How to allocate time to creativity?

Creativity is a necessity.?

And yet, one big challenge is?planning the time and effort spent on being creative.

The results we reap from a creative effort will depend on:

1. Habits of the target audience: How much do we know them?
2. Consumption that drives the platform: Why is the audience using a platform and how??
3. The media used: What limitations are set by formats, length and ratios?

How much effort should go into making the audience pay attention?

Like?a fast-food chain may not spend substantial effort innovating new dishes and recipes every hour, we may not build fresh content/communication without considering the cost. It may be wise, at least for the moment, for the restaurant to focus on the overall theme, personality, taste and delivery of the food.

We are not saying that it will stop innovating new dishes entirely. It may nevertheless consider such an action as the need arises.?

Build successful digital marketing on an organic backbone.

Spending on organic helps achieve long-term KPIs and induces consistent action independent of changes in budget allocation. Ask yourself if the restaurant feels the cost of coming up with new recipes is high, what would they make of the marketing spends.

Often, it is easy for a marketer to not spend sufficient time and resources on this fundamental while focusing on KPIs. It seems easy to burn money on inorganic because the ABC ad platform promises to get you results.?Owned properties bear the big burnt of this apathy.

Organic is where the need to be creative is more?

Most?automation today is targeted towards helping marketers spend more time being insightful. Whether it is AI, programmatic, big data solutions, even social and email marketing, resource allocation on data must be treated as a strategic input.?Where, when and how much? These are questions that need specific answers. What is evident is that this data should drive organic results. And that is why these ABC ad networks keep talking about quality.

At the same time, spending on inorganic shall not just grab eyeballs—because that is not the only goal anymore—but rather induce users to Opt-in, take immediate action and keep coming back for more. To sustain audience interest is far more beneficial both in the short-term and in the long run.??

Results vs Spends

Just like a horse needs blinkers to keep it from seeing the rear or sides and move forward without distractions, creativity must be channelled and organised. Give users / your audience more reasons to choose your business.?

Putting even one of those reasons out there will be a cost because communication or?a promise can not exist without resulting action or consideration to back it up.?For instance, if we say the customer is our priority and forget ORM or support services, it breaks down our promise, including our communication. So we build an organic system and offer one good proposition that our media spends would sustain.?

So how do you save marketing costs?

Creativity involves uniting the dots and building intra-platform messaging that disrupts.?For ORM, imagine pushing relevant content about regular conversations. When people talk about SEO, all they can imagine is keywords.?Keywords are only clues.

Something as simple as?content, platform linkages, and UX is what drives traffic.?

Before we suggest inorganic, we need to consider the organic eco-system we are operating inside. It all takes creativity to build and foresee.?Step back and realise the bigger picture here is what deserves more time and thought.?

Why get help with creativity?

Creativity can't come without effort and some self-love.?

Think of self-care as things you'd need to do for survival and durability. For success, you'd need to be within the time limits.?

To set internal expectations:

1. Add 20% to your internal expectations as a margin of error. So if it takes 60 mins then expect to complete a task in 75 minutes.?
2. Take an unbiased second opinion from someone who has no benefit/association from the task at hand.?
3. Divide work in nuggets for more accurate expectations.

To set external expectations:

1. Expected meetings/Internal Calls
2. Leadership responsibilities and Additional/ancillary responsibilities?
3. Self-improvement activities such as training and learning
4. Commitment to family/team/relationships and networks

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Time investment success

(External expectations) + (Internal expectations) ≤ 8-9 Hours

Time debt stress

(External expectations) + (Internal expectations) > 8-9 Hours

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So if someone asks you for a deadline next time:?

Know that you have?only six creative hours but at least 2X higher internal expectations.

*formula source?[I may have altered this a bit!]

Let me know what you think.

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