All About Creative Marketing: 6 Creative Marketing Ideas

Creative marketing is a marketing strategy that aims to surprise and delight an audience with creative promotional efforts. Creative marketing spans multiple channels and mediums, and the focus of creative marketing can be broad or narrow in scope. Large and small businesses alike can enact creative marketing plans, including interactive ads, attention-grabbing graphic designs, highly engaging social media marketing, or pop-up events. Creative marketing can lead to stronger partnerships, more landing page visits, and positive customer testimonials.

Creative marketing can bring a host of benefits to companies and marketing teams, including:

1. 1. Sales: Creative content and fresh takes on marketing trends are more likely to galvanize an audience and increase sales. Dull marketing campaigns won’t stop a social media user from scrolling through their feed or entice a customer to visit a brand’s website.
2. 2. Brand awareness: Creative marketing can establish greater brand awareness. In a free market, differentiation is critical. Companies must build and maximize a brand identity to attract new followers and audiences. Creative marketing is a vehicle for brands to cultivate a personality and, most importantly, a target audience.
3. 3. Teamwork: Marketing teams that prioritize creative marketing efforts are more likely to collaborate, share ideas, and foster a workplace built on mutual appreciation and imagination. This can lead to stronger teams and more innovative marketing ideas.
4. 4. Partnerships: Brands that prioritize creative marketing are alluring to influencers, organizations, and vendors. Creatively marketing products and services can lead to a robust network and a broader reach with collaborative new partners.
5. 5. Metrics: Creative marketing campaigns can serve as case studies for companies, allowing marketing departments to try new ideas to see what sticks with an audience. Try out new initiatives with your print, digital, and e-commerce marketing—just know what you’re measuring for, and see how the return on investment performs to analyze if any of your creative approaches are worth using in future campaigns.

You can execute creative marketing in several cost-effective ways. Consider the following creative marketing ideas:

1. 1. Utilize your company hashtag. Your company should have a unique hashtag it uses regularly to tie posts to your brand. In your digital marketing efforts, continually search for your hashtag to identify posts from others on social media. These posts can be free advertising. You can use these posts as testimonial videos, or share them with questions or comments to prompt buzz marketing.
2. 2. Create standout animations. GIFs and infographics perform well on digital platforms. Creating short content marketing pieces can be an excellent way to stick out in your audience’s mind.
3. 3. Share video tutorials. Create and share short video tutorials on social media. Tutorials on how to use a brand’s product or how it was made can lead to greater brand recognition. These pieces of content also invite real-time engagement and are highly shareable.
4. 4. Jump on trends. Annual events, like awards shows, are opportunities for companies to jump on news and share relevant content. For example, when film awards announce nominations, your company can similarly share a list of nominations for favorite products or services.
5. 5. Incentivize engagement. Everyone loves a freebie. If you can find a fun way for people to comment on your posts, share your emails, or take pictures with your product, you can get your services in front of more eyes and build stronger relationships with customers by offering something in return for this free advertising.
6. 6. Hit the streets. Creative marketing can expand beyond virtual channels with pop-up events and in-person experiences. You can use guerrilla marketing techniques to produce creative, memorable marketing campaigns. Guerrilla marketing can be a type of pop-up marketing in which a company stages an event or dialogue to prompt inquiry and discussion. For example, a pop-up food truck to promote the release of a film can generate buzz.

Learn more about advertising and creativity from Jeff Goodby & Rich Silverstein. Break rules, change minds, and create the best work of your life with the MasterClass Annual Membership.