Knock the socks off your customers with creative messaging

by Henning Lørup
Creative Director
Blue Business A/S

Albert Einstein defined creativity as: “Creativity is intelligence having fun”. John Cleese said it’s simply new ways of thinking about things. In B2B marketing, creativity is using fresh ideas to incite action that drives results. So you may ask yourself “what is your strategy”? Is it one that is more focused on avoiding being boring, or are you aspiring to be interesting?

In a recent report published by B2B Marketing the role of creativity is under scrutiny.
You could be forgiven for thinking that creativity has no impact, and that focus is now on marketing technology (like marketing automation which we at Blue Business are a great fan of), and the delivery of account based messages (anoth-er Blue Business specialty). But without creativity it’s like fishing with no hook.

The chart below illustrates what I have always believed in: marketing will not achieve its goals without creativity:

Source: Report by B2B Marketing surveyed 179 B2B marketeers.

Creativity has a major impact on results
Our own ABM campaign targeting 22 enterprise accounts in Denmark clearly demonstrated that.

Using account based advertising to increase our own awareness the campaign ran over 3 months serving almost 190,000 impressions. We reached 100% of the accounts and 99% of those accounts clicked on the banners resulting in 360 web page visits. The CTR was almost 3 times higher than the industry average. It just proves the findings from B2B Marketing that creativity is important if you want to reach your KPI’s. And we all want that.

But what is creativity
At the agency we love brainstorms about the challenges provided by our clients.

A productive brainstorm always starts with insights. I encourage you to do thor-ough research. Set up calls or online meetings with customers, prospects, and ideally non-customers to understand their worries, what makes them click, and what is important to them. Do competitive positioning analysis and figure out what messaging from your competitors really stand out. Define which competi-tors you really admire and why. Create detailed buyer personas. Conduct exten-sive audits of your marketing content and materials. And most important: Drop the autopilot and be creative.

The brainstorm Curve:

Gather relevant people
Often it starts by going through obvious topics, things you know, old ideas close to what you are about to develop. That curve fades fast. Until somone says something silly. That can be an important breakthrough. The thinking takes a new direction and new ideas arise. Creativity with other words.

So unleash your ideas and dare to be different. Although we are in B2B, and yes, the customer journey is digital, but at the end of the day, it is human2human, so express yourself. And disregarding how stupid you find silly suggestions, don’t ignore them, they are important. It is the raw material of all innovations.

From here the idea curve fades rapidly, and further usefull ideas seldom appears.

3 good rules to get creative

1: Start with a box.
Creativeíty has a tendency to get lost in space, unless you have restrictions – specific goals, time, rules, design guides, tone of voice etc… The more you know about the project from the beginning, the more likely you are to come up with relevant, realistic ideas.

2: Dare to be different.
Go further than the ordinary, dare to try something cracy. The expected will lead only to expected results.

 

3: Don’t criticise.
Be open no matter how silly you think others ideas are.

This is not the only formula for creativity, but it’s a good start.

CTA (Call To Action)
Whether it is ABM or traditional lead generation we often talk about CTA: down-load this or sign-up for that.

I have a different call to action for B2B marketers: Push the boundaries. Dare to be creative. Dare to be different. Do not communicate like all the other B2B marketers. Talk to your audience like they’re real people and demonstrate how your company can help them become tomorrow’s corporate heroes.

It will make their day, and yours.

Good luck!