As marketing becomes increasingly digitized, it’s gone from a subjective field to a more objective one. Numbers and trends inform our practice. It’s easy to see the shift towards more data-based strategies and worry that, in the struggle between qualitative and quantitative work, the latter appears to be winning.
It’s a daunting question: Can marketing retain that subjective element, and can we still produce qualitative work from a quantitative base?
But at Motion, this isn’t a problem for us. Our digital team makes marketing’s objective elements into their own art as they work hard to keep clients visible and relevant on social media and likewise channels. Creative works with data—not around it—and maintains their ability to communicate person-to-person through our campaigns.
So, when it comes to the objective-focused strategy known as performance marketing, how do we as advertisers fulfill the needs of our clients while maintaining our creative strategy and brand identity?
We talked to a few people at Motion who know the ins and outs of this conflict for a better perspective.
Performance Marketing: What’s It All About?
“Performance marketing” is a digital advertising strategy where the goal is to increase the amount of traffic a client’s website receives. The hired agency will develop a campaign and strategy based on the client’s current website performance to make them as visible as possible. The agency will then adjust their strategy as the campaign progresses based on how target audiences interact with it.
This data-oriented approach is a perfect encapsulation of the divide between quantitative input and qualitative output present in marketing, as well as a perfect example of how we at Motion find balance between the two sides. The numbers present throughout the process of optimizing campaign visibility informs us on which direction to take our campaign in. The friction between objective and subjective approaches to marketing doesn’t have to be either/or.
How Creative Rises to the Challenge
Executive Creative Director Terry Mertens is no stranger to this divide. When it comes to an agency focusing in on performance marketing, he says: “We like to say we’re results-based and data-driven, and those are important things, but if you lean too heavily on that part then the creative can sound like it was output by a machine.”
But conversely, he agrees that an agency’s project focused only on brand creativity and ambition may not be “delivering from a business standpoint”: “You can spend and waste a million dollars not moving the needle. It’ll get a lot of attention, but will you get more sales?”
Here’s where Motion bridges the gap between adhering to the data and exercising creativity. “The key is that our creative team understands the big picture on what we’re trying to accomplish,” says Chief Strategy Officer Mark Shevitz. “In addition to being really good creatives, they’re also really good marketers.”
The data we’re given not only sets our long-term goal but helps us figure out what changes need to be made as the campaign progresses. Instead of suppressing our ideas, working with the data helps them grow and progress.
“If we’re able to translate data into something that functions on an emotional level, not just on a rational one, that’s a big win,” Terry says about our process. The singular goal of advertising with intent to meet a specific number doesn’t mean that the creativity behind it has to be lessened. Instead, it presents our team with a new way of thinking about how to get target audiences interested.
“There has to be a results-based focus,” Terry says. “If the strategy’s done well, like we do here at Motion, then the work will be ultimately effective.”
The Personal Side of Digital Marketing
Data being the more objective, rational side of marketing doesn’t make it a detached practice. For every creative using provided data to build a successful concept that reaches their target audience, there’s someone on Motion’s digital team testing that concept’s effectiveness with the audience and optimizing its visibility. Ken Jackson, account manager of digital, believes in this symbiosis between teams: “A good creative team, like the one we have at Motion, is in constant communication with their digital people placing the media.”
“I’m a numbers guy,” Ken explains. “Over my career I’ve kind of gravitated towards this digital marketing specialty.” The testing of different concepts—Ken calls this a “constant iterative process”—is its own creative niche. It bridges the gap between creative’s ambition and the needs of a client who engages in performance marketing. By perfecting the visibility of creative’s ideas and getting target audiences to interact with the clients, our digital team’s hard work and problem-solving makes sure everyone is satisfied. “It really gets at what the clients want,” Ken says.
Mark adds, “It’s important at Motion we’re accountable to our clients, and often the way to become accountable with them is through data.”
The hard facts of performance are what keeps our clients certain that Motion is getting eyes on their products, and it’s our digital team that makes it visible. By engaging with the numbers and learning from their trends how to bolster creative’s ideas, they act as performance marketing’s backbone. Ken says as much: “We know who the target audience is, and conceptually how and who can solve it, but how do we put the puzzle together?”
How Our Teams Work Together
With the strengths of both the objective and subjective perspectives of performance marketing in mind, how do they work together?
Creative and digital are two sides of the same coin. Both teams operate with the goal of helping our clients reach their target audience, they just help with different parts of that process, especially when it comes to the data-driven performance marketing. “We’re talking about qualitative vs quantitative, and those two things can coexist. They’re not mutually exclusive,” Mark says.
“A good creative team works and communicates with the digital team, as we do at Motion,” Ken says.
The balance between qualitative and quantitative is created when the teams that embody them work off each other. Creative constructs campaign ideas, digital ensures that they’re as accessible as possible after their publication, and if need be, creative tweaks the campaign to make it more visible as per digital’s analysis of the campaign’s performance.
Together, these teams lend their own brand identities to the objective challenge of performance marketing, whether it be through exciting new ideas or sharp problem-solving skills.
Tying It All Together
When it comes to more data-driven advertising strategies like performance marketing, we work with the objective goal it sets for us while still retaining our subjective approach to new campaigns. From digital’s puzzle-solving perspective, Ken puts it nicely when discussing what he loves about the work’s objective nature: “Every client has a challenge.”
And when it comes to creative, they can retain their innovative work even when working with something more numbers-based. “It allows them to still use that creativity but never lose sight about how we quantitatively measure success,” says Mark on the topic of creative’s work with performance marketing.
“We really enjoy what we do, because that’s why we’re in this industry,” Terry says as he gazes at the wall of his office, which is covered with campaigns he took part in. “These all just started with a brief or a business challenge, and in the end, it became something much bigger.”
