How to make creatives work

The modern advertising market is developing very intensively. New ideas are constantly emerging, different products and formats are being tested. All this is necessary in order to attract the attention of the user audience to goods and services. And the key element in most strategies can rightfully be called creatives. This is what can not only attract the attention of the user audience to your business, but also ensure its transformation in accordance with the current trends of our time. If these works are carried out correctly, then you can even bring the company to a completely new level, win the most loyal audience. The one that will constantly contact you with orders and will become the basis for the stability of business development. Even solving complex, extraordinary tasks is within the power of high-quality and thought-out creative work.

But, unfortunately, in practice, everything is not as clear as it seems in theory. The absence of a clearly structured structure, lack of interaction within one team, insufficient professionalism of employees, the presence of uncertainties - this is what can become a serious obstacle to the generation and implementation of ideas that can have a general positive impact on business development.

To minimize all sorts of difficulties, problems and get high-quality creative work at the end, it is necessary to develop your own rules and strategies that will be highly effective within the framework of your business. Today, there are already many ideas and software products that can be safely used when developing your own advertising materials. You can read about how to create creative content yourself and what tools you can use to perform these tasks here.

But in today's review, we will focus directly on those mistakes that are very common in practice today and do not allow you to get the desired result. We will highlight 5 main points that everyone who would like to minimize problems at the stage of creating creatives and get excellent results with minimal time and effort should pay attention to. The information provided will allow you to complete the work as correctly as possible, but at the same time quickly and easily.

Why does it happen that creative work does not solve the tasks set?

Situations when creative work created by professionals with good investments of effort and money, in practice do not meet expectations, do not provide an increase in the audience, alas, are not isolated. So why does this happen? To answer this question unambiguously, it is necessary to conduct a comprehensive analysis and understand what the main reason is. And here there are several possible options. Here are the most common:

• “What brief - such creative work”. Yes, customers really do not like such a phrase, but in most cases it is this reason that causes problems with creativity in the future. We would like to immediately draw attention to the fact that we are talking about brands that involve third-party specialists to perform such tasks, and do not do it themselves. Here it is necessary to understand that people who do not know your company from the inside and have not interacted with it before will work on your content. That is, for them you are just another object, for the study of which the information that you provide is used. And this means that in this case it is you who bears full responsibility for the quality of the final creative. It is you who must create the most competent brief, in which the creative tasks will be clearly formulated. We would like to draw attention to the fact that we are not talking about business, not about marketing, but directly about creativity. That is, you must clearly let the performers understand what exactly you want to get as a result. And when they have an objective and completely understandable measure for evaluating the idea, it will be much easier to achieve, test and verify its effectiveness.
• Wrong choice of the creative format itself. You can't ignore the fact that you chose an option that turned out to be unworkable. And here you should blame incompetence, mistakes made at the implementation stage. In most cases, the prospects of an idea are assessed at the planning stage, that is, long before development and implementation. Perhaps the information presented in the brief was incorrectly interpreted or the concept testing was not given due attention. As a result, a project is launched that is doomed to failure from the very beginning. In this case, funds are spent, time is wasted. This problem can only be eliminated by choosing responsible performers. Those who will not allow such problems and plan everything in advance and as correctly as possible.
• Media factors. Even if you have a concept worked out to the smallest detail, which has shown high efficiency at the testing stage, it can simply get lost in all the information that exists on the market today. Here you need to understand through which channels your audience will interact with the business and launch the resulting creative wherever it is possible to implement it. The effectiveness of such publications on the official website of the company will be very low. There is a chance that they will not notice it at all, will not appreciate the benefits for themselves. That is, one of the mandatory moments of the effective launch of creative will be the correct selection of a platform, and in most cases even several.

Of course, there may be other reasons why your content will not work in practice. We can say with confidence that most of the problems can be minimized by a careful approach, comprehensive planning, and professional execution. And here we would like to give 5 fairly simple rules that will help you create high-quality and working creatives. Those that will attract the attention of the user audience, contribute to increased brand awareness, the number of orders and, accordingly, income growth.

Remove strict frameworks for performers

Quite often, customers of creatives literally prescribe every step of the performer. They form a strict structure that will be used when generating materials, including frameworks, deadlines. They indicate all the actions that must be implemented at each such stage. Yes, such actions in some cases give a good result, since the performers clearly understand what is expected of them and what kind of product should be obtained at the output. This will be useful if it is necessary to prepare impressive volumes of content, especially under tight time frames.

