Top 10 Best Practices for Creative Optimization As a full service digital marketing agency, we know that the quality of creative impacts campaigns

and the way consumers experience your brand’s message at all touch points.

A new campaign needs effective creative to make an impression across the various distribution

channels and connect with potential customers, and an established product or service needs

refreshed messaging and imagery to continue to generate interest.

Beyond these fundamentals of creative design and messaging, optimization is the most significant

service we offer to help our clients increase engagement and drive measurable improvements. We

define creative optimization as the use of customized strategy, technology and best practices to

deliver outstanding performance for our clients’ campaigns and websites- and gathered together

here are the Top 10 Best Practices for Creative Optimization.

1) Get a Website Design that Connects – What is web design really? Effective web design is eye-catching,

engaging and drives the advertiser’s intended actions. It’s a vital part of any online marketing initiative.

If your website is generic or appears outdated, this should be addressed first and foremost.

2) Leverage your Achievements – New visitors to your website or landing page may know nothing about

your products or service besides an offer they just saw. Emphasize your expertise and showcase

accolades, media praise and customer testimonials.

3) Understand the Mobile Factor – Mobile web usage is projected to overtake desktop usage in 2014. It is

imperative that your website and landing pages are designed and coded to support mobile devices.

This is known as Responsive Design. Responsive Design allows your content to dynamically adapt the

user experience to any device. Responsive techniques can even be applied to your email creative so

it’s optimally displayed on the iPhone, Android and other smartphones.

4) Improve the Form Itself – Each lead generation campaign must capture certain key information to be

of value. Ensure your form only captures required fields and do everything you can to eliminate other

fields. For instance, City and State can be auto-filled by incorporating a backend zip code database.

5) Call them to Action – Your landing page, campaign creative and all online processes tied to

marketing performance should provide clear language that informs and compels the user to take

action. This is especially true for your main call to action link/button. Replace vague language like

“Start Here,” “Submit,” and “Next” with something that communicates to the user like: “Request a Free

Trial.”

6) Load Time Can Make or Break – All elements of your website should be optimized to load as quickly as

possible. A review of your file sizes, code structure and links to 3rd party support files helps you identify

elements that are slowing you down. This technical side is often overlooked, and it might be the reason

your campaign is failing.

7) Attribute and Adjust Creative – If you’re running several campaigns across different media and

distribution channels, you may be surprised to learn that your best creative isn’t equally effective on all

channels. It’s important to test your messaging and imagery until your campaign is optimized for each

channel. Also be sure to pay special attention to attribution to discover messages and imagery that

are resonating and when and how often these interactions occur.

8) Be Mindful of Your Campaign Type – A landing page tied to a search marketing campaign can be

enhanced in several channel-specific ways.. Judicious use of keywords and text-based content are a

plus for Quality Score and contextually relevant content and support for Site Links will help your ad

stand out with a larger ad in the search results. Creative and landing pages can be customized for

other campaign types (Email, Display, Social Media) as well.

9) Test your Landing Page – This is crucial to success. Don’t ever assume that your landing page design is

finished when you start using it. Continuously test your messaging and images to find a winning

combination that improves your conversion rate. Find the right test strategy for the type of campaign

and/or traffic you’re testing and establish an ongoing testing program.

10) Optimize the Funnel – Can you reduce or eliminate steps to request your products and services? When

eCommerce checkouts and other complex processes are developed, the initial goals are centered

on delivering the basic functionality without any bugs. User experience should be central to your plan

form the beginning, but it’s never too late to revisit your funnel. By improving one or two things, you

may see a dramatic improvement in your conversion rate.

Request a Custom Audit of your email, landing page or website. Our creative team will review your

materials and provide recommendations you can apply to instantly increase your digital marketing results.

Contact: marketing@directagents.com to get started on your custom creative evaluation.