Creative That Actually Converts: What It Takes to Engage Your Audience

Announcer: Welcome to the Ignite Podcast, the only healthcare marketing podcast that digs into the digital strategies and tactics that help you accelerate growth. Each week, Cardinal’s experts explore innovative ways to build your digital presence and attract more patients. Buckle up for another episode of Ignite.

Lauren Leone: Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Ignite Healthcare Marketing Podcast. I have, returning with us today, Jean, our creative director, senior creative director, something like that. Jean, I’m so excited to have you because I was actually recording an episode with Rich last week, which is probably airing as we speak. We started having a conversation about creative enabling media. I was like, “We should have just had Jean on here. We could have all talked about it together. I’m glad we’re doing this follow-up together. Welcome. Welcome.

Jean Zhang: Thank you. One of my favorite topics. I’m excited to be here.

Lauren: That’s your whole job, right? Rich and I started talking about how important it is to have a good creative strategy to enable the media plans. We’re talking about media channel testing, and we’re talking about third-party audiences and all this really cool activation stuff. The biggest gotcha to me, one of the two biggest gotchas outside of data enablement, is executing on all of these plans and not having the right thing to say to the right person, and just expecting something generic or branded to perform for you. In your words, can you just explain or differentiate the term performance creative from just what people think in general about creative?

Jean: Yes, that’s a great question. The way that I view performance creative is it very much is associated to some extent with some end metric that we’re then responsible for from a marketing perspective. What it usually does is take broader brand, big idea type of creative, and then essentially applies it across different mediums, different channels, different tactics that we know we need to enable in order to get in front of our audience. It’s taking that big brand idea and distilling it down into tons of granular pieces that essentially allow us to run media.

Lauren: Yes, absolutely. In thinking about creative that performs, what are some of the things that you need to start developing the plan? What comes first? Does the media plan come first, and then the creative? Do we build a creative strategy and then fit a media plan around it?

Lauren: A little bit of both. I think it’s flexible. I’ve seen it work both ways, but the pieces that absolutely have to come together in order for us to create a really strong creative strategy that enables media is that multifaceted approach where we are first layering on important insights about the actual end users and then layering on top of that brand insights for major differentiators, things that really, truly are different about that service or offering within the market. Then, last but not least, we apply, of course, our media knowledge and expertise. Things like recent meta best practices that come out based on user data and a plethora of user research studies, tests, et cetera.

We layer all those pieces together to essentially create something that’s really strong. The most important piece, I think, that we have to keep in mind is that the granularity of targeting is something that really does impact creative strategy. If we know we’re able to find a specific type of user based on their affinities, things that they’re interested in, we want to make sure that we’re leveraging that as we think through our messaging approach, because those pieces have to work together. It’s one thing to speak from a very broad brand perspective and just hope that in those smaller touchpoints it resonates, and it’s another to apply that specificity to the brand messaging to then hopefully be more impactful overall.

Lauren: We’re talking about where to start, which is with the audience. It’s almost like, without clarity on what the ideal profile looks like, you don’t start media planning or creative. What would be the point in doing those things other than general brand marketing? We’ve created these audience segments. We understand in general who they are, some information about them. Then you’ve got this layered complexity of, “Well, then they’re going to go on a journey. When are we going to reach them, and when do they enter, and what do they know about us at that point?” Can you just talk a little bit about how does that impact the creative strategy?

Jean: Yes, absolutely. I think a lot of brands get that very final piece right. The conversion piece where it’s, “What’s our major value prop? It drives the landing page. These people are already hand-raisers. They’re already engaged.” The part that I think a lot of brands could do additional work in is understanding that digital touchpoint and digital journey ahead of that decision stage. What exactly is someone doing in their research process? Where are they going? Where is an organic place for us to show up? Then what type of messaging, given all of those pieces, is messaging that could actually resonate?

What we don’t want to do is drive someone away because we are– What’s the analogy I love to hear? We’re asking someone to marry us on the second date. We have to make sure that what we are setting in front of a user or a prospect at that time matches what they’re seeking. What we like to do is layer on top of our actual strategy, some idea of a journey map. Understanding that research process, making sure that we are then an available resource as a brand for that user at that state, and then ideally pulling them through their journey after that. That’s the ideal state.

Lauren: I just finished recording an episode with Richie where we were talking about third-party data activation. Just to tie it all together, let’s say we’ve got a client in the mammography space and we’ve got an audience. You might say in general, “I know that my audience is women who are– I’ve got my 35 to 45, first time starting to get mammograms. Then I’ve got my older demographic.” That I think some groups may stop there and say, “Okay, that’s our audiences.” Then you start to layer in things like a third-party audience, and you get a segment that has had a mammogram, but it has lapsed and not gone in the last three years.

They’re going to get a very different message than the woman who’s never had a claim in her history and needs to even understand why mammograms are important for your proactive health. That’s that extra layer when we start to talk about the granularity that a media plan informs your creative strategy.

Jean: Yes, absolutely. I think that is the power of digital marketing is the ability to get that granularity. I think the creative piece, of course, enables that. Understanding that journey and making sure we’re creating appropriately is going to be hugely impactful.

Lauren: We can do and create all of these awesome journeys and all the messages. You and I have been talking a lot about measuring those things, where at the end of the day, we want to perform. The reason why we buy more expensive third-party audiences and create assets specific to them is because we believe that will cause the user to convert at a higher rate and ultimately drive higher quality, more patients in the door. How are you measuring that in creative, where I’m assuming it’s fairly challenging to do?

