Gather any group of employees and ask them to contribute their thoughts to developing a marketing campaign, and the vast majority of them will focus on the look of the brochure, the name of the celebrity spokesperson, and the “big event” you’ll stage where you invite the media. That’s because writing the ads is the fun part – it’s what nearly everyone thinks the Marketing Department does, and since Marketing folks seem to have a lot of fun, they’re eager to take their turn doing “what Marketing does.”

What they don’t think of are the questions that must be answered before you try to sign the local weatherman to drive sport-drink sales. These answers make up the creative strategy behind the funny ads.

Creative strategy means developing the over-riding message and tone of a series of related marketing pieces, so that the end result is a marketing campaign that sends an appropriate, cohesive and resonant message to the targeted audience.

So what are the hard questions that make up the creative strategy?

1. What is the goal of the campaign? Write a goal that includes a specific and measurable result. Expecting something measurable from your marketing is reasonable. It puts you one step ahead of those competitors who are just trying to “raise awareness.” (Examples: increase leads in the pipeline by 15 percent; increase sales of sports drinks by 10 percent.)
2. Who is the audience? Be specific. “Current customers, potential customers, investors and employees” is too broad for one marketing campaign. While your brand should certainly be consistent across these groups, you need to identify a primary target for your marketing campaign. (Hint: the goal of the campaign will likely drive, to an extent, who your target market is.)
3. What is the message you want them to remember? You’ll want your audience to remember something important about your company. What is it? (Hint: your brand position will dictate this in part.)
4. What is the action you want them to take? This goes back to your measurable goal. The action might be to visit your website, to call for an initial meeting, or to place a direct order. It will depend on where the marketing pieces fall in your overall sales process.
5. What style or tone of message does your audience respond to? An elderly white male will, obviously, respond to a different style or tone than a 20-something Latina woman. You may find the style or tone easier to nail down if you can determine the message first, as the latter may suggest the former.
6. What media do your target audience members pay attention to? It doesn’t matter if you have a great idea for a viral video to put on YouTube… if that’s not where you target audience spends their time, there’s no sense in putting your money into that video.

Of course, your strategy must work to uphold your brand. (And, toward that end, you must be confident in what your brand is.) Can you name a company that can’t seem to decide on a creative strategy?

Photo from the Flickr stream of Sirkus.

To Tweet or share this post via your favorite link-sharing site, just click the headilne and look for the link at the bottom of the post!

Think before you write your ad copy