results. In this post you’ll learn everything you need to know about creative strategies, from how-to-write one, to successful, real-life examples that you can implement in your own workplace. Let’s get started!
Purpose Behind A Creative Strategy
You know creative strategies are important, probably because you were asked to make one, but you might not understand why they are important.
Your creative strategy stands as your what, how, and why you’re going to reach your marketing objectives.
Creative strategies assist the company in reaching marketing goals, prove their ROI, and support business growth through a strategic and well-executed approach.
Without one, you risk losing sight of your projects, going over budget, and ticking off your stakeholders.
Write Your Best Creative Strategy
First things first, if you’re looking for an extra kick to your creative strategy. Consider CoSchedule’s Hire Mia as your sidekick. Hire Mia is an AI-powered content writer that can handle simple tasks, generate ideas, and conquer writer’s block.
Sigh a breath of relief as Hire Mia takes the stress out of your creative strategy and everything marketing.
Now it’s time to break down the process of developing your own creative strategy. Here is a step-by-step process of how to implement your very own creative strategy.
1. Set Strong Marketing Goals
When it comes to marketing, having clear and measurable goals is essential for success. But it’s not just about setting any goals; you need SMART goals to guide your efforts and keep your team focused. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound—a framework that ensures your goals are well-defined and actionable.
- Specific: Your goal should be clear and focused. Instead of saying “Increase sales,” aim for something more targeted like “Increase website conversions by 20% over the next 6 months.”
- Measurable: You need to be able to track progress and know when you’ve hit your target. Numbers speak volumes, so always have a metric in place. For example, “Boost social media engagement by 30% through targeted campaigns.”
- Achievable: Set goals that are challenging, but realistic. Consider the resources, time, and budget at your disposal. You want to push the envelope but not set your team up for failure.
- Relevant: Your goals should align with your broader business objectives. If your company is focused on brand awareness, a goal like “Increase the number of blog post shares by 15%” would be more relevant than a goal focused on sales conversion.
- Time-bound: Set a deadline for achieving your goal. Having a clear timeframe keeps everyone accountable and motivated. For instance, “Grow email list by 25% within the next quarter.”
By setting SMART goals, you’re creating a clear roadmap that guides your strategy, measures success, and ensures that your efforts are aligned with the larger business objectives. It’s the first step in ensuring that your creative marketing strategies will drive meaningful results.
2. Track KPI’s
It’s important that you know which metrics to measure when assessing your goal. In reality, you can’t prioritize every metric, because that would mean that all of your metrics have the same importance (and they shouldn’t be).
KPIs are metrics that indicate progress towards a particular goal. Some examples of KPIs that you may be measuring are:
- Leads generated.
- Conversions.
- Revenue.
- Email list subscribers.
- Pageviews.
Pick a KPI or two that goes hand in hand with your goal and then focus on them. You’ll be surprised how much focusing on a specific metric can help you reach your goal!
Now that you’ve set your marketing goals, it’s time to find out who you’re marketing to.
3. Tune Into Your Target Audience
Define the ideal person that you want to buy your product or service. The better you know your target audience, the better you can market to them. Understanding their needs and wants helps you get inside their minds to create a creative strategy that connects to them.
For help targeting your audience, Hire Mia can use your unique brand voice for any piece of content. Construct your brand voice using descriptors that represent your brand well:
- Informative
- Conversational
- Humorous
- Concise
4. Define Your Strengths
One of the simplest but most important steps in your marketing strategy is demonstrating how your product or service benefits your target audience. If you can’t clearly articulate these benefits, your audience won’t be able to understand why they should care.
To make sure you’re on the right track, ask yourself these three essential questions:
- What does my target audience gain from using my product or service?
- What problem does my product or service solve for them?
- What sets my product or service apart from the competition?
Once you’ve answered these, you’ll have a clearer picture of the benefits you offer—but that’s only half the battle. To make your audience believe in your claims, you need to back them up with proof. The more evidence you provide, the stronger your argument will be.
There are a number of different ways you can support your benefit in your creative strategy.
Customer testimonials are a great way to show that real people have used your product or service and prove it works! To get customer testimonials, you can directly ask customers or even use reviews that you get.
Here’s an example of a customer testimonial from CoSchedule:
Hearing such strong, loyal testimonials from customers enhances your credibility and attracts future leads.
5. Enhance Brand Positioning
Brand positioning strategy is a large project in itself. When you consider positioning in your creative strategy, make sure it aligns with your brand.
Positioning your brand is a huge reflection of your audience. Consider what they like to see and where they tend to consume their media. Then, all that’s left is to meet them there.
Here’s how to make sure your brand positioning connects:
Know Your Audience Inside and Out:
- Understand their values, preferences, and pain points.
- Pay attention to what type of content they engage with—are they looking for entertainment, information, or inspiration?
- Identify their communication styles and the language that resonates with them.
Focus on Emotional Connection:
- Position your brand as a solution to their problems, but also as something that makes them feel understood, valued, and empowered.
- Align your tone and messaging with their emotions—whether that’s aspirational, comforting, or motivating.
By taking the time to understand your audience’s needs and emotional triggers you’ll create a positioning strategy that’s not only effective but deeply resonates with your audience.
6. Set A Clear Budget
One thing that ticks off stakeholders more than a bad creative strategy is when that creative strategy goes over budget.
But don’t worry, here’s all you need to know so that you don’t go over budget to fulfill your tactics!
Steps to Keep Your Creative Strategy on Budget
- Choose your deliverables
- Accurately estimate how much each deliverable is going to cost
- Keep track of where your money is going at all times
- Drop strategies that aren’t performing well
The biggest thing with budgeting is to make sure you keep an eye on the money and the tactics so that going over budget never becomes an issue.
Types Of Creative Strategies (With Examples)
Your creative marketing strategy can take different shapes and forms depending on your goals. It would take days to cover every type of creative strategy, so this blog post will cover the most prevalent topics and strategies along with some killer examples.
Content Strategy
An example of a genius content strategy comes from none other than Sephora. They built and launched a community page for their users to leave comments, drop questions, and share their tips and tricks within the make-up world.
Engagement increased and sales drove through the roof, once they grounded an inclusive space where their users can communicate and connect.
Social Media Strategy
If you’re looking for a company that dominates social media, follow Wendy’s. Their sassy replies and savage Tweets is how this company rose to the top with their social media.
From playful jokes to their competitors and humorous tweets their viewers can look forward to, Wendy’s knows how to captivate an audience.
I’ll let their engagement speak for themselves. Their audience follows for their announcements and stays for the humor.
Branding Strategy
You’re probably familiar with the hashtag #ShareACoke phenomenon. (I think we can all admit we have looked for a Coke with our name on it.)
It swept the nation and encouraged millions of customers to hit their local grocers and search for the names they hold near and dear to their hearts.
Not only did Coca Cola pull together a tight knit community, it boosted sales and brand awareness like nothing before.
Video Strategy
Slack rolled out a customer success video a few years ago to highlight their product, and it worked.
They took the pain points of their target audience and showed how to get rid of those pains by using Slack. And they managed to make the video humorous and educational at the same time. Hats off to them?
Whichever method you choose, remember that you don’t have to break the bank. If you have a video camera, some knowledge, and a little bit of creativity, you’ll be in luck.
Email Strategy
Email marketing is still as powerful as ever. The best engagement comes when you optimize your use of email correctly. Avoid settling for just sending out emails packed with information.
Make them personal, eye-catching, unique to the receiver, and overall unforgettable.
Take a few notes from Patagonia and how their email demands attention and cultivates clicks. High quality images paired with a perfect product showcase, pulls viewers in and motivates them to learn more.
