From brief, to design, to launch. Seems straightforward enough, right? So why does your team’s creative workflow seem to not be working anymore? They’re as productive as ever (and often feeling overwhelmed). But your ad campaigns are yielding unsatisfying results. Is that common? Yes. But, most importantly, can you remedy that and get your campaigns (and your team’s happiness) back on track? Also yes.
Omnichannel marketing is expanding with new channels. Personalization demands of your team more effort and productive output. And real-time testing is no longer a trend or a good-to-have, but a necessity. And all of those aspects are vital for your marketing strategies. But at the same time, they make your team’s work a lot more demanding. Keeping up with all the aspects of a good marketing strategy requires that your teams start working in a smarter way. Enter, data-driven creative workflows.
A data-driven workflow is a process in which data is used to inform decision-making and optimization. When it comes to marketing, teams focus on data-driven creative workflows: they create processes in which data informs their creative decisions. That doesn’t mean that teams stop being creative; data is there to provide your creative teams with direction, inform them on how their creatives are performing, and help them optimize for greater impact. This makes your ad campaigns stronger and more effective. It also helps your team keep up with the demands personalization creates, and makes omnichannel campaign creation and deployment that much easier.
A data-driven creative workflow can also help with your team’s workload: no more unnecessary creative iterations that don’t create an impact. You will now know what performs, what can be tweaked to boost performance, and what is unnecessary, helping you cut down the workload without sacrificing the impact of your ad campaign. With a data-driven creative workflow, your team will also collaborate better, taking advantage of feedback loops and using centralized dashboards to all have access to the same data. No more miscommunication, siloed data, and unnecessary frustrations.
Starting with your data-driven creative workflow might seem daunting. But following these steps will help you and your team put in place everything you need to succeed.
This is the part most companies already have in place. Take into consideration all your main business objectives, but make sure to also take into account your team’s creative objectives. If these haven’t been defined before, this is the right time to get together with your team and look into that. Prioritize creative objectives so you are left with those that truly matter the most and have the largest impact on your business objectives.
This is the time to decide on the data you are going to use to inform your creative process. Based on the objectives you have already identified, look into the nature of the data you need. List all the data sources you are going to use, and make sure your company is compliant with all relevant laws and regulations.
Interpreting data requires you to have the right tools. If you’re already using a creative automation platform, you are already on the right track. A creative automation platform is the ideal tool to inform your creative process
Some aspects of the same creative might be performing well, while others might be causing your audience to churn. You want to be able to adjust the exact elements of your creative that don’t work - and, of course, keep the ones that are performing well. This is why you need to separate your creative into components and adjust them as needed: headlines, images, CTAs. Make sure the components you create are tagged and trackable, so you can analyze their performance. Now you’ll be able to both track and adjust only what is needed.
Don’t let testing become an afterthought or a nice-to-have for when the team has spare time. To get the most out of your data-driven creative workflow, set testing frameworks from the start. Design campaign with A/B tests for different creative variations, and set up testing for the creative rotations in place to minimize creative fatigue.
Raising your marketing campaign ROI requires you to track creative performance continuously. Focus on continuously consulting analytics dashboards in your tools. Make sure you take advantage of real-time metrics so your team pivots fast when needed. And, if possible, set up alerts for underperforming creatives.
Data is paramount in informing your team on the performance of marketing campaigns. But while they need a creative workflow that is more data-driven, you need to make sure that you’re protecting creativity. This is a very important aspect of your advertising campaigns, and your team needs to know and feel that the human factor in general, and especially creativity, is always at the core of your advertising strategies. Here is how to make sure that you’re protecting creativity in your team’s creative workflow:
Data is your team’s information source, not a hard rule on creatives. A data-driven creative workflow will inform your team on what the audience likes or dislikes, but it’s not there to dictate how your team will act on that, or what creative process they will use to reach their collective goal. Communicate this clearly to your team to ease any concerns, and lead by encouraging teams to think creatively first, and test after. This will reassure them and safekeep their creativity, while also showing them that data can be a good information source on how the audience responds to their ideas
For all its advantages, a data-driven workflow in the creative process can’t (and shouldn’t) dictate all aspects of your strategy. So, before you start setting your workflow, align with your team to define your non-negotiables: things such as your brand’s identity, tone of voice, or creative must-haves based on brand identity.
Creativity is your brain power, data is your tool. Create a stable process of creative reflection after each campaign, where the team will gather to interpret the data you received. The team members will be able to collaborate, brainstorm, and use their creative power to reflect on the campaign’s results and understand how to create better campaigns in the future.
Keep creative exploration at the heart of the creative process. Make sure that, aside from your team’s campaign reflection meetings, you also set brainstorming sessions in place. These need to be independent from any form of data, encouraging all team members to participate in purely creative sessions. This collaboration will not only safeguard, but also amplify their creative power. And, at the same time, it will showcase that their creativity is as important to the process as ever.
A data-driven creative workflow can boost your team’s productivity and help them keep up with the increasing demands of the advertising landscape. It can provide valuable insights into your creatives’ performance, and empower your team’s creative process. But it’s important to safeguard creativity. Make sure to communicate its value to your team through actions, like incorporating purely creative brainstorming sessions to your processes.