Marketing is a domain in continuous evolution with the last couple of decades being dominated by digital marketing and integrated marketing practices. There are multiple views on how one should promote their business, some being more technical and others being referred to as creative marketing.
There is a famous saying that good marketing does not feel like marketing. But when you get down to it, any type of marketing is simply marketing. Its purpose is to get your message in front of your best prospects and customers.
As basic as it sounds, your marketing will only be effective when you think outside the box and stand apart from the competition. With so many businesses communicating to consumers on multiple channels and all the noise out there, you need to invest in creative marketing if you want your voice to be heard.
What Is Creative Marketing?
Creative marketing is defined as the process of selling things using creative talent in areas such as design, music, visual arts, interior design, architecture, etc. Creativity in marketing also refers to discovering new ways to communicate to customers and engage with them, such as online channels that were not available before.
Creative marketing is actually a bit of a pleonasm because any type of marketing implies an act of creation, but the concept is used to highlight the importance of using your creativity in order to craft messages that stand out from the crowd and are extremely attractive to your audience.
Applying creative marketing techniques to digital marketing should consist of elements such as developing a content marketing strategy, crafting a digital advertsing plan, developing a social media strategy, following email marketing best practices, designing your search marketing strategy, applying website analytics to your digital marketing, and leveraging conversion rate optimisation to drive growth.
Looking for innovative ideas for communicating to your customers? Here are some excellent creative marketing campaigns that we should learn from:
User-Generated Content And The Importance Of Knowing Your Customer: Dove – ‘Show Us’ Campaign
The Company
Dove is an American personal care brand owned by Unilever and originating in the United States; its products are currently sold in more than 150 countries. Dove is also known for its campaign for real beauty, which started in September 2004, and which was followed by the creation of the Dove Self-Esteem Fund in 2006 with the purpose of popularising a natural image of women in advertising and media.
About the campaign and its success
Project #ShowUs is a collection of more than 10,000 images offering more inclusive visions of beauty for all media and advertisers to use. This creative marketing encouraged user-generated content. The main rules for submitting content for this campaign is pictures representing women and being taken by women. Taking away staged sets and artificial scenarios, not using digital filters to enhance the appearance of subjects in the images. This creative marketing campaign set a new standard for how women are represented in the media. Around 70% of women worldwide say they didn’t feel represented in media and advertising. Dove noticed the opportunity of promoting its brand by listening to their audience and joining the global equality movement.
Takeaways
-Listen to your customer’s complaints and offer them tools to feel empowered and valuable;
-Encourage user-generated content as this is one of the most powerful tools for increasing engagement. It also gives your customers a voice of their own.
Influencer Marketing & User-Generated Content – Airbnb
The Company
Airbnb is an online vacation rental marketplace company based in San Francisco, California. It offers arrangement for home-stays and acts as a broker, receiving commissions from each booking. The company started with its founders renting out an air mattress in their living room, thus turning their apartment into a bed and breakfast; prior to Covid-19 Airbnb was privately valued at US$31 billion.
About the campaign and its success
Airbnb’s creative marketing strategy mainly focuses on user-generated images and videos. These images and videos are posted on a variety of social platforms. Social media as a travel forum has become extremely popular since celebrities began using Airbnb and documenting their experience. Airbnb’s Instagram account currently boasts 4.6 million followers.
Takeaways
-Use influencer marketing to attract attention to your business. Show your audience how their favourite celebrities are using the same products and services that they do;
-Use the power of user-generated content and let your customers advertise and promote your company for you!
Conversational Marketing Enables eBay To Help You Find The Best Deal
The Company
An e-commerce corporation based in San Jose, California, EBay is facilitating consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer sales via its website. EBay started with auction-style sales but it has later introduced instant ‘Buy It Now’ shopping, online classified advertisements, online event ticket trading, and various other services.
About the campaign and its success
EBay has one of the most advanced e-commerce chatbots there is; it was built for Google Assistant, meaning it is exclusively accessed through your Google Home or your Android phone. This clever Shop Bot allows you to navigate across a very high number of product categories only by voice. The bot assists you with finding the best deal and it will send your information to your phone for easy purchasing.
Takeaways
-Voice search is a powerful trend nowadays as also shown in another post on our blog and it can help you achieve even more when you integrate it with conversational marketing;
-Splitting your website into categories is a thing of the past; you should aim for a more user-centred experience that also makes your shop easy to navigate from mobile devices.
Heineken Using Content That Is Emotionally Relevant
The Company
Heineken is a Dutch brewing company best known for its beer sold in a green bottle with a red star. They have managed to attain the Creative Marketer of the year Award twice.
About the campaign and its success
Heineken brought together and interviewed people with conflicting views on hot or sensitive items such as global warming, feminism, or transgenderism. Then people with opposing views were paired together and asked to complete a number of tasks. After the tasks were completed, the interviews given by their opposites were revealed to participants in the experiment. The pairs were offered either to discuss their differences over a beer or leave.
The video received more than 17.7 million views and has more than 138,000 shares and 324,000 engagements on Facebook. Heineken received plenty of publicity and featured in over 625 magazine articles.
Takeaways
-Use storytelling to inspire emotional responses in your audience. You can choose a topic that is not necessarily about your brand and add your message in the final – this type of message can easily go viral.
-Customers use different platforms, so you have to do the same if you want to reach them. People also respond differently to various platforms. Spread yourself across multiple channels and you can reach them in a manner that they prefer. Re-purposing your topics across all channels provides the most value from the content you create while saving you time and money.
Building A Community Around Shared Interests – Wholesome Culture
About the company
Wholesome Culture is a fashion brand specialising in cruelty-free clothing. They are mindful of animal rights and environmental issues. Their business involves printing designs with eco-friendly water-based ink, using sustainable materials in their products, and using biodegradable and recycled packaging for shipping orders.
About the campaign and its success
The approach taken by Wholesome Culture was to use their customers’ interests to generate content for their digital campaigns. The main interests they have created their content around are vegan diets, plastic free life tips, environmental issues, and preventing animal cruelty. Using hashtags such as #veganlife helps pull the right audience towards Wholesome Culture channels. The brand is being followed by more than 280k users on Facebook and over 800K users on Instagram.
Takeaways
-Use your audience’s shared interests in order to build a community that is likely to use your products;
-Create content that is related to your brand’s philosophy, ethics and your brand’s core values.
Does your marketing need a boost, unsure where to even start? Contact us today and find out how we can help!