Such a solution will be convenient in the case when it is supposed to develop standard advertising content for different channels of interaction with the user audience. But if you apply such a strategy everywhere, the efficiency may be very low. Here you remove one of the most important, and in most cases even key aspects of creating cool creatives - the creative component. As a result, you get a template solution, even if it exactly matches your personal requests and wishes.

For the most part, work on creating creative should be performed in the following sequence:

1. Initially, the strategist gets to work, offering interesting facts about the brand itself, including its audience, culture, and other points that the creative team can latch onto and develop several ideas.
2. After each individual specialist has collected a sufficient number of options, everything is collected together and the prospects of each solution are considered. Those creatives that, in the opinion of the majority, will be ineffective are immediately discarded. Several really strong and cool ideas are sent for processing.
3. The final revision of several options is carried out. At this stage, they are sent for visualization. Their storyboard is made, a document containing basic information about the project is prepared, the main advertising image of the brand is formed, etc. Based on this information, presentations are prepared for the customer.
4. The client receives several creative options, already worked out to the smallest detail. And now your task is to choose from all the proposed solutions the one that you like the most and that will correspond to the specifics of your business, as well as the business tasks that you set for your company.
5. The project is launched. And here it is very important to monitor the effectiveness of creatives in order to make timely adjustments, if necessary. If you plan to use several channels, then it will be necessary to generate reports for each of them, promptly exclude non-working ones, so as not to waste the advertising budget in vain.

On average, all work, starting from processing the brief and up to issuing several ready-made options to the customer for approval, takes about 2 weeks. The smaller the scale of the project, the faster these tasks will be solved. But if you are about to launch a large-scale campaign. One that should not just work, but really surprise the market, cause a stir in the relevant niche, then it may take much more time to find creative ideas. And here it is important not to rush. It requires inspiration, unconventional thinking, mostly even far from the world of advertising. That is, if you decide to rush the performers, then, most likely, you will not get the expected furor at all.

And we must not forget that most people who develop creative ideas are extraordinary creative individuals. And they really do not like it when they are forced into a strict schedule, when they are required to implement certain steps. This can completely drive them into a stupor. And you can clearly not expect any working creativity here. Provide them with opportunities for choice, the illusion of freedom, the opportunity to make certain decisions independently. And you will be surprised at how effective and extraordinary the solution you will get at the end.

Create the perfect environment for creativity

Have you heard the phrase that the best ideas are born over a cup of coffee? Here we are talking about the fact that casual communication, jokes, random comments - this is where you can find a brilliant idea that can become the basis for future creativity. Such an insight can happen in the most unexpected places, and in some cases even in inappropriate ones. And here the project manager needs to think about how to organize such random (or not so) meetings, dialogues from which you can get original ideas. That is, it is necessary to inspire employees, unobtrusively stimulate them to create extraordinary concepts. And there are many options here. Here are just a few possible ones:

1. Various festivals, competitions dedicated to advertising, including within your own organization. A huge number of creative people gather here to communicate in a relaxed atmosphere.
2. From time to time, hold events that allow people to take a break from everyday projects. Such events where you can create a comfortable atmosphere, ideal for pure creativity without any deadlines or customer requirements. If possible, you can go outside the office, move to a small cafe or even organize a trip to nature. Thanks to the change of scenery, the general perception of the situation changes, completely different thought processes are stimulated.
3. Conduct trend reports periodically. These are a kind of meeting where anyone can speak out about what has inspired them recently. And it doesn’t have to be some kind of creative thing. Perhaps it was some kind of extraordinary event or phenomenon, a previously unknown technology. If something caught the attention of your employee, then perhaps it also stirred up society. This means that it can be safely used when developing creative ideas. It is optimal to hold such events in an informal setting with food and drinks. This way, idea generation will be more effective.

And the main thing here is not to miss this very brilliant idea. Therefore, it is important to find a person who will monitor the situation and record all the most interesting things. Let us remind you: we are talking about creative ideas. In any case, the focus should be on the most relaxing and comfortable environment for communication. Moreover, such events will unite the team, increase team spirit, which will ultimately affect work productivity.

