Marketing is a complex facet of the business world. It is structured around strategies, budgets, and the intricate analysis of hard statistics. And yet, when a marketing team begins work on a project, it’s not cold calculations but creativity and inspiration that take the front seat.
The creative end of marketing can be a bit difficult. In fact, the challenge of continually coming up with a new angle, slogan, or aspect to market the same category of products to the same niche of consumers can be straight-up exhausting.
If you or your company’s marketing team are running low on creativity, here are a few ways you can help fend off a creative slump and get those exciting, inspired ideas rolling again while still staying within the structured bounds — like budgets, analysis, and more — that naturally restrict every marketing endeavor.
As a preliminary note, while there are numerous smaller tips and tricks out there for individual creative sessions, these particular suggestions are focused on the macro side of things, helping creative leaders foster and maintain a culture of creativity throughout their company over the long haul.
Glean Inspiration From Others
One tried and true method to reignite creativity is simply taking a look at what’s working for someone else. If you’re struggling for pure, unadulterated inspiration, there’s no shame in looking at what others have come up with instead. Click To Tweet
For instance, if you’re trying to build your brand identity and you need to develop a fresh look for your logo, spend time looking at the numerous tremendously successful examples out there. Start with the bigger companies like Google, Apple, or Amazon, identifying things like color, layout, simplicity, minimalism, and font choice.
Then, look into your own specific industry and see what is working for your competitors. As you identify things, you can incorporate the larger concepts into your own design. At a certain point, you’ll have enough fuel on the fire for your own creativity to take over.
Get Back to the Basics
Sometimes, a creative team can bury itself in its own overly-complicated ideas and inspirations. When the layers and clutter seem to overwhelm your creative processes, it can be a good idea to take some time to strip everything down to the basic tenets.
Step back from individual projects and regroup as a team. Review your company’s policies, mission statements, message, and vision. Communicate together and make sure everyone’s on the same page.
It can also be helpful to get away from the office entirely in order to take walks in a local park, go hiking, or find another way to spend some time outside. Activities of this nature have been shown to significantly increase creative thinking and problem-solving.
Focus on the Positive
If you oversee a marketing team, it’s important to understand that genuine creativity can be stifled when individuals are continually tasked with putting out fires and focusing on negative PR issues within a company. Click To Tweet
If your marketing personnel is getting bogged down with covering up the negative, it should become a priority for management and leadership, in general, to effectively “clear the runway” for the marketers to focus on the positive.
Things like proper community involvement, sustainable business practices, the quality of products and services, and stellar customer service should be carefully maintained. In addition, steps should be taken to properly safeguard valuable things like customer data, the mismanagement of which has come to define the failure of many modern companies.
Issues and concerns in these areas should be addressed outside of the marketing department as much as possible in order to allow marketers to creatively focus on the benefits, messages, positives, and overall good that your company provides.
Look for Innovative Ways to Deliver Your Message
It’s no secret that Google has been increasingly writing its algorithms to prioritize mobile devices. That’s why the critical importance of having a mobile-friendly site has been percolating through the private sector for years now.
While mobile optimization is key for a user-centric site design, though, marketing teams can and should be taking the mobile-focus one step further. If you haven’t done so yet, consider taking your marketing message in the direction of a cutting-edge mobile site design or even a mobile app.
Developing an app for your business gives you a unique marketing channel that allows you to beam your message directly into the hands of your customer base. It gives you much more control over things like visibility, brand awareness, and brand strength.
Email campaigns are also an excellent way to tailor your brand’s message. While every company on earth has an email list at this point, that doesn’t mean that your particular organization is using their list to its maximum marketing effectiveness.
Exploring ways to adapt your marketing message into personalized, engaging, informative email campaigns that are tailored to each customer can be a great way to reignite your team’s marketing vision.
Fostering Long-Term Creativity
The battle to generate “on-demand” creativity within the workplace can be tiresome. That’s why suggestions like those outlined above can be crucial in maintaining creative output over an indefinite amount of time.
Rather than solely focusing on individual projects until you and your team run out of steam, step back from time to time, draw inspiration from others, facilitate a focus on the positive, and stay on guard for innovative ways to deliver your message. This kind of open-minded approach can do wonders in equipping your marketing team and overall marketing operations with a robust level of creativity that doesn’t flag over the long-haul.
Featured Image Credit: Pixabay
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