Your digital campaign is designed to get your message in front of the right audience for your business. But is your creative strategy as strategic as your media strategy?
The most well planned media strategy can completely go to waste if your creative doesn’t do its part. An effective creative strategy begins with considering best practices along with the use of emerging technologies that result in engaging your ideal customer and growing your business.
Construct a strong call to action.
You only have mere seconds to make an impact. You need to motivate your audience to take action before they lose interest and move on. Ask yourself, if this person is going to do just one thing, what do you want that to be? Call? Register? Download a free whitepaper? Be singular, clear and direct. Get your audience to focus on the action you most want them to take.
Answer the right question.
What’s in it for me? That’s what your audience will be asking so make sure to give them an answer. Does your product save them time and money? Make them happy? Make them smarter? Richer? Stress-free? Answering these questions will have more impact than 10 product features packed into a 300 x 250 pixel digital ad.
Create relevant landing pages.
When someone clicks on your ad, where do they go? The landing page for your campaign must be consistent with the message in your ad. For example, let’s say you are advertising “Register Now” for an event. Make sure the click-through URL delivers the user directly to a registration page with the relevant details. Customers aren’t going to hunt. You will lose them as quickly as you got them. It’s known as “a high-bounce rate.” Do you have a high-bounce rate?
Make sure the ad is device specific.
In today’s mobile dominated world, your strategy should include both advertising on mobile devices and desktop computers. On a desktop, you can expect the customer to take more time – to “learn more.” On a smartphone you better get right to the point – “find a location near you,” for example.
Embrace emerging technologies.
Emerging technologies are beginning to transform performance metrics. Responsive Rich Media works to increase engagement with digital ads by combining the power of video with other features. Video, along with features such as adding an event to a calendar, social sharing and email capture, appear within the ad and provide the functionality to interact with your most desired calls to action without leaving the ad unit. You can even conduct a survey from within an ad. This engages the user longer and on a deeper level, while also potentially providing you with valuable data about the user. Just as websites are working harder to provide meaningful content to users, digital display ads are evolving to be more than just impressions and click-throughs. Ad engagement is quickly becoming the new metric.
So remember, your creative strategy and your media strategy work in concert. Don’t forget to make sure they are truly working together.