Creative Advertising Methods and Madness
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Making ads that resonate with customers is a fine art, which many marketers still haven’t got to grips with. Although ads need to be informative and tell the customer about the product, they also need to generate an emotional response. People need to be able to related to the company and put their trust in it, and the best way to achieve that response is to use creative advertising methods.
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Coming up with new ideas for adverts is incredibly difficult and for every good idea, there are thousands of bad ones. That’s why marketing professionals often attend ad school so they can learn the ins and outs of advertising and understand what constitutes a good idea. If you are struggling to come up with creative advertising ideas, try these different methods for creating an ad.
Analyze Your Business
An advert should show the consumer what your business is all about and why you are better than your competitors. But it’s tough to capture that when making ads if you don’t really know the answer to that yourself. Analyzing your business can help you to work out what differentiates you from the competition and provide some good jumping off points for new ad campaigns. Doing a SWOT analysis on your business is one of the best places to start when you are trying to come up with creative advertising ideas SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. By identifying each of these areas, you can get a good sense of what your business does best, and this can be the focus of your ad campaigns. In all creative advertising campaigns, it is important that you have a core idea that underpins them all. This creates consistency and helps you to build a strong brand. This Big Idea needs to encapsulate the things that your business does best, which is why analyzing your business is such a great way to come up with new, creative ideas. Get to Know Your Audience
Understanding your audience is also key to creating good ads. Different people respond to different methods, so before you design any ads, get to know your target audience better. Think about how they spend their spare time, what problems do they encounter in their daily lives and how can you solve them, and which advertising platforms are most likely to reach them. Once you start to understand the lifestyles of the consumers that you are trying to target, you will find it so much easier to generate winning ideas for creative advertising campaigns. It also helps you to find the right tone with your copywriting, so you can speak to people on their level. Make sure to conduct plenty of market research and consider running focus groups for previous adverts. Seeing how people respond to your existing ads gives you valuable information about what works and what doesn’t, so you can make adjustments when generating new ideas. Look At Your Competitors
Seeing what other similar companies are doing can often give you some inspiration. However, the aim here is not to copy what they’re doing, it’s to find a new approach. The #Morning Win campaign by Belvita is a prime example of this. During their research, they discovered that most breakfast food ads took a negative approach to the morning. They marketed their products as a solution to this and promised the nutrition that you need to help you overcome the challenge of the morning. But Belvita decided that they would go in the opposite direction and take a positive view of the morning. They portrayed it as a time for achieving things and invited their customers to share their Morning Wins on social media. The campaign was a huge success, all because Belvita looked at what their competitors were doing and they were inspired to take a completely different approach. Think About Cultural Trends
Tapping into trends is a brilliant way to create ads that resonate with people. Flash mobs are a prime example of this and when they were at the height of their popularity, a lot of brands used them as part of creative advertising campaigns that really got people talking. One of the most memorable examples was the T-Mobile ad, filmed in the middle of a packed train station. Hidden cameras were used to capture the real-life reactions of the commuters and, at the time, everybody was talking about this incredibly innovative ad. Flash mobs aren’t popular anymore and you shouldn't use them in your ad campaigns. But the T-Mobile ad is a prime example of how tapping into current cultural trends can lead to some incredibly creative advertising that is very well received. Social media is a brilliant place to find cultural trends that your brand can get involved in. Quantify Results From Previous Advertising Campaigns
Your previous marketing campaigns are the most valuable asset that you have at your disposal when trying to come up with fresh ideas. Whenever you launch a new marketing campaign, it is vital that you keep a close eye on analytics to see how it is performing. Look for changes to website traffic, new social media followers, and sales figures. This will give you an indication of how effective your marketing campaigns are. When you are trying to come up with new ideas, you can look back at your most successful advertising campaigns and think about what made them work so well. That doesn’t mean you should copy old ideas and do more of the same, but if you can identify your most successful ideas from the past, it might spark some new, creative ideas. In a lot of cases, you might be able to find a Big Idea, which underpins your creative advertising campaigns in the future. There are a number of different ways to come up with new creative advertising ideas and build campaigns. Once you have developed the initial idea and decided on the concepts that underpin your adverts, you can start designing specific marketing assets and focusing on areas like copywriting and ad design. |