Balancing the Left Brain and Right Brain

Digital media has made it much easier to measure marketing efforts. This can be a dream for marketing professionals as more pressure is being put on them to show ROI for the dollars they spend. Because there are so many ways to gather and organize data, it can quickly become an obsession if you’re not careful. Amidst all of the numbers, charts and graphs, sometimes the need for great creative gets overlooked and the brand suffers. This article examines how to observe the basics of good communication design while making it more data-driven and measurable.

There’s a fair amount of planning and structure to performance-driven marketing. If you get lost in the sheer mechanics of it all, you can forget the importance of pursuing the je ne sais quoi; that intangible quality that engages people and creates memorable campaigns. The right approach can help balance creative and analytical efforts.

Campaign Planning
If you want to create results-oriented marketing programs, the most important thing to do up front is clearly define your business goals. Following the SMART format helps. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-based. An example of a SMART goal could read like this:

Increase number of Facebook fans for the brand from 181 to 1000 by June 1st.

The above statement says a lot in one sentence. It provides a key performance indicator (1000 fans by June 1st) and it provides a benchmark (currently at 181). In traditional advertising, it has been common for the campaign objective to be something really soft, like “raise awareness” or “increase store traffic”. Being more specific when defining goals makes it easier to measure them later, and ensures that all stakeholders share a common vision of what success looks like. This will help avoid likely disappointments by minimizing confusion, and leveling expectations.

The Creative Brief
Traditional formats for creative briefs still work well, as long as they include the clear success criteria established in the planning phase. Below is a common brief structure:

• Background/Overview
• What are the objectives of this communication?
• Who are we talking to?
• What do we know about them that will help us?
• What is the main idea we need to communicate?
• What is the best way of presenting that idea?
• Why should they believe us?
• What action do we want them to take?
• Design Imperatives

The first two sections of a brief following the structure above should include clear success criteria. A good brief provides direction and insight, but leaves lots of room for different creative solutions to be explored. Any time the creative brief dictates the solution, it’s not a creative brief, it’s a work order. And when that happens, you’re not a creative shop, you’re a sausage factory. The author of the brief should take the business of writing them very seriously and devote him/herself to mastering the craft.

Concept
The creative team is given the brief and encouraged to explore different ideas to achieve the goals and objectives outlined within it. But to excel in performance-driven marketing, it’s important to emphasize the need for results with the creative team. Some experts advocate for offering incentives to teams whose campaigns meet Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). This gets everyone more involved so they take more ownership.

As mentioned before, performance-driven design still has to be good, creative and engaging. It has to show original thinking, and be memorable. It has to tell a story. It has to express the essence of the brand. But it also has to show promise of satisfying KPIs before it’s approved to go into production.

In the concept stage, big ideas are roughed out and there’s a lot going on. Despite everything, with performance-driven marketing, it’s crucial while ideating to consider what the measurable interactions and conversion points will be, and it should be expected that the creative will include those points in his/her presentation to the team. It’s not just a detail to be defined later. It’s a critical aspect that determines the viability of the proposed solution.

Architecture
With the approval of a rough concept, detailed architecture should be defined at the next step before veering off too far into stylistic explorations. In this stage, the mechanics of the program are spec’d out in a little more detail. The overall framework must be laid out to ensure that the solution can be engineered. It helps to show all the components, their relationship to one another and the overall flow, while thinking through the technology plan that will drive the solution.

Design
Once the architectural framework is defined, the creative team has a clearer understanding of the structure and constraints that they need to work within. They also have a very clear idea of where the important interactions are taking place in the user experience. At this point, having held the creative team accountable to results throughout the process has made them acutely sensitive to the parts of the experience that need to pop and engage users. Without a focus on performance, designers can tend to think less about influential interactions and revert back to an instinct many of them share, which is a deep desire to please themselves as artists. Performance-driven marketing challenges a designer to put purpose and meaning first, while still satisfying their own designerly idea.

Build/Test/Launch
Performance-testing is common during the build/test phase, but its scope is often limited to making sure the solution is working to spec. To help ensure positive results, user testing can be exercised at this stage to get an early read on how the solution may achieve the campaign goals. It’s important for the creative team to remain engaged at this stage to help interpret feedback and to help them maintain a sense of ownership throughout the initiative. Any refinements made at this stage to better position the campaign for success (as universally agreed to by all stakeholders) need to be overseen by the creative team. Once it’s as good as the team thinks it can be, it’s time to launch.

Measure/Analyze
After launch, comes measurement; reporting and analysis. It’s rare for a creative person to enjoy analyzing data, but it’s best to avoid letting the team become fragmented at this stage. It’s important to look at the results as a team and have everyone pitch in to interpret them. It’s especially important to keep the creative team heavily involved as ideas for enhancements are being considered. This will keep the quality up and the initiative on-track.

Following a process that supports freedom for creatives while at the same time emphasizes the need for results and holds them accountable, is the key to quality performance-driven marketing. Some key points to take away:

• Define measurable success criteria up front
• Include the success criteria in the brief
• Hold the team accountable for results and incentivize them for achieving success targets
• Focus on results throughout the creative and engineering process from ideation through build
• Keep the whole team involved to interpret results and plan enhancements