How to sell great creative

First off, you have to be able to develop great creative.

And what exactly is great creative, anyway? It’s advertising or marketing communications or experiential marketing that grabs your attention and makes you think. It stops you in your tracks and makes an impression – pulling at your heartstrings or punching you in the gut or making you smile – and all the while, strongly delivering whatever your selling message is in a big way.

Great creative really isn’t great unless it makes an impact and delivers on what the original strategy was. If you have a generic strategy, you’re going to wind up with generic communications.

So great creative begins with a great creative strategy – something that has been seen and signed off on by your client. If your presentation doesn’t begin with an overview of your creative strategy, you’ve already lost.

What you need to do is review that strategy. Focus on the key message that your communications are going to deliver. Get agreement and buy-in. See heads nod up and down in affirmation. Then, if the work you’re presenting clearly answers the key message that you’re conveying, you’re more than halfway there.

Many people like to present more than one concept to a client. That’s okay, as long as each concept is on-target and on-strategy. But it also makes your selling job a little more difficult. Most times, but not always, your client will choose the safest of the executions you present and the concept you really wanted to sell will be relegated to your “ideas that never made it” file.

So by showing multiple ideas, you may be shooting yourself in the foot. Of course, if you only enter the room with one campaign and your client asks, “Is that all you got?” then maybe your work wasn’t quite as powerful as you may have thought.

But if you truly believe that what you’re presenting is the absolute best solution for your client, you need to be a warrior. You need to fight for your ideas because ultimately, that is what your client is paying you for, right?

It’s a fine line to walk. You need to fight and defend in a way that shows your client you are passionate about their business and doing what is best for them.  If the work you’re presenting truly is right on target and they bought off on the strategy, that’s a sound argument on your behalf. Perhaps your idea could be tested or run by your target audience for their reaction. If you can do this before you present and have it in your pocket, that’s all the better.

Sometimes, though, all the reasoning and logic in the world won’t help to sell your great idea. That’s when you need to go back to the proverbial drawing board and top it.

We’re in a business where logic and reason doesn’t always apply. You need to have thick skin. And you need to always be ready to re-group, re-energize and realize that if that first great campaign or concept didn’t fly, you’ve got another one in your pocket that will.

Written by Thomas Blood

Social networking is a huge part of my daily life. Whether I’m talking to friends or complete strangers the Internet is a great way to socialize and also a great way to get your name out there. Facebook is defiantly the leader in the social networking roster, and with such a huge amount of people in one spot, it makes it incredibly easy to reach out to new customers or show your work to everybody, and best of all its free! The easiest and best way to advertise yourself on Facebook would be to create a Facebook “page” that is separate from your personal profile. You want it to be separate since you will be allowing access to strangers and you don’t want EVERYONE to see your baby pictures right? But once you have this page up you can throw up photos, and talk to your potential customers. Take advantage of this free networking and get your name out there!

Written by: Joey Harrell

From what I’ve heard, Facebook is becoming more business oriented. Supposedly they are thinking about automatically tagging products in pictures, whether you go in and do it manually or not. This means that if you have a photo of Grandma drinking some coffee out of a Starbucks cup, or a photo of a friend using a Mac laptop, these products will be tagged and therefore become part of the internet marketing world. I haven’t heard if they are going to charge for this, but I won’t be surprised if they do. What do you think about this new business tactic that Facebook may pursue? Do you think it’s a smart move on their part, or will it annoy you to see a product tagged in every photo along with your friends and family? How do you feel about your “personal” photos becoming advertisement for a company? Will you be cautious of what you take photos of from now on?  Let us know!

Written by: Jen Ebenrick

Anyone who has watched the television show Mad Men knows that there was a time in our country when the advertising industry was the tail that wagged the dog of American industry.  That age ended recently in my opinion.  Spending a load of money on television ads and having strategy on if you are reaching your target market is not acceptable in today’s fast paced marketing environment.  Having a conversation with your customers is now preferable to a shock and awe campaign costing millions of dollars.  What do you think the future of advertising and marketing will bring for us as consumers?

Written by: Dan Goeke

In today’s world, everyone is using social media to stay in touch with family and friends, keep in check with current events, meet new people, and even grow their business. Here are some tips on how to use social media to grow your own personal business.

• Creating your brand.
The first thing you need to do when bringing your business to social media is to create you brand. This means you need to go out there and match you business and products to the outside world. A good way to bring your brand to the online world is to invest in online advertising. Online advertising is a great way to expand your business because it allows you to reach potential clients that would normally be inaccessible to your company.

• Being Direct with you consumers.
With social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, you can easily give your followers the latest news and updates about your company. This is great for your company because it allows you to be more personal with your clientele and keeps them up to date with what goes on in your world.

• Generate more traffic to your website.
While keeping others up to date about what your company does, you can also post links to your site on all of these posts as well. This will get the people reading your updates back onto your site, and generate more traffic to your page.

These are just a few reasons for you to get into the social media world, and to expand you business. What are some other reasons you find it important to use social media to expand you business.

By – Joey Harrell