Understanding Performance Creative in Marketing

1. Introduction

Performance creativity has received little attention compared to the importance of creativity in advertising. Conversely, data-driven creative and performance creative - referring to aligning marketing communication objectives directly with creative strategy and key messaging - are very popular among marketers. The primary benefit of an effective performance creative approach is its strong implications for advertising practice to maximize creative effectiveness. This text aims to critically analyze the concept of performance creativity to offer a more comprehensive framework for understanding this phenomenon.

The relevance and importance of this concept for marketers will therefore be illustrated from three complementary perspectives. Firstly, focusing on the interest of managers to better understand and manage the phenomena related to the design and use of performance creativity as a distinctive asset in advertising campaigns. The analyzed material will provide some managerial implications helpful for marketers in designing and managing effective marketing initiatives. Secondly, the importance of integrated marketing communication will be discussed, with particular reference to the issue of better and higher use of creativity in advertising and promotion, pointing out the need to advance a framework to better comprehend the potential effort of performance creativity in the new marketing era.

1.1. Definition of Performance Creative

Performance Creative

1.1 Definition of Performance Creative In today’s increasingly competitive digital environment, there is a growing trend to focus on marketing strategies that are most effective and directly drive people through the increasingly complex marketing funnel. Performance creative is creative that drives a measurable response: a click, a lead, a sale, a web visit, etc. Because performance creative is driving these sorts of actions, it is generally data and audience-driven. Once these actions occur, the creative becomes a business performance driver. It becomes tactical and transactional, and many times, completely reliant on media investment. It cares less about brand building and is agnostic of input data and data cues about the brand. Performance creative is about the “offer.”

Performance creativity is both an expression and a strategy. The term generally applies to digital or direct-response marketing and often gets conflated with more traditional expressions of creative marketing. Performance creativity is not mutually exclusive with these more traditional definitions of “creative.” Data-driven insights are essential in shaping these stories, and the best ones often perform the best. But performance creative tactics are marketing for a distinct moment in the customer journey. In that scenario, someone is more amenable than ever to hear your message, and thanks to your insights gleaned from performance data, it is timely, relevant, and hyper-targeted to their behaviors and interests. That is why the distinction in language can be really helpful. It is about contextualizing the approach toward marketers of all stripes and experience levels.

2. Role of Performance Creative in Marketing

Performance creative takes a front-and-center role in the marketing spotlight as a critical enabler to achieve high-impact results. When used effectively, it can act as a powerful driving force for converting consumer interest into active engagement. Marketers aspire to influence their target audiences by providing them with compelling messaging and visuals to trigger specific actions. With powerful creativity, the strength at which marketing aspirations can be achieved is likely to increase. Many fundamental creative compositions are born from a close association with desired subliminal messaging and several other brand-signaling psychological elements. It has been understood that organic creative design tested best with consumers when searching for on-brand elements historically.

Brand messaging is intrinsically linked with performance creativity. Crafting and refining an artistic strategy to speak to a brand’s values and offerings will enforce the brand’s message subliminally within the expanded video for a given customer. A brand’s values, voice, look, and other creative decisions will also influence the appropriate people to whom it is best served. Over time, experience with performance creative has noted a significant consistent effect: top-funnel messaging grounded in brand resonates well with consumers who experience it. The direction of an emotional overarching focal point for the finished video determines success or failure at this stage. Performance creative exists to move a customer further down the purchase journey. Tracking clicks, new website views, and other action points reveals basic performance creative alignment. Marketers who apply performance creativity as a strategy will produce more refined subcomponents of a given high-performing creative throughout a campaign. This proven planning allows for quick and accurate iteration. The specialized scaled and repeated video builds on the effectiveness of the foundational top-funnel creative scope for a more immersive journey through a seamless brand experience. Having a top-performance creative ensures the long-form video enjoys a significantly higher average engagement than an average interest viewership campaign entirely. These numbers show standout performance and are ultimately what marketers seek by running an interest-focused campaign. This allows for lower CPM. Having a high average view-through rate (VTR) further demonstrates a highly engaging video. This high creative engagement positively affects the brand. After viewing this introduction, views of the long-form video drove traffic to retailer websites significantly higher among an ad-exposed audience. Comprehensive analysis results included an effect on ad recollection for exposed individuals, an increase in understanding of what the product could provide, and an increase in preference for the product.

