Your creative is an incredibly important asset to your advertising campaign. It captures the attention of your audience. It's what makes that big impression on consumers and convinces them your business is the one they want to support.

Before you start planning your marketing creative, do your research. Conducting research before you begin developing assets can help you better determine what type of creative will best reach your target audience and accomplish your goals.

Conducting Research for Your Benefit

Sure, you know you need to understand your target audience and your market, but what exactly do you need to know? Your research needs to cover several key elements in order to effectively help you design better marketing creative. 

What mediums work best in your industry?

In healthcare, you may find that TV commercials can help you better stand out from your competitors and attract consumers who may be on the fence about certain procedures. On the other hand, a home improvement business might find that creating strong social posts, including before and after examples of their work, can help them better reach their target audience. 

What does your target audience respond well to?

What type of creative is most likely to get the response you want from your target audience? For example, some audiences respond better to emotional content, while others need more information laid out in front of them.

What has worked well for your competitors?

You don't want to exactly duplicate what your competitors are doing, but you do want to learn from their tactics. What types of content do they continue to produce? What styles do they prefer? Analyzing what works best for your competition can help you decide on how to capture your audiences’ attention.

What have you tried in the past?

How did you aim to reach your target market in the past? What social platforms have you been active on? Have you tried TV commercials? What about email promotions? As you conduct research related to your business, carefully consider the most important information for your specific industry. That is the type of data you have already covered. How did it work for you? Did you find that consumers weren't clicking on your emails, or did email marketing have a high return on your investment? Talk to a media partner to learn more about why past marketing efforts might not have gone according to plan and what you might need to change in the future to help you better reach your goals. 

What correlates best with your goals?

Your business needs to base its marketing creative on the specific goals you have for a given campaign. For example, if you're seeking to raise brand awareness, you may use a very different approach than if you have a goal of increasing sales for a specific new product. Likewise, you want to work with a media partner to be sure that you have an adequate budget to achieve your overall marketing goals. 

What does A/B testing tell you about your marketing efforts?

A/B testing changes small elements of your marketing in order to better analyze consumer response. A/B testing can be as simple as changing the color or shifting the position of your CTA, but it can have a substantial impact on the overall performance of your ads. As you continue to change specific elements, you'll get a better idea of exactly what your consumers are looking for. 

Using research can have a substantial impact on your marketing efforts. Through your research, you will develop a better understanding of your target market, which can then help you better shape your creative. 

How to Utilize Your Research in Planning

You've done the research. Now, you need to know what to do with it. You can:

Analyze gaps in the market and how you can help fill them.

Where does a gap exist in your market? What services does your business offer that could help fill in that gap? Consider, for example, areas that your competitors do not cover or specific services your market does not often receive. Where is your competitor falling short that you can pick up the slack?

Find national holidays or other days that fit within your niche.

Use those days to dominate your industry. For example, a coffee shop or restaurant could choose to dominate national coffee day with free drinks or increased advertising. 

Determine the best use for your budget.

You can work within your budget to make the best possible impact with your content. Your research will provide you with information that will help you better understand the needs of your target audience and how you can fill them. 

Working with an experienced media partner can help you achieve your marketing goals, from helping you conduct marketing research to assisting in developing that outstanding creative that will help you catch the attention of your target market. By conducting research before you begin, you can get a better idea of how to reach your target market, allowing you to maximize the overall return on your investment.