We spend a lot of time on this blog talking about strategies for managing campaigns that effectively target — and consistently reach — your ideal customers within the ag industry. We also discuss the advantages of using programmatic ads to achieve your goals.
But even with all the best digital marketing savvy you can muster, your campaign won’t deliver the results you want if the creative isn’t working. Companies that reuse the same creative from one campaign to the next are probably going to see diminishing returns on their investment. At Precision Reach, we advise our clients against running the same ads over and over for a couple of reasons:
- Message fatigue. The odds of grabbing the attention of your ag audience are greatly reduced if you continually show them the same creative in the same formats. Even creative that has worked in the past eventually loses its drawing power. Viewers get tired of it and, after a while, don’t even see it anymore. Worse: they might start to find it annoying.
- You don’t learn from it. The success — as well as the failure — of your creative provides you with valuable information about your ag audience. What part of the message is resonating with them or missing the mark? How can you refine the message or take a new approach to reach your audience more effectively? The same old ad presented in the same old way won’t teach you much.
Keep it Fresh
The quality and freshness of your creative plays a key role in a campaign’s performance. We see this happen all the time at Precision Reach. Among the 900+ display campaigns we ran in 2022, for example, only 16.5 percent included a creative swap or ran multiple sets with different messages or images. These campaigns nearly doubled the CTR of campaigns that ran only one set of creative.
Fresh creative is vital for whatever tactics you’re using, from CTV to audio to social media. And your media plan should include multiple tactics, which is as important as using multiple sets of creative. Ask yourself if you’re doing enough to deliver dynamic creative to the ag audience you want to reach.
Tips for Boosting Your Creative
Switch it up. Whether your campaign is running for one month or 10, change your creative bi-weekly or monthly to keep it vigorous and your audience engaged. Even when you’re seeing a good response to creative, switching to a different approach can provide insights into why it’s working. A campaign’s value isn’t only in promotion and conversions. There’s also value in what you can learn from it.
Test, test and test again. As mentioned earlier, swapping in new creative gives you an opportunity to test what’s working and what’s not. By using a variety of messages, videos or images, you learn what approaches resonate with your target audience. Do they respond better to a particular benefit? To a particular tone or presentation style? After analyzing the results, you can optimize and refine your creative based on what you learn. Programmatic offers a great environment to test different messaging and product positioning.
Be specific. Is your ad running in multiple states or across multiple commodity groups? Consider creating specific ads for each one to target them more directly with your message. This personalized approach can increase your audience’s sense of connection with your brand. The message feels more relevant to them and to their needs. Ask your provider to place the ads where the appropriate groups will see them.
Creating new ads and using multiple ads takes a little more time, but the benefits more than repay the investment. Reaching your audience effectively and gaining insights into how they respond are critical for the success of your campaign — and for the next ones.