The current economic landscape has businesses in every industry restructuring their advertising strategies. The likelihood of a recession ebbs and flows, and globalization and digitization has increased competition by opening businesses of every size to new markets.
Couple this economic volatility with the multitude of digital and social platforms that make it even more difficult and expensive than before to capture consumers’ interest, and you’ve got a perfect storm. In fact, some marketers are calling our current digital age an “attention economy,” meaning human attention is seen as a scarce commodity.
Sounds like we’re all in for a rough ride, doesn’t it? Yet some brands are not only pulling through these turbulent times, but they’re also thriving – and all because they’ve realized that the best path toward long-term business success isn’t by slashing budgets. It’s by maintaining, or even increasing, their marketing funds through creative advertising.
What Is Creative Advertising?
Global economic uncertainty has led many brands to tighten their marketing budgets, but history repeatedly proves that this isn’t the right move. Despite the temptation to cut spending, it is strategically disadvantageous to lower your advertising budget during a downturn. What is profitable, however, is to make creative advertising choices that maximize the efficacy of your existing ad spend.
Creative advertising is:
- A well-established form of marketing that relies on original ideas to communicate with consumers
- An opportunity to advertise your brand in a way that is highly memorable
- A way for your brand to evoke a response from and foster connections with consumers
- Your chance to break away from traditional advertising and instead leverage innovative advertising strategies and emotional storytelling to make sales
- The single biggest determinant of advertising profitability, and several times more powerful than the other levers marketers can control
There is ample evidence to suggest that investing in creativity will deliver a bigger ROI (which we’ll discuss more below). You’ll be happy to know that the process of developing creative advertising also isn’t all that different from the way you already design your ad campaigns.
Start by conducting research and understanding your target audience, craft a memorable message, then launch and test your promotional blitz. The one key difference between regular advertising and creative advertising is the way you use emotional storytelling to connect with audiences.
Why Invest in Creative Advertising?
Time after time, the brands that experience the most long-term success are the ones that employ creative advertising strategies to connect emotionally with their audiences. Maintaining or increasing your advertising budget gives your business these vital benefits:
- Ad spend generates a positive brand image and sales
- Greater media spend can also lead to greater market share
- Brands that continue to invest can bounce back more quickly from a downturn
How Does Creative Advertising Boost ROI?
Creativity is the most important factor in getting an audience to notice your brand. A recent Kantar Group market research study proves that creativity can actually deliver a 400% increase in ROI. Wondering how? Here’s a quick list of the ways creative advertising boosts your returns ratio:
Creative messages that lean into emotion and humor have the highest chance of being noticed and remembered by target audiences.
Brands that make an emotional connection with consumers increase brand loyalty, thereby lowering the long-term cost of the investment.
Creative storytelling, especially when competitors are cutting back on ad spend, can have a huge impact and win greater market share.
But creative advertising only works if your brand maintains or even increases its marketing budget.
We know you’ve got budgets to balance and profits to maintain, but cutting your creative teams and resources down to the bare minimum is never going to give you the results you need.
If you’re reading this article, you are very likely searching for new ways to maximize your advertising without losing out on valuable marketing opportunities. Please trust us when we say that, in all our years of supporting clients in their advertising strategies, we have never seen a cutback lead to growth.
Ready to apply this knowledge and transform your approach from fear to freedom? Let’s explore the steps you can take today to strategically allocate (not cut) your marketing budget, revamp your advertising strategies, and tune into emotional storytelling!
Creative Advertising for Your Brand: How You Can Start Today
Leap Group uses an entire toolbox of strategies to generate breakthrough creative and help our clients generate revenue in both the short- and long-term. You can partner with us and de-stress your creative advertising process, or you can follow our tips below to try your hand at optimized ad spend. Either way, these steps will help you get the most out of your budget while keeping your revenue growing.
01.
Do Your Homework.
First and foremost, you must put in the work to conduct audience and competitive research. This market data is critical to informing your creative development. Without a strong foundation of audience research, you won’t be able to speak to consumer pain points, offer valuable educational content, or evoke an emotional connection.
Market research enables you to know exactly what type of consumers are seeking out your brand, which platforms they’re using, and what’s motivating them to act, and competitive research clues you into what other successful brands in your industry are doing so you can do something different and stand out.
02.
Get Creative.
Yes, it might sound obvious that creativity is necessary in creative advertising, but all too often, we work with clients who get a little too comfortable with their tried-and-true methods and unintentionally stop taking risks. Remember that the best way to connect with customers is often by leaning into emotions like humor, joy, and surprise when it’s appropriate. Bottom line: You’ll never be memorable by creating something “safe.”
03.
Commit to Your Vision.
Through a symbiotic partnership, the Cannes Lions and WARC organizations have discovered that effective ad campaigns aren’t always driven by the biggest budgets. Instead, top-performing advertising content is made when a brand has massive amounts of something called “Creative Commitment,” or a combination of media budget, campaign duration, and media channels.
Reach out to Leap Group today to learn more about committing to your creative advertising vision, or dive into our recent whitepaper to immerse yourself in the science of ads that make an impact!
Leverage Creative Advertising with Leap Group
Leap Group offers our clients simplified access to specialized agencies that can help with video production, social media content, AI enhancement, brand identity, product packaging, and so much more. We use our entire creative toolkit to develop breakthrough creative ideas that make our clients matter more. Partner with Leap Group today and see how we:
Blend strategy with creativity to create dynamic digital content
Uncover insights and deliver design-centric solutions
Inspire audiences to take action
Synchronize social and paid media to generate revenue
Help your brand stretch, flex, and adapt
Collaborate with your existing team or serve as your agency of record
Top it off with 25 years of experience working directly with clients on local and global levels across every industry and platform, and you’ve got the Leap Group team. We’re always creative, always on – and always ready to hear about your next project. Reach out to get started today!
