.png)
Content
Risks of Creative Marketing Without a Clear Strategy for Business
December 9, 2024
7 mins
Often, brands go straight to developing creatives and launching communications, downplaying the strategy stage. The approach entails investment risks for businesses. So, there’s a big question on today’s agenda regarding creativity in digital marketing.
Today, Promodo’s Strategy Team will explain creativity without a strategy. We will highlight what brands are losing by downplaying the research stage, and why it is essential to consider strategy as an investment in marketing effectiveness.
The creative side of marketing encompasses ideas, approaches, and solutions to help businesses grow, become visible among the competition, and attract new customers. Creativity is a powerful tool for building mental accessibility - effective memorizing of your core message.
High-quality creatives evoke an emotional response from consumers, thereby building memory structures. Every time a person experiences a relevant emotion or need, they unconsciously refer to your brand. It helps to create and assign recognizable brand attributes.
Without a creative strategy in marketing, however, no business is complete. A marketing strategy starts with planning and ends with implementing. First, we evaluate our resources and competitors, explore the market, and then create a strategy with creative marketing tactics to implement.
Whenever a new client comes to Promodo, we align their marketing and business goals. The crystallization of strategic client goals is the reference point we rely on in providing strategic recommendations and developing creatives.
“Setting goals” sounds like something obvious. However, the process assumes coping with managers who cannot formulate their business and marketing goals. They can’t answer what results they want to achieve or refer to “broad” indicators instead. We recommend formulating goals in line with the SMART model: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Victoria Pagut, Senior Brand Strategist at Promodo.
If a client goes straight to developing a creative idea not grounded on a strategy and does not consider business needs, the adverse effects may be as follows:
Ideally, brand work starts with strategy planning. Further, we implement the strategy into the creative. In reality, however, we often notice a common behavioral pattern among business owners: a desire to skip months of market, competitor, and audience research to achieve “quick wins.” Most businesses lack time for an in-depth analysis; instead, they stick to the subjective feeling that they already know everything about the market and the business audience. And this is a total mistake in a managerial mindset. Victoria Pagut, Senior Brand Strategist at Promodo.
Marketing strategy intends to boost a business with ‘evidence-based thinking’ that supposes fact-proven thinking mode. That's why the results of market research surprise business owners. Oftentimes, it turns out that the audience of their brand is different in their buying behaviors, needs, or pains. And, that’s what is at odds with what business owners may imagine initially. Market research is vital to debunk these false perceptions.
Without a clear understanding of the target audience, most brands shoot in the dark by targeting the wrong audience, delivering irrelevant messages, spend extra budgets on ineffective promotions. Even if they modify their campaign marketing strategies, they still fail to attain their goals. And, all this often leads to a hasty conclusion: marketing does not work at all!
When analyzing communications, we regularly come across brands lacking focus. They appeal to too many audience segments while trying to position themselves as an “all-for-everyone” brand. In an attempt to please everyone, they deliver messages that confuse consumers or cause conflicting reactions. As a result, communication fails to reach the right audience.
Marketing strategy is not just about “where we go” but also about “where we don't go”. It defines the audience and communication zone within which we communicate and what we refuse to do.
The successful brand story that managed to find the right answer to this core question is IKEA. The brand occupied the premium furniture niche by focusing on wealthier consumers and offering expensive, exclusive products. The company has turned into a global leader in the affordable furniture segment. IKEA has clearly defined that it is not going to enter the luxury market, sustaining its strategic focus on key brand audiences without dilution.
IKEA communicates its positioning through communication messages. In one of its creative marketing campaigns 2024, the brand created a series of posters depicting situations where animals acted as domestic abusers. Whether it's a dog chewing on a pillow or a cat breaking a cup, no owner is immune against it. Nonetheless, extra expenses cause less panic when spoiled goods are available. And that’s IKEA’s slogan for its new campaign. Another interesting insight of this ad is in targeting a particular audience segment of pet owners, including a solid share of consumers.
Another risk of launching a creative without understanding the strategy is a brand that will experiment with communication by changing key messages every few months. The approach is erroneous as it deviates from the brand essence or delivers opposing messages simultaneously. Eventually, the consumers misinterpret the brand image as inconsistent and unclear. All this affects the effectiveness of marketing investments.
The approach we recommend is to opt for a single point which we will target consistently for a few years. The example of giant brands (think of anyone: Coca-Cola, Nike, or Apple) shows that the key to effectiveness is one big brand idea carried on for a long time. Lead brands maintain a single course of action for many years. Fundamentally, while they don't deviate from strategic positioning, they only modify tactics. This is how the synergy of strategy and creativity works best.
Kantar reports that the more messages a video holds, the less consumers will recall it. And that's why a brand should decide on a single idea to convey, and where it should not communicate it.
.png)
We suggest the following sequence:
1. Collect data on which you’ll base the Positioning Triangle
.png)
2. Set your positioning. What territory do we play on? What audience are we fighting for? What is one key brand message?
3. Develop a media plan. Channels through which we will address the audience.
4. Develop a creative strategy. Align creative ideas with the overall brand marketing strategy.
Before we go on, we are planning the route: we study the market and define a strategy that provides a brand with a clear course of action and helps our clients avoid common mistakes.
A consistent strategic approach allows us to build a strong image, and recognition, and win trust among consumers. As a result, it gives you a competitive advantage - resilience over other businesses and a strong brand that is resilient to temporary crises and market competition.
Journalist at Promodo
For over 4 years, I have been working as a journalist in the communications and marketing industry. I help brands communicate effectively through written content, engage with market experts, and create professional materials on topics related to business and marketing, sharing insights on working with marketing tools.
You may also like
Choose quality and trusted services to improve the presence of your company on the Internet, and feel free to contact our UK team if you have any questions.
We at Promodo are ready to help you improve your performance across all digital marketing channels.
Get started
.svg){kind=logo}
