How to Develop a Creative Strategy

Having a solid creative strategy for your campaigns can set you apart from your competitors. Your creative strategy is all about defining what your advertising goals are, and planning on how you are going to achieve them through innovative advertising and marketing approaches that will appeal to your audience. For example, using humour to appeal to your audience or showcase everyday use of your product through a series of social videos.

For business owners, we know this can sound overwhelming. However, spending time planning a strategy ensures your campaign has purpose, direction and goals to achieve. It makes the rest of the work involved in building a campaign much easier too. Let us break it down for you.

Define your goals

What do you want your advertising to achieve? Every campaign has different goals, whether that is to grow your audience, generate more leads, make more sales or  something else. It’s important to set both short term and long term goals that are financial and non-financial (it isn’t always about the moolah). Our top tip is to use the SMART model when writing goals for your campaign…and keep the number of goals for a campaign to one or two, maximum.

creative strategy development
Write a creative strategy statement

Now use your goals to develop a creative strategy statement. This statement is like a mission statement that outlines how you aim to achieve these goals. It should focus on the reason for the creative strategy, who you are aiming to appeal to and through what creative approach.

Choose your KPIs

Use key performance indicators (KPIs) to track your campaign and check whether you’re on the way to achieving your goal or not. KIPs are dependent on what your goals are. For example, if your goal is to grow your audience, then your KPIs might be increase of social media following and increase of website and/ or foot traffic. If your ad is running on Facebook and Instagram, you will be able to access real-time data about its performance in Ads Manager.

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Determine your target audience and message

Defining your audience is arguably the most important aspect of your strategy because it determines how you will craft your message. The length, tone and delivery of your message will depend on your target audience and their values. Other things to consider is what the content will look like, and where it will appear.

Set your dates

The last step of your creative strategy is to develop a timeline for your campaign. This is usually split into the time spent creating and implementing the strategy, when and how long the campaign will run for, and dates to see results. Timelines helps with the allocation of resources and keeps everyone involved in the project accountable.

 

With these steps, your will set your business up for a successful campaign that has purpose and will (hopefully) result in the achievement of your goal.

Related tag: advertising gold coast

 

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Facebook & Instagram Advertising 101

Facebook & Instagram Advertising 101

It’s no surprise that 80% of Australians have an active social media account. That’s more than the percentage of households with TV’s (gasp!). Therefore, it goes without saying, no business should ignore Facebook as a powerful advertising channel. Affordable and dynamic, Facebook ads can be a game changer for small-to-medium-sized businesses. The best bit, you’re in control of your budget, deciding exactly how much you want to spend and when.

Why We Love Facebook Ads (and you should too!)

Facebook Ad Manager’s most impressive feature is its ability to target users based on a combination of characteristics and behaviour. From age, to location, interests and hobbies, professions and relationship status (and more!), you can create an incredibly targeted audience who will receive and hopefully respond to your communications. By doing so, you’re maximising budget, spending your precious dollars on those who really want your product or service.

But targeting doesn’t stop there. Facebook has so much data on each user, it can target people based on how they’re predicted to act when they see your ad. If you want more website traffic, optimise your ad for landing page views. If you want more sales, optimise for purchases. In addition to purchasing, there are other things you may want users to do such as download an app, send an enquiry, click to call, subscribe to the newsletter etc. You can create Facebook ads to prompt of any of these actions. Top tip; keep the Sales Funnel top of mind.

Be Responsive

The beauty of an ad that can be created and edited with the click of a button allows you to be responsive to current events and trends. With no lead time, you can experiment with little to no risk, helping you to really hone in on what makes your customer tick. Have a bit of fun and jump on a trending meme, make a cheeky ad in response to a footy game or respond to a social movement to show your brand values. The flexibility of Facebook advertising means you can advertise whenever you choose to.

An Integrated Approach is Always Best

Digital advertising is great, but it’s even better when you integrate your campaign across both online and offline channels (we’re talking print ads in the Lennox Wave, radio, billboards etc). You’ll reach more people with more frequency in different areas of their life, reminding them of your brand.

Don’t forget the power of complementing your campaign with organic social content. Post about it on your Facebook and Instagram feed, your stories, reels and IGTV. Write blogs and send eDMs. Not only does this reinforce your messaging, but you may be able to authentically connect with your following. Branch out to other platforms like LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube and TikTok (hint: If you’re targeting young mums, download TikTok now).

One last word: use reports in Ads Manager to understand how your ads are performing and what you could change to better them next time. Contact us for Instagram & Facebook ads in Australia.

How to write a Press Release

We’ve all been waiting for it, and finally 2021 is here. Over the holidays Lennox has been buzzing with visitors. It’s been fantastic to see local businesses being supported after such a trying year.

Success stories are popping up all over the place and if that’s you, it should be part of your marketing strategy to tell people about it. Social media is great at spreading awareness, but a story in the media, whether in a newspaper, magazine or on the TV or radio is unparalleled. Getting your story ‘published’ is the best form of word-of-mouth marketing you can get. We refer to this as ‘earned media’ and it is more trusted and credible to the viewer than ‘paid (owned) media’ as it is seen as unbiased. Naturally, people get talking and before you know it, you will hopefully see an impact on your business in terms of customers and sales.

When something newsworthy happens, let the media know about it by sending them a press release. Journalists are busy bees, so when writing a press release, there is a bit of a recipe to follow to make their life easier.

  1. A Strong and Informative Title

The title is the first thing the journalist will read, so it must clearly describe your story, grab attention and not be too long. This will become your email subject when you send press release out to publications. If it’s boring, the email won’t be opened.

 

  1. Your Subheading is Everything

Journalists receive hundreds of press releases, so don’t have time to read them all. Write a sentence or two that sums up your story and this will become your subheading. Make sure you answer all the Who, Where, When, What, How and Why questions.

 

  1. Talk about the Important Things First

Your press release is not an essay. Like a news article, you need to include the most important and relevant information towards the beginning. When you’ve done this, you can go into more detail, adding quotes and interesting facts about your story.

 

  1. Include Photos with People in Them

Send photos (with people in them) along with your press release. Photos make things more engaging for readers and helps them relate to your story. By including a variety of photos that are captioned, you’ll give your story a better chance of being published.

 

  1. Quotes are important 

Boost the credibility of your story with quotes from the business owners, customers, members of the community…whoever is relevant.

 

  1. Your contact details

Often, journalists will want to get in touch to organise interviews, take photos or learn more. Include your contact details, so they can get in touch.

 

  1. Boilerplate

Appearing at the bottom of every press release, is an outline of your company, products, services, awards and website and social links.

 

And with that fine-tuned recipe, you’ll have a press release ready to send to publications. Happy writing !

Related tag: Digital Marketing Byron Bay