***reader disclaimer: Schlesinger Group recently re-branded to Sago through March,2023

Get creative and take more educated risks with your marketing strategy

Marketers are ready to take more risks and ramp up creativity in 2023, according to a new survey from Optimizely.

So, here’s the (multi) million-dollar question: How can marketing professionals leverage creativity and risk-taking to grow market share and win new customers at a time when many businesses are tightening their belts?

The answer: Marketers who leverage data-driven insights to better understand the shifting preferences of their customers will be in the best position to succeed. Calculated use of data-driven insights can tip the scale in your favor. Fully leveraging existing creative assets, validating new creative directions, and integrating real-time customer preferences allows you to take informed risks, increasing the likelihood of improving the ROI of your marketing efforts.

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Here are three tips you can employ to take more educated risks in 2023 and beyond.

1. Use Qualitative Research to Explore and Understand on the Go

Connecting with and understanding your customers has always been important, but it’s even more essential as preferences and buying behaviors begin to shift rapidly during times of economic uncertainty. Qualitative research solutions have evolved to encompass a variety of ways to connect with your customers on a fundamental level, ranging from traditional in-person focus groups to digital insight communities or mobile smartphone-based consumer journeys.

When you’re exploring white space opportunities within your marketing approach but lack a deep history with a new target audience or creative campaign, conducting an initial qualitative assessment is valuable. It helps you quickly gain confidence in your decisions or avoid a costly misstep with your marketing spend.

When you want to garner a deeper understanding of consumers’ feelings, motivations, and perceptions toward your product or service, that’s where qualitative research is critical. Qualitative research gives you a deep level of empathy for your customers and provides a lens of understanding how the current economic conditions affect their world.

2. Leverage Your Greatest Hits

Financial constraints or conservative budgets can be a helpful nudge to evaluate ways to use historically successful creative in new rotations, especially for brands with a significant volume of existing creative assets.

Just as musicians historically repackaged their top songs across multiple albums to generate popular (and highly profitable!) greatest hits albums, marketers can repackage their brands’ “greatest hits” within new media buys. We’ve seen multiple insurance companies use this cost-effective approach that also tugs on the elements of consumer nostalgia prevalent in uncertain times.

Underpinning this strategy is decades of advertising effectiveness research that demonstrates very little genuine “wear-out” of creative assets in market. Sure, as viewers we may get tired of seeing that same car commercial every time we watch our favorite sports team play, but the wealth of data says most creative assets are maintaining their performance in market or still rising when they are pulled off the air. Call it marketers’ impatience or a drive for a new shiny object, but we rarely see genuine wear-out, especially on TV.

As you save creative dollars and time to market by leveraging or repackaging existing assets, run a quick creative test to make sure the messaging and branding still play well with your target audience. Modern approaches to this kind of research—both qualitative and quantitative—can turn around results in 24 hours or less.

3. Staff Up Your War Room

When you’re taking risks and moving into new directions as a brand, 24/7 vigilance in reading the market reaction to your work is essential.

When digital spend is often greater than 50 percent of our total campaign budget, that means our choices to shift campaign elements are almost infinite and coming at us in real time. Thankfully, there are a multitude of insights that help you steer your campaign effectively at the speed of the market and minimize risk.

Data scientists and researchers set you up for success with an optimized media mix, audience targets, and creative assets. They can also leverage real-time behavioral data to optimize digital action and quick-turn research. This provides an understanding of relative competitive performance, how your customers feel, and what they’re going to do next.

These insights aren’t worth anything if your marketing team isn’t ready to consume and quickly act on them. A multi-disciplined team in constant contact with one another ensures your creative and media decisions over the course of a campaign will be well-informed, coherent, and consistent over time.

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Final word

It’s easy to pull back on marketing efforts during times of economic uncertainty. But in this case, the easy route isn’t the best route. Instead, get creative and take informed risks that will help you grow share and win new customers.

Understand your customers’ current needs. Track micro movements in your industry. Get back in market and on air. Seize the opportunities that lie ahead.

In other words, don’t stop!