Why Your Creation Process Must Improve Before Your Content Ever Will

Marketers often find themselves in their roles because of their talents as a creator; whether it’s writing or art design or even music, talent alone doesn’t always pay the bills. The challenge in the marketing industry is finding the right balance between business and creativity. While the complexities of business can seem irrelevant to many creatives, the one challenge they should deem relevant is the software solution that allows them to do their job. No matter how good they are at creating content, unless they work on a platform that allows them to actually create, their content will never be as enticing as it should be to their audience.

Data Driven Creativity

We hear the term ‘data driven marketing’ constantly, but content should never be created without first having data to back its origin. The right data will tell you what kind of content is being consumed, who is consuming it, where it is being consumed and what should be promoted on different channels. Without this information you don’t have the complete picture and therefore cannot know what they should create let alone where and how to promote it. With the right data, though, you can ensure that your creative talent is being used to its fullest.

No Man Is an Island

No matter what you do for your marketing team you do not work alone. Departments within departments have become normal though. A design department, a content marketing department and a social media department might all be a part of the marketing department, but aren’t able to collaborate together. It’s understandable that the finance department might be siloed from the marketing department but it shouldn’t be permissible for the social media sector of a marketing department to be siloed from the art department. It’s not just software that can solve this problem, but the solution begins with software.

Creatives are always in high demand. Hiring them and not giving them the proper tools to do their jobs is not only frustrating to them, but financially draining for the organization. Not only are they unable to perform at the levels they are capable, but will eventually end up finding a company that allows them to see the fruits of their efforts. Quality marketing software isn’t cheap, but it’s a lot cheaper than allowing your marketing department to have a revolving door.

As content has evolved from print to television to web the formula for best practices for marketing and advertising have gone out the window. Marketers look at TV ads and wonder how the expense can be justified while TV ad producers look at the cost per mil for ROI. Print ads today are more expensive than ever because the ad space has dwindled. Of course, there’s justification for every form of advertising, but it’s more important than ever to ensure that any piece of content that you exhibit, no matter which platform you use, has to be better than your competitions.

The Bottom Line

Marketing departments are often looked at as expensive and unresourceful, but, nonetheless, a necessary evil. As a result, it’s hard for the marketing department to ask for a million dollars for software to improve their work, while also asking for millions of dollars for a commercial that will never be able to prove its ROI. At the end of the day though, it’s the bottom line that matters to a business. While awareness level content can rarely prove returns, software offers hard data that can prove that it is the right decision.

Just because someone is left or right brained, creative or analytical, is no longer an excuse to not be actively pursuing the best decisions. With the right integrated marketing software even the least analytical minds can intelligently see whether or not their content is doing its job and tweak the campaign accordingly. The days of having to find personnel with the right mix of business and creativity should be over. With the right tools the data is where it should be, right in front of everyone.