What is a creative strategy and why is it important?

What is a creative strategy?

A creative strategy is a plan of creative activities that will bring us closer to achieving specific goals.

It sounds general, I know, but give me a moment. 😉 Say you want to sell your products. You can plan a campaign, come up with some creative, add copy, and wait for results. However, you could also try to take a more organized approach.

You can write down all the information about your brand. Find unique selling points and identify what problems you solve by analyzing your customers’ comments. You can look at what your competitors are doing and research interesting creative ideas. Then, you can transform this information into creative ideas for your brand. Finally, you can plan and prioritize your next steps, write creative briefs, and schedule creative testing. And this is the creative strategy in action.

Why is creative strategy important?

Creative strategy enables you to act in a clear and organized manner. You avoid making decisions based solely on subjective feelings. Instead of relying on personal beliefs and hunches, you base your actions on data and numbers.

With a creative strategy, you develop planned and thoughtful creative tests that provide data to guide your actions.

How can you benefit from using a creative strategy approach?

Implementing creative strategy into your marketing efforts can not only organize your work but also transform the way you plan, execute, and optimize your campaigns.

What are the key benefits of implementing a well-defined creative strategy in your company?

1. You can easily optimize your campaign results – It allows for continuous improvement and refinement of your marketing campaigns.
2. You base your decisions on data, not assumptions – Creative strategy emphasizes the use of data to guide decision-making, minimizing guesswork and subjective choices.
3. You can infinitely improve your campaigns – A systematic approach will enhance your campaigns based on evolving market trends.
4. You can always have a plan for the weeks or months ahead. You don’t need to worry about the next steps – A well-defined creative strategy provides a clear roadmap, ensuring you’re always prepared for future actions.
5. You can find competitive solutions – Creative strategy helps you identify unique and effective solutions that can set you apart from competitors.
6. You can build the brand in a more transparent and organized way – Integrating a creative strategy into your marketing efforts will foster brand consistency and clarity, enhancing public perception and trust.

What are the goals of the creative strategy?

The primary goal of creative strategy and creative testing is not only to identify the best-performing campaign but also to draw conclusions about why it achieved the best results. These conclusions are then implemented in subsequent campaigns, which are also tested, and other creatives can be iterated based on the results to ensure better performance.

This allows us to iterate on campaigns almost indefinitely while testing new ideas that may even outperform existing creatives.

When is it worth developing a creative strategy?

When is it worth implementing a creative strategy? ALWAYS.

It doesn’t matter if you run your own business or an agency. It doesn’t matter how big the brand is or what industry it’s in. It doesn’t matter if it’s run by an in-house marketing team. None of that matters. Because creative strategy always pays off.

What does a creative strategy look like?

We develop creative strategies in Notion. We have dedicated pages there to collect all the client data. We also store inspirations, ideas, and thoughts after brainstorming sessions.

Most importantly, you will find the heart of the creative strategy there – a written plan for creative testing.

In the screenshot above, you can see an example Notion table where we have example creative tests for one of our clients. Here you will find:

1. The name of a particular campaign—clicking on it opens a separate subpage where we have a brief description of the tests performed within that campaign.
2. Production status.
3. Priority.
4. The platforms on which we want to run the campaign.
5. Link to the creatives.
6. Assigned members responsible for specific tasks.

Of course, our client also has access to this file, and we regularly share ideas, current activities, and results with them.

How to implement a creative strategy?

Implementing a creative strategy is a complicated process. If you feel you are not quite there yet, I recommend starting with small changes. Even the smallest step toward simplifying your organization’s creative efforts can yield big results.

You can also explore the ins and outs of creative strategy in the e-book I wrote with Jakub Michalak and Piotr Ostapkowicz. We shared all our know-how there.

And if you want to implement a creative strategy quickly and efficiently in your company, contact us. We can handle it for you, or we can discuss your situation, exchange ideas, and determine the best starting point.