Use creative ideas in your work and analyze their effectiveness

No one can say for sure that this or that creative idea is guaranteed to work in practice and meet or even exceed expectations. Firstly, it is difficult to predict the user reaction. Secondly, while the idea itself is being transformed into content, a certain amount of time will pass and it may turn out that the relevance itself is lost. Thirdly, it is impossible to say at all how well everything will be implemented, because the idea is one thing, and the finished product is something completely different.

To minimize problems, it is necessary to perform comprehensive testing of all creative ideas. And here they rely on openness and flexibility. Here are several proven ways to test creativity:

1. Take your idea outside the team of specialists. It is best if you show your thoughts to people who are not connected with the sphere of marketing or advertising. These can be friends, relatives, or complete strangers. Recently, the services of focus groups have often been used. The idea itself is not new, but today in practice it has become widespread, becoming a standard for most projects. This way, you can count on a fresh opinion and understand whether your audience will like your concept. It is best to involve people of different ages and interests in a focus group. If it turns out that the idea is already quite clear at a basic level, then you can think about implementing it.
2. Launch a small promo version of the future creative in order to assess interest from the market. Here, it is not necessary to disclose all the material, features of the product or brand that you plan to present to the audience. The main idea will be enough. The main thing is that here you can show people what to expect from the future video. If at the stage of analyzing the results you understand that the market has seen potential even in such simple descriptions, then you can continue working.
3. Periodically use in practice strategies that involve launching several successive creatives. In this way, you will consistently introduce the audience to the product, service or company that you are promoting, increasing the level of recognition and loyalty. But even after the first stage, you will see how the market has responded to your creative. If everything is good, you can move in the same direction. If it turns out that the advertising did not work properly, you will have time to identify the cause and make appropriate adjustments in the next stage.

In any case, there is quite a lot of creative and extraordinary work ahead. In order to implement the idea as correctly as possible, you need to have the appropriate knowledge, skills, and intuition. You also need to regularly test the results, and always be ready to accept the appropriate challenges. You just need to experiment, analyze until you get a creative that is ideal in all respects: interesting, recognizable, successful.

Choosing metrics to determine the effectiveness of creatives

Regardless of what creative project you will deal with in practice, in the end you will have to implement all the tasks that were written in the brief. This is what all subsequent work will be built on. That is, regardless of what ideas you decide to implement, the main thing is to solve the tasks that the customer of the project set. That is, you will need to achieve all the KPIs specified in the cooperation agreement.

In most cases, one of the most important parameters here for companies that are just starting to enter the market can be called increasing brand awareness. Using conversions for this, increasing loyalty in this case is hardly a good option, since at this stage you are still working for the future. A more reasonable solution is to focus on forming knowledge about the brand itself among the audience. That is, you should check how many people remember the new brand, what products and services it supplies to the market, how it differs from analogues. If this is achieved at the first stage, then this is already very good.

It is a completely different matter if we are talking about launching creatives for companies that produce goods, services, that is, enter the market with a specific product offer. Here it will already be necessary to pay attention to other criteria when assessing the effectiveness of advertising. There is already a direct relationship with sales. This means that attention should be paid to how much the number of orders has increased, the amount of each individual order and the total income for the period under study. You can also evaluate how many new clients the brand has acquired. It is also very important to compare the income received and all the expenses that went into developing and launching the campaign. This is the only way you can evaluate the effectiveness. This means that the key criteria for assessing the effectiveness in this case will be an increase in revenue, ROI and other similar ones.

We would also like to draw your attention to the fact that today we can highlight a number of such advertising campaigns, the effectiveness of which makes itself known only in a fairly distant future. This mainly applies to strategic, image projects that initially set long-term goals. As an option, this could be:

1. Formation of consistently high loyalty to the business from the consumer market.
2. Strengthening the brand, which is largely manifested by increasing its recognition and forming a permanent consumer audience, a regular increase in the number of new clients, financial stability.
3. Changing the audience's perception: is formed when an unfamiliar company attracts regular orders, moves into the category of one that can be trusted.

