Performance Creative: What Is It & How Does It Work?

Creative content must do more than simply look good; it needs to perform. That’s where the performance creative model comes in. It’s a strategy that allows your marketing team to flex their creative talent while reinforcing your strategy with timely, relevant data insights. The results are more impactful campaigns that resonate with your target audience while delivering a strong return on investment. 

What Is Performance Creative?

Performance creative refers to a marketing approach that combines the artistic intuition of your team with quantifiable data insights to create better content. Unlike traditional brand creative, performance marketing creative is grounded in performance metrics relevant to your campaign goals. 

Some of the metrics you’ll use to guide your performance creative model include conversion rates, cost per acquisition, and click-through rates; the key is to choose those that are relevant to your campaign goals and target audience. 

Why Is Performance Creative Important?

Performance marketing creative allows your team to move from acting solely on their gut feelings to doing so based on data-driven content creation and distribution. 

Some of the potential benefits of the performance creative model include the following:

• Improved return on ad spend
• Reduced waste
• Personalization at scale
• Better scalability
• The ability to pivot 

Customer preferences can shift in the blink of an eye. If you are guiding your creative decisions with real-time data, your team will be better positioned to adapt to changing preferences and pain points. 

How Does Performance Creative Work?

Performance marketing creative is developed through a cycle of ideation, testing, measurement, and iteration. Instead of launching one polished ad and hoping for the best, your marketing team will create multiple versions and test them. 

Some key steps in the process are as follows:

• Goal setting
• Mining data
• Creating multiple content variations
• Running structured tests
• Optimizing content
• Scaling your strategy as you gather more data

In its simplest terms, performance creative is a constant feedback loop that yields better content with each iteration.

How to Implement Performance Creative

Here’s how you can embrace performance marketing creative in ten simple steps: 

1. Set Clear Campaign Objectives

Whether you are aiming for more leads, increased app installs, or higher sales conversions, determining what it is that you want to achieve is your first step. From there, you’ll want to choose relevant KPIs to track your progress and push your team by setting lofty (though realistic) goals. 

2. Analyze Historical Performance Data

Even if you are new to the performance marketing creative model, you likely have lots of marketing data available. Use it, reviewing what’s working and what isn’t. The results of past campaigns will help you understand which visuals, messages, and channels resonate with your audience, and those insights will help guide your new creative ventures. 

3. Develop Data-Driven Creative Briefs

You’ll also want to use the data you collect to create briefs that guide your team and inform the content creation process. Each should include details like which audience segment you are targeting, performance goals, and your preferred formats.

4. Produce Multiple Creative Variations

Create a few different versions of your content, but don’t waste time polishing it up just yet. Change up elements like the call to action (CTA), format, and headlines. Just keep them similar enough that you’ll be able to compare and identify which elements are most impactful. 

5. Launch A/B and Multivariate Tests

A/B testing is, essentially, a head-to-head matchup between two versions of the same piece of content. Such a comparison helps you understand which changes can improve content performance so you can further enhance your creative assets.

6. Monitor Real-Time Performance Metrics

Launch your campaign and measure how your audience is responding to your new content. You can track things like click-through rates and conversions to determine which pieces of content are performing well and which ones are falling flat. 

7. Identify Top-Performing Elements

Break down the results of your campaign to identify what’s working and what you can do better. Sometimes, details as small as your chosen color palette or CTA could make the difference. In other instances, though, you may find that your content needs more extensive reworking. 

8. Iterate and Optimize Creatives

Use what you’ve learned to refine your content further. Swap out underperforming elements with better ones, and don’t be afraid to completely rework a piece of content that is underperforming. 

9. Align Creative With Audience Segments

Each audience segment will have different messaging preferences. Use segmentation to serve personalized ads to these specific demographics; tailored content is more likely to drive meaningful engagement and conversions. 

10. Scale Winning Assets Across Channels

Once you’ve found your best-performing creative assets and channels, scale up your campaigns. Adjust the format and dimensions of your content to suit each channel while keeping the core messaging consistent. 

Why You Need Scalable Video Production

In performance creative, video production is a powerhouse. But producing it at scale while keeping costs down represents a major barrier for most businesses. 

At least, it used to. Enter QuickFrame, an end-to-end video production platform that can help you make better videos faster. Our network of Makers is composed of global video professionals who can help with every aspect of your video project. Check out QuickFrame and start building better videos today. 

Performance Marketing Creative: Final Thoughts 

Performance creative gives you a strategic advantage in the fast-paced digital advertising environment. It combines the storytelling power of creativity with the precision of real-time data. Explore the performance marketing creative