2.1. Increasing Performance Marketing Metrics

Successful marketing is reflected in the improvement of performance marketing metrics. Some of the most frequently measured and monitored metrics include click-through rates (CTR), as a ratio of how many people clicked on an ad compared to the number of people who saw it, and conversion rate. Clicks and conversions are two of the most frequently used outcomes to assist in serving the objective of campaign performance since loyalty and engagement with the brand do not always result in direct action. Many additional metrics, such as interaction rates, cost per click, cost per thousand impressions (CPM), domain performance, and engagement rates, can also be used to assess the efficiency of the marketing plan. Marketers can effectively increase these outcomes by optimizing their creatives. Marketers can raise more awareness, reduce the cost per action, or improve the action rate in any direction. The process of optimizing market objectives by advertising and reinforcing the message can be analyzed and improved by getting the user’s attention through the analysis of pattern psychology. When the user’s attention is fully available, and a change of thought is triggered, rather than starting from scratch, marketers can tap into this attention potential to continue influencing the consumer. In other words, we are capable of causing a change within the prospect, which allows them to think and feel differently. By opening them up, behavior and reactions can therefore be influenced. Advertising can signal to the intended consumer that it will increase their personal or reputational stake. This can be achieved whether a user is encouraged to indulge more in the values to which they already adhere or to question their loyalty to their worldview. To identify the best strategy to adjust performance and improve the advertising plan, the optimization of audiences through creative design in both likelihood and impact allows marketers to focus on top performers with similar characteristics across a variety of dimensions. Audience insights should be reviewed, such as what differentiates the top performers from the lowest performers. Marketers must work on improving their scoring across various creative recommendations, such as through more appealing messaging or more relevant creatives. Marketers can check to see if current ads are visual-only, or include a video or carousel, to explore if specific creative concepts contribute more flexibility than others. The estimated action rates of the audiences should be reviewed as well. In line with strategic objectives, creative testing methods can be determined. Each creative component is important when designing a strategy for an ad. One of the many tactical suggestions in performance-driven outcomes still revolves around maximizing one such creative component. Most of the experiments will test how creatives can be optimized and lessons for future designs of the ad strategy can be drawn. Advertising performance intelligence can help to produce different impacts on audiences with messages and formats. The flexibility of different interests of people embodies humanity. Thus, a clear focus on individual aspects can help develop creative designs and optimization of an audience to achieve this level of integrity. It can also tell you whether flexible synergy is created or whether a selection formalized system must be improved. The creative set gauges can be based on the implementations of known impression actions, including click-through rates, video views, or result rates. This allows marketers to change their strategy before the flow of money or resources goes out. The single evaluation frameworks are limited to one metric. Data makes a more holistic analysis performable and available. Outcomes are formulated prospectively, focused on the performance center or the secondary one. The utmost effective creative aspect enables the creative development of the most optimized retargeting. Capture information and monitor performance to understand any changes more accurately.

3. Characteristics of Effective Performance Creative

Certain characteristics need to be present in a piece of creative that would make it effective in performance ads. Firstly, it has to be clear and communicate its intended message or promotion. Second, it has to make the viewer feel something. The more intense the emotion is, the stronger the impression, and whatever memory it has of the brand will be etched in the viewer's mind. Third, the emotion that it sparks should lead to action, so the creative must have a call to action that's exciting. Lastly, it must be crafted with the media in mind. It must be flexible enough to be adapted to various digital channels and formats.

