How can you use data to identify the most effective creative approach?

How can you use data to improve creativity? First, gather data from past campaigns to see what worked best. Study customer feedback to understand their preferences. Use analytics tools to track audience engagement with different creative pieces. Compare this data to sales or other success metrics. Look for patterns to see which creative ideas connect most with your audience. Use this insight to guide your next campaign, ensuring it's aligned with what your audience likes and responds to.

Questioning assumptions, looking beyond the obvious, striving to understand the deeper 'why' behind the data. Feedback Loops: Don't: Being defensive of negative feedback. Do: Embrace criticism as a goldmine for improvement. The most passionate critics can provide the most valuable insights. Trend Analysis: Don't: Jumping on every trend without discerning its relevance. Do: Delve into the origins and narratives behind trends. Understand why something is trending and how it aligns with the brand's ethos or the audience's needs. Social Media Listening: Don't: Focusing on mentions or direct feedback. Do: Explore adjacent conversations, like what're people saying about the broader industry? Contextual understanding can be eye-opening.

Remember that data informs the brief/problem not the solution. The data can come before or after the work, i.e. data collected to inform audience understanding (before), or data collected as part of the results of the work (after). Either way you use it to inform the next brief, not the answer to the next brief.

There are largely two data sources to look at: media & business. Data from past campaigns can give an indicator into what segments are best engaging. However, these media metrics like view through rate or engagement rate are simply proxies. A better, more sophisticated use of data to inform creative strategy is integrating your CRM to exposure on different platforms & measuring the lift of certain segments or demographics against actual business data (revenue, customer lifetime value, churn, etc.) Then design your creative (and media) strategies to better align to these segments, rather than looking at proxies like media metrics.

Utilizing data in creativity isn't stifling, it's about guiding imagination to impactful avenues. Here's a simplified route: 1. Setting Goals: Start with a clear aim, like boosting brand recognition or sales, guiding the creative strategy effectively. 2. Know Your Audience: Use tools like Google Analytics to understand their preferences, tailoring a resonating message. 3. Look Back to Move Forward: Review past campaigns for insights that shape future strategies. 4. Experiment: Test different creative ideas through A/B testing to find what engages the audience. 5. Feedback is Gold: Collect feedback through reviews or social media for direct insights.

Do not lose sight of the fact that the data that one is seeing, the numbers, most often would correlate an activity/activities in the lives of common people. To make the creative leap, one must put themselves in the shoes of these common people to understand these activities and pursue the study. It's only when one has the relatability and the resonance that they will be able to pursue a creative solution to a problem that they understand.

Data can help you understand your customers requirements and also can allow you to customize your approach accordingly. This will allow one to reach the right audience with the right messaging and get the right product to be pushed to market.

Understanding your audience is a step often overlooked. Companies rush in to test the performance of their creative, but overlook whether the audience is correct or properly defined. If you audience is not right, then all your data is scewed.

Different creative/content approaches work for different audiences hence A/B testing various offers and messaging to analyze the results and then pushing the best creatives using paid media budget.

There is no one perfect message. Ignore anyone who tells you there is. They lack imagination. Your job is to choose one awesome message out of the infinite possible awesome messages. That is not a simple task. But it also provides hope. There are so many good things you can do. With your skills, you're bound to stumble upon something good.

WATCHOUT: There’s a gap the size of the Grand Canyon between ‘the message you want to deliver’ and your ‘creative message’. 😉 The former is clear, simple, and can sit comfortably on the website. If your Marketing department is any good - they will replace the buzzwords with simple human language, and voilà - people will actually read your entire page. 😱 (How do I know? Been there, done that, got THAT customer feedback in testing.) You can use the same for paid media / digital ads, sure….ONLY if your goal is to drain your budget in the shortest possible period of time. 👀 (Scroll down, I'll tell you what to do instead. 😉 )

Imagine you're launching a new line of organic skincare products. Data-driven testing reveals that your audience responds better to a friendly, informative tone rather than hard-selling. You've fine-tuned your message accordingly, highlighting the benefits of your products without being pushy. Data empowers you to adapt your message in real-time, ensuring it resonates with your audience and supports your creative objectives. In essence, data transforms your message from a shot in the dark to a precision-guided arrow.

By understanding your audience, you should have a firm understanding on how to trigger a response. The messaging you use should go hand in hand to defining the impact and design you run with. Speak to your audience, trigger and emotion and let the media support that.

So let's get on the same page. Infographics/concise creatives and photographs work for B2B, and dancing and interactive reels work best on Instagram. It is important to know and learn about which media works for which platform and use them wisely.

Want your creative strategy to ACTUALLY work? Appeal to the 85% of the audience who are NOT interested in you, meet them AT THEIR DISINTEREST. 🤯 Stop the scroll! Use creative metaphors, humour, reverse psychology - ANYTHING to get them to actually notice your ad. THAT’S the difference between saying 'what you need to say’ and ‘what they audience might actually hear’. (In the spirit of this article, A/B test this, yeah. 😅) P.S. For people who go - ‘DAMN, this is hard, where do we get these creative ideas from?!’ You do it once WELL and keep it going. ‘Creative wearout’ is a myth for most companies - if anything, your target audience is seeing NOT ENOUGH of your ad, for it to be effective. Do yourself a favour, do it properly…ONCE. 👌

In addition to the key steps mentioned above, it's crucial to continually monitor and adapt your creative approach based on real-time data feedback. For instance, during a seasonal promotion, you might discover that a particular color scheme or messaging style performs exceptionally well. Being agile and responsive to such insights can be the difference between a good campaign and a great one. Keep the feedback loop with data open to ensure your creative approach stays ahead of the curve.

It might be strange to hear a researcher say this but data and insights are just one input. If you base your entire creative strategy on a bunch of numbers you are going to lose some of the magic that comes from human creativity. Use data to inspire, guide, and prioritise but it is just one voice of many at the table. You really do want to give creatives as much room to play as humanly possible, when you use data to reduce the playing field your creative output will suffer as a result.