Jean: There are two major pieces. One is that you have to set up that creative testing plan ahead of time with your media team. The way you name things, the way you set up the analytics, and the structure, for us, that has been really, really a critical piece in order for us to evaluate, “Hey, is message 1, which is value proposition-based, performing better than variant 2, which is then emotionally-based?” I think that’s a really important thing that we also like to make sure we do, which is, it’s one thing for us to take a look at all the insights and pieces and come up with a strategy, it’s a whole other thing to actually put that in the wild and see performance.

Having a baby variant or having multiple variants where we can test, iterate, and essentially continue to optimize as we grow our campaigns, that is the true best way for us to hone in on that creative approach.

Lauren: Just super directly there, Jean, it’s mostly done through UTMs. Is that how you’re tagging and tracking all those variables?

Jean: Exactly. I think in our most complex versions of this, we have very, very long UTM parameters.

Lauren: You’re capturing what? The name of the image, the headline, the size, the dimension, the format? What are you capturing?

Jean: Just about all of those pieces. It’s anything that we really want to test. If we know we’re putting something in market that has subject female, subject male, or design element overlay versus design element no overlay, we’ll put those pieces in the UTMs to essentially allow us to afterwards look at the data, filter by those pieces, and determine, “Hey, which piece actually performed best.” The precision in how you name across channels as well is really important because it gives you that full coverage and full overview for, “Hey, not only are we seeing this within meta, but we’re seeing this within display programmatic, et cetera.”

Lauren: The UTMs I know are very much when you have a click activity that happens, and so much activity in these channels is view. I’m assuming you’re not just using that dataset, and you’re not just using the in-platform. It’s really just the bigger picture of both of those things.

Jean: Yes, absolutely.

Lauren: Jean, when it comes to actual testing, which we’ve started to touch on because we talked about how to track everything at a high level, do you think are the most impactful creative tests? What are some things that you like to do an A/B test on or a multivariant? Then there’s this concept of micro testing as well. Can you just talk a little bit about the approaches for those?

Jean: Yes. In terms of testing, I think the exact approach for the first thing you test is going to be specific by brand. It’s what is most important to drive the bottom line, or is there an insight that needs to be solved for in order for us to apply those learnings elsewhere? From that perspective, a testing roadmap is super helpful, which allows us to establish at the top, “What are we starting with from a testing perspective?” Then, as we grow and iterate, “What are additional tests we can put into play that allow us to truly understand how to grow the campaign?”

What we’ve seen most often is testing, maybe at a value proposition standpoint first. The reason that that is something that is a very smart way to test is because those pieces can impact not just our media creative, but they can impact what goes on the actual home page of the website, what other types of areas across the board for that digital footprint can that touch and impact. What we see after we start to get those learning is more granularity. We get to that micro testing place when we start to get to a place where we’re truly iterating small A/B variances. For instance, CTA language that says get started versus learn more to give you a terrible example.

Those are the pieces that we tend to see more often once we have more of those big-picture views. Once we know, “Hey, the subject of the image is resonating more with this group because it’s female, and we know that female audiences for this brand respond better to this type of photography reflecting themselves back,” once we get all of those big major ones, the iteration process is what just helps us hone in.

Lauren: Thinking about where the world of performance creative is going, let’s do a little bit of forecasting what you and I think is coming. Very much there’s this world of branded assets. That’s what you see in the world of meta and display banners, very traditional like logo, value prop image. Then there’s this whole world of user-generated content and people advocating for a brand. It’s on your mobile device. It feels very much like someone just was telling their story, walking around the lobby. What are your thoughts on testing those things against each other, where performance creative is heading?

Jean: That’s definitely a trend that we’re seeing. We’re seeing the consumer gravitate more towards real voices. I think UGC is a really good way for brands to bring that to life. I know from a performance perspective as well, we’ve heard from different providers essentially say that if they take something that feels organic to someone’s Instagram feed, when I say someone, I mean the brand’s Instagram feed, and then run it as, for instance, a programmatic asset, they see performance go way up.

In terms of testing for that, I think it really is worth testing, more so on that grand scale. We’re not talking about micro testing anymore. We’re talking about putting something into market that is fairly different and just seeing performance there honing in afterwards. I think that it’s a really good idea to test, though. The execution is going to be critical to some extent that UGC has to feel authentic. It has to be authentic to some extent. I think for some brands, that can pose to be a little bit more challenging with how they shoot it, the voiceover, how authentic the feedback from that person feels.

Lauren: So much of it hinges on having strong relationships with patients, former patients, someone who you believe can be an advocate. You’re almost creating these micro influencers out of your patient base. There’s really no replacement, and sending in an actor to pretend to have that experience might fall flat.

Jean: Yes, absolutely. Then there’s that other side of things as well, where you’re engaging existing content creators to act on behalf of you. That’s that middle ground between true patient and more of that. You’re moving back towards some of the buttoned-up video types of approaches.

Lauren: Jean, as we wrap, is there anything you would recommend? Where do you go to stay up to date on the latest in what’s going on in the world, other than this podcast, of course?

Jean: I think it sounds silly, but in terms of creative, things change all the time. Just going through and seeing how the really big players are marketing themselves is something that I find to be really interesting. What I’ve been trying to do is build a massive creative repository of my favorite ads or favorite ways to go to market. That’s something that the team can then just take a look at, leverage, and get inspired by. It’s this ongoing process of collection as to what’s truly being displayed out there.

Lauren: Also, just not forgetting, we ourselves are consumers. If you’re clicking on something, obviously it’s resonating. Make a mental note of that. What’s working for you? Jean, thanks so much for joining us. I’m sure we will continue these conversations, especially as the creative world is changing so frequently. Thanks for being here.

Jean: Thanks for having me.

Lauren: Thanks for listening to Ignite, guys. See you next time.

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