A successful performance creative also behaves like performance advertising by being very relevant and timely. To be relevant, the creative must talk about things the audience prefers. It, therefore, needs to be inspired by rich and accurate insights about the audience it's intended for. Over time, those involved in creating or improving the creative should review it following each of these characteristics and see how they might have made the creative stronger by building this quality into it. When you look at creative performance in this way, that's when it becomes scientific. Every decision can be tested and improved in the quest to make great ads that drive fantastic business results.

3.1. Relevance to Target Audience

The previous section details the approach for a brand in terms of performance outcome, but this subsection drills down to relevance in performance creative by directly addressing the target audience – not those who might like the idea, but relevance to those who are more likely to convert or garner audience interest in the first place because it aligns with their set of preferences. The key to it is audience relevance. Understanding our target audience’s preferences can shape our creative decisions. Creativity that connects with audiences more likely will spur more from this audience to connect with the brand. The first step is targeting effectively. Audience segmentation is important because businesses cater to specific market segments – some preferences might be different on a fundamental level, even if they’re both shopping for the same item typically or have the same demographics. Once we know whom we’re targeting, all we have to do is figure out the best way to message them. This is not a task that can be approached lightly. In deeper markets, a lot of businesses make very easy mistakes, such as marketing bake sales to people who like living near bike trails – or who simply like bikes in general. A bagel sale is not relevant at best for someone shopping for a home to live by a bike trail. At worst, trying to sell a $600,000 house to someone interested in bike trails could seem tacky and stingy. Market research of any sort, which could come from field experience, empirical research, or showcasing case studies of a known phenomenon, is important in figuring out this sort of marketing strategy and cannot be undertaken lightly. Additionally, it is important to realize that targeting typically does not end at simple demographics. Too often, simply finding an age, income, or sex difference would be too broad, with the internet allowing infinite categorizations available from psychographic or behavioral data. Demographics alone are typically not enough to ensure relevance in a strategy – it’s only a starting point.

4. Best Practices for Creating Performance Creative

Create, analyze, iterate, and deliver. It's a very easy four-step process, but also very hard to execute. That is one of the best practices in performance creative development. In other words, begin with an analysis of what customers are telling you in the data and then use that to inform creative development. Here's more on best practices for creating performance creative:

Set clear objectives. As with all great marketing, effective performance creative starts with a clear marketing and/or creative strategy. This will help ensure everyone is aligned on key objectives before jumping into creative. It's vital to be clear about the KPIs the creative needs to deliver. Ideally, a brief would encompass customer insight, message, tone of voice, and functional points of differentiation, before we have even thought about filling in a template.

Test and iterate. Regular testing and iteration are key parts of developing an effective performance creative strategy. Once we create, we test aspects of the work across all stages to optimize and iterate. This keeps us flexible and works well because being too rigid in creative can resemble a process—and we know how frustrating that workflow feels.

Collaborate across teams—and beyond. In most modern workplaces, few tasks are accomplished in solitude. The same holds for performance creative. Cross-functional teams are key to developing evocative marketing materials. Having your creative requests make their way through one specific team can limit the creative outlook on a project. Collaboration from multiple teams can bring a more holistic view of bigger marketing initiatives and long-term company goals.

4.1. Strategic Approach to Ad Creation

Some marketers turn off when the word 'strategy' comes up. It can feel like an additional complication that doesn’t fit the company’s ethos or a distraction from more pressing execution demands, at worst reducing a perceived edge or magic. But in today’s digital marketing landscape, there are clear benefits to having (and acting on) a well-defined ad strategy from which a performance creative then follows. The creation and deployment of online advertising is not free, and a surgical ad can often do the trick and deeply influence the performance of a campaign. We estimate that a well-created ad can make targeting effective up to 50% more efficient. A carefully designed performance ad strategy is a triple win. Not only will it lead to a bigger impact on the bottom line through better, more effective creative, but it will also speed up the ad creation process by providing clear direction and setting a clear framework by which to measure success.