Evaluating the effectiveness of such creatives is not as easy as for the campaigns we talked about above. Here you cannot do without a thorough and comprehensive analysis of all metrics related to the Brand Health Tracking category. Practice shows that these works can drag on for months or even years. But this will no longer be a universal solution typical for any company and content. This is already a tool that will transform and adapt to specific goals and objectives of each stage of work with the brand. In this case, it will be necessary to select individual metrics for each creative and evaluate their effectiveness within the framework of a separate project.

Optimize your creatives before launching through VK Advertising

If you have been working with advertising for a long time, are well versed in marketing, then you probably already know that even high-quality creatives created on the basis of all the wishes of the customer and the rules that are typical for them in practice can work differently. Of course, a lot depends on what audience they are targeting. It is clear that creatives dedicated to products for children will give a good result in practice among parents whose children are, let's say, up to 15-17 years old. But teenagers, people of a more mature age, whose children have already grown up, will not be interested in such advertising at all. Of course, here, first of all, you should focus on the target audience. But in some cases, advertising even for goods of common use does not always work as expected. And the whole point is that it has not been tested correctly in practice.

VK Advertising is a tool that will allow you to test your creatives before launching them on the market and understand how promising they are. To implement these works correctly, use our recommendations:

1. Launch one advertising campaign and create only one working group in it.
2. Configure targeting parameters. Here it is better to start with fairly broad indicators, without narrowing the audience by social or financial status. Built-in VK Advertising algorithms will independently select the target audience that may be interested in your products and services.
3. Create several advertisements within the group you created. These can be either static images or video ads for each of the ads. Thanks to this breakdown, the service algorithms will understand on which platforms it is worth posting materials in order to get maximum coverage. Moreover, VK Advertising can adapt your content to the specifics of the placement location.
4. Set your advertising budget for 1 day. It is important to understand what target actions you want to get as a result. It is optimal to set at least 2, or better yet 3 actions at the testing stage that you would like to get from your audience. Your budget will be determined based on this.
5. To assess the prospects, it will be enough to wait an average of 3-5 days. During this time, the program will collect all the necessary statistics, and at the output you will receive a full set of information. Among other things, the cost of one target action will also be indicated here.

With the information received, you will just need to place a bet on the creative that has shown the highest result in practice. Namely, on what gave the most targeted actions with minimal material costs.

After this, you will need to move on to finding the most suitable targets. To perform this work, you will also need to use a new advertising campaign, but launch several ad groups within it and set different targeting at the level of each of them. Here we upload all the creatives that we selected at the previous stage and again set the daily budget, focusing on the same 2-3 target actions. At the output, we also receive statistics, but unlike the previous stage, we select not the best solutions, but those that did not give the desired result in practice, that is, they turned out to be inoperative.

It is clear that conducting such a test will require additional material costs and time from you. But at the output, you will already get a creative that will really work.

Let's summarize

Working with creatives — This is a rather complicated process that requires an extraordinary creative approach, time, and money. Above, we described those points that can be safely used in practice in order to increase the efficiency of work and get the desired result. But here we would like to warn you against using other people's advertising cases as source materials. Firstly, this is not entirely correct and right from a moral point of view, and in some cases it can even entail lawsuits. Secondly, those creatives that people have already seen will not give the same feedback that was observed when the company was first launched.

This means that it is necessary to create your own product even if the work ahead is quite complex and expensive. As source materials for ideas, you can use popular music videos, podcasts, information from opinion leaders that comes through social networks, blogs. You can also bet on interesting TV series. This way you increase your chances of attracting the attention of the audience. And this is what brands compete for in reality. It is also very important to make sure that your creative output has little in common with classic advertising, which the modern market is already very tired of. Your content should become an integral part of working with the brand. One that will interest the audience, will contribute to the fact that people will independently continue to use it with their friends.

A tool such as mobile proxies from the MobileProxy.Space service will provide you with significant assistance in implementing these ideas. With their help, you will ensure high levels of privacy and security of your online work, including protection from any unauthorized access. You will also be able to bypass any regional restrictions in order to access sites blocked in your country, and along with this, access to the most advanced tools in the field of advertising, generating creatives from around the world.

Also, the advantages of using this tool in practice include its dynamism. You will be able to change IP addresses to bypass site bans on multi-accounting, the use of tools that automate actions on the network. This is what will make your work on the Internet as functional, convenient, fast as possible and will significantly facilitate all the work related to finding the best creatives and checking them for effectiveness.

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