Data is essential for developing effective and engaging creative strategies that resonate with your audience and achieve your goals. But what kind of data should you use and how should you use it? In this article, we will explore some of the key data sources and methods that can help you inform your creative strategy and optimize your results.
Audience data is the information you have about your target market, such as their demographics, preferences, behaviors, needs, and pain points. You can use audience data to segment your market, create buyer personas, and tailor your creative messages and channels to their interests and motivations. You can collect audience data from various sources, such as surveys, interviews, social media analytics, website analytics, customer relationship management (CRM) systems, and third-party platforms.
Start by asking what data do you have, and how does it relate to your overall creative strategy? Hopefully your creative strategy has been elaborated with stakeholder buy-in and offers you a goal, the data then can help you design your path. For example, you may want to know if you should push the same content on all communications channels or if you should adapt in order to achieve maximum engagement. You could set up A/B testing to feel this out.
To inform your creative strategy, leverage a combination of quantitative and qualitative data. Analyze audience demographics, behavior, and preferences to tailor your message effectively. Utilize performance metrics from past campaigns, such as engagement rates and conversion data, to understand what resonates with your audience. Additionally, gather feedback through surveys, focus groups, or social media monitoring to gain qualitative insights that can further refine and enhance your creative approach.
Audience data becomes the essential basis on which we build our content strategy. For a client we found that on Linkedin most sales people our following us. Then we tweaked our creatives which they would value to them.
Competitive data is the information you have about your competitors, such as their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. You can use competitive data to benchmark your performance, identify gaps and niches in the market, and differentiate your value proposition and positioning. You can collect competitive data from various sources, such as online research, industry reports, media monitoring, social listening, and mystery shopping.
Every month we analyse 2 3 competitors over 3 4 mediums & identify their best posts. We saw one highlighting their events more another was using social & current news more & another highlighting its being more environment friendly. This inputs helped the creative team to make changes in their strategy.
Creative data is the information you have about your own creative assets, such as their design, content, format, and distribution. You can use creative data to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of your creative strategy, and to test and improve your creative concepts and executions. You can collect creative data from various sources, such as feedback, reviews, ratings, comments, shares, likes, clicks, conversions, and return on investment (ROI).
Contextual data is the information you have about the external factors that influence your creative strategy, such as the trends, events, issues, and sentiments that affect your audience and your industry. You can use contextual data to adapt your creative strategy to the changing needs and expectations of your market, and to leverage the opportunities and challenges that arise in your environment. You can collect contextual data from various sources, such as news, blogs, podcasts, webinars, forums, and influencers.
In India there are many current events & festivals happening all around the year. We preempted some & were ready for cricket world cup, Chandrayaan posts. We received positive response in most of them.
Ethical data is the information you have about the ethical implications and consequences of your creative strategy, such as the impact on your reputation, credibility, trust, and social responsibility. You can use ethical data to ensure that your creative strategy aligns with your values and principles, and that it respects the rights and interests of your stakeholders. You can collect ethical data from various sources, such as codes of conduct, policies, guidelines, standards, regulations, and best practices.
It's critical to consider ethical data now more than ever before - when building your creative strategy - and the best way to do it is to involve your leaders looking after three key spheres (i) diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI); (ii) environment, social, and governance (ESG); (iii) sustainability. They can each share key metrics they follow, how they impact your business, staff, as well as your competitors, and help you see how they can help make your creative strategy more thoughtful, considerate, and well-rounded.
Strategic data is the information you have about the goals and objectives of your creative strategy, such as the outcomes and outputs you want to achieve and measure. You can use strategic data to plan and prioritize your creative actions and resources, and to monitor and evaluate your creative results and learnings. You can collect strategic data from various sources, such as vision statements, mission statements, strategies, plans, frameworks, models, and tools.
Quantitative and qualitative data BOTH have strengths and weaknesses, so use both! Analyze customer feedback, market trends, and competitors' communications. Employee surveys can provide insights into internal perspectives. Monitor social media analytics, customer reviews, and engagement metrics for real-time feedback. Gather data on industry benchmarks, demographics, and relevant case studies to inform your approach.