A performance creative ad strategy refers to a clear guideline that sets out what needs to be achieved, who we are trying to reach and influence to get there, and what their attitudes and behaviors are. Having a good strategy means making some decisions about the kind of creativity that will make the people who matter care about what you’re offering. The starting point is to have a clear objective that will filter, shape, and guide your strategy for all creative. This means deviating from a pure communication objective to consider metrics and behaviors that are in the best interest of the entire brand-marketing mix. Ultimately, what you are looking to achieve defines your performance creative strategy, audience, and message formulation and can be conducted using digital drivers that set up an ad that is seen, relevant, and effective. The rich amount of digital data available to us means the answer is not subjective but led by social media or research data. Tailor your audience strategy and ad type to reach the objective through an understanding of perceived drivers of truth. The modern marketing creative team should have a good balance of right and left-brain thinking. Starting with a good, rich, and robust insight about your audience, their behaviors, and how you can reach them is the left-brain part of the creative strategy. The right-brain part is about crafting the ad, the messages, the words, and the design to best deliver to that audience. Importantly, the creative can now be tagged or labeled in a way that relates back to the objectives that you need to attain. This allows for flexibility and learning down the track, meaning a poorly performing ad can be changed, refreshed, or better targeted before the rest of the budget is used on a type of ad that isn’t effective. So get thinking with your left and right side of the brain for great online marketing!

5. Case Studies

Case Studies

There is a wealth of case studies showcasing performance creativity from a diverse range of industries and outputs. From a retailer advertising on TV for the first time to encourage app downloads, to a video game maker using characters in ads to increase in-app purchases, to a brand embracing trial and error – over and over again – to see what drives sales. The graphs below simplify the results, but each case study also holds how the creatives outperformed one another, the insights learned from these outputs, and what was put into practice as a result of coming iterations of these marketing strategies.

However, creatives including ad copy, video length, and product selection were variables outside of the brand's control. This is why it is recommended to include paid influencer and user-generated content into a DNP environment to maintain an element of control on how you can creatively influence trial quantity. When faced with reduced basket-check rates in a DTP environment, a simple approach of video ads obsessing over the product and explaining it in detail in this environment costs you penetration because no fantastic creative had been developed; only generic videos. The success of this two-pronged testing process goes to show that using creativity to influence consumer purchasing behavior is very powerful and that brands don’t just need standard performance marketing strategies. You need to make in-depth bespoke, if at scale, user experience strategies to take your consumer through a holistic user journey from consideration to action by using creativity. Combine this creative maturity with performance metrics, budget control, and the power of attributing every sale to the advertisement, and you have performance creativity.

5.1. Successful Implementation of Performance Creative

Cadbury Eye of the Tiger is a great example of a performance creative that works. The creative elements align well with the overall brand, and the simplicity has helped drive home the message. In a similar vein, the Wonderfilled campaign is simple, positively toned, and effective. The creative elements of 'time well spent' and 'bad commute' align the feel and tone of the creative with delivery in a way that can captivate as the message is delivered. They also use placement to inform the creative, and vice versa, by using 6-second cut downs that feature a quick build that capitalizes on the thumb-stopping intrigue as cut downs.

Since this is a true performance campaign, here are a few performance metrics of note: Love rate vs. control was 31% higher for the Wholeheartedly Wonderfilled cut-down, and 30% higher for the joyous commute advertised version. There was a 54% lift in approval for the bad commute ad vs. control and 42% for the Wholeheartedly Wonderfilled version. Earned Video Starts: 29% were from Times Square. News Feed placements came in as one of the lowest ERPs with 1.5 cents. This campaign also won a Stir award in 2016 for 'Best Use of Film.' Both Eye of the Tiger and Wonderfilled exceeded delivery benchmarks by an average of 5%. Many other elements and contexts helped contribute to the success of these campaigns listed above. These aspects, unique to these campaigns, only served to amplify their success. We could go on and on about what has or hasn't worked, so be mindful as you read case studies or research. Utilize the information to inform and drive your choices, but know its effectiveness is far from static, and ultimately context determines success.