Part 5: Left-Brain Creative
Creative and analytics teams are drastically different disciplines, driven by different personalities and workflows, which means that merging them takes purposeful planning.
The timeline is the first big challenge. The creative team looks ahead, creating new campaigns to be launched in the future while analytics teams review the past, examining what happened and translating that into recommendations that apply to the creative team’s work.
Additionally, the speed at which the creative team moves is another difficulty, making the task of stepping into the communication flow feel like stepping into a four-lane highway. But, it’s worthwhile! Data-driven creative performs better due to increased relevance and enhanced understanding of customer behavior.
So, let’s review what it takes to equip creative teams with the knowledge that they can use to make truly powerful campaigns driven by insights.
WHEN
Project kickoff: For project-based work, this is a no-brainer. This is the simplest and easiest way to get the conversation started early. Every agenda should include a discussion around past results and what strategic or tactical shifts the results indicate.
Monthly/Weekly: This is rote for digital teams, whose work by nature is a constant evolution. To a data-driven marketer, the speed and agility with which digital can launch and measure results is an astonishing wealth of information. But digital isn’t the only team that can benefit from that wealth of information – the test results and trends that the digital team are privy to should also be shared broadly with leadership and offline teams working on the same campaign.
When it comes to multichannel campaigns, we spend time crafting, planning and launching, but it’s also important to be agile. Monitor the campaign response at least weekly, so that if some pieces or tactics are falling flat we can adjust the creative message, timing or tactics using digital channels to make sure the campaign is fully optimized.
Post-campaign: After the campaign concludes, it will be important to look at the campaign results as a whole, determine how to allocate the revenue by channel (last-touch attribution, time decay, etc.) so that we can understand what worked, what didn’t and inform the next big campaign.
WHAT
Make sure the analytics team isn’t just thinking in terms of revenue by channels and tactics. The team should also be prepared to answer questions like these:
- What has creative testing told us about what the customer is responding to?
- What level of personalization is possible? Think beyond names. Can we version by buyer preference?
- What can data tell us about where they are in the customer journey with you? Do certain offers and products work particularly well for converting prospects to buyers?
- Is there versioning that we can employ to improve relevance to the audience?
- What considerations are there for frequency and timing?
In addition, the team should be actively listening for opportunities to connect the knowledge they have about the audience, behaviors and trends to improve the campaign or project.
HOW
So, if we agree that data and creative work best when working together, how can we put it into practice? Here are a few steps.
- Make it a policy that data and creative both get a seat at the table at regular meetings. Invite key members of the creative team into the data review, and invite the data people to the creative kickoff.
- Encourage participation and discussion from both sides. When creative is invited to what’s primarily a data meeting, encourage them to ask questions and offer ideas. Conversely, challenge the data-people on how insights translate to creative presentations.
- Ensure that KPI dashboards cover not just the facts and figures, but always include a review of the creative to put it in the proper context.
One thing is certain: when you get data analysts and creative people in a room, it’s bound to provoke lively discussion. But, discovering new information is the best way to learn from each other, build on each other’s strengths and challenge each other – and the status quo.
These are just a few of the ways we’ve helped clients make smart, data-driven creative decisions. We can help you too. Send an email to laurena@jschmid.com if you need some guidance. We can help!
Tags: analytics, creative, creative testing, Data Driven Marketing, data-informed storytelling, Knowledge-Based Creative, Lauren Ackerman, marketing, marketing strategy