Regardless of the channel, ad format, or brand, stories are what ultimately drive performance in digital marketing. Every brand has one to tell – but how do you scale storytelling, evoke emotion, and, ultimately, build a lasting consumer relationship? In today’s fast-paced world advertisers don’t only have to produce more advertising assets than ever before but also create relevant and personalized content. The challenges most marketers face is usually those of scale, relevancy through personalization and localization, and lastly, brand integrity: how to produce high-quality ads fast, efficiently, and without breaking the bank?
Challenges with Creating Content in a Timely Fashion
It’s time to wave goodbye to poorly cropped product images and dull ads by putting storytelling and branding at front and center. The three pillars of high-performing creative are personalization, variation, and relevancy; you should cater not only to your audience’s interests, but also their location, language, and context (seasonal occasions, events to name a few).
It’s rarely feasible to deploy manual production to satisfy the demand for constantly updated and branded advertising assets. While technology has made content production more accessible than ever with affordable equipment, the pace and scale at which content should be produced can be overwhelming.
As it drives up to 66% more qualified leads and increases brand awareness by 54%, it is understandable that many brands want to explore the medium and show video content to their audience.
Video has been growing faster than ever. As it drives up to 66% more qualified leads and increases brand awareness by 54%, it is understandable that many brands want to explore the medium and show video content to their audience. Video production is work-intensive and time-consuming with a set of unique, production-related challenges. With all the steps and special skills and technology required, video has traditionally called for large teams and big budgets. Outside of the creative process, its complexity spans coordinating tasks, gathering feedback, and sticking to deadlines. These challenges tend to occur no matter if the production happens entirely in-house or is partially or entirely outsourced.
The Opportunities with Automation
This is where new-era creative automation comes into play; modern automation technology allows marketers to generate personalized ads – even videos – without sacrificing quality or brand integrity. Facebook Marketing partners like Smartly.io offer sophisticated and template-based creative automation tools that help tackle some of the most common obstacles with scaling creative. Many leading brands in the US and Europe have turned to automation of creative to optimize performance and brands such as Uber, TechStyle, and eBay have seen excellent results with their campaigns. Not only did their creative perform well – it was visually on-brand, too.
The good news is, you can introduce automation in the realm of personalization while maintaining your brand integrity. Automated video solutions allow advertisers to customize the look-feel entirely: fonts, colors, borders, overlays, images, copy, animations, transitions in video, among other features, are completely editable.
The good news is, you can introduce automation in the realm of personalization while maintaining your brand integrity.
Automation is an efficient way to trim down timelines and streamline the process as it cuts out several steps associated with traditional content production. Manual iterations and updates are soon becoming another blast from the past; instead of separately working through menial tasks like changing price or product information, teams can reallocate the saved time in design strategy, creative planning, and creative testing. Automation diminishes the risk of human error and mistakes by tackling repetitive and tedious manual tasks.
Product feed-based advertisements, on the other hand, ensure you that the beautiful creatives you’ve generated with overlays and templates will always show relevant content to the user, which in turn, drives performance. You can use API data point to customize the ad content on-the-go with automated targeting: real-time sports results, weather, even public transport information. Virtually any data in a feed format can fuel a campaign. On top of this, the content can be automatically refreshed every so often to maintain advertising performance and to keep up with changing product inventory.
Content can no longer be published in one format on all social platforms, the risk of appearing unprofessional is simply too high. Template-based video creation helps advertisers crop and resize their videos to further improve the creative quality and appear professional. The video needs to be in the format that is native to its platform – the smart way to approach this is to scale with the help of creative automation tech.
The Future of Creative Is Here
As technology and social continues to shape consumption habits and preferences, it also brings new opportunities for advertisers. Consumers are increasingly looking for relevancy in advertisements, and these possibilities don’t only bring an elevated level of personalization but new ways for consumers and audiences to engage with the ads. Data allows advertisers to quickly test, analyze, and iterate ads depending on performance. It can inform brands on what works, for whom, and when. Automated creative will ensure that the right content reaches the right consumer whilst building a favorable image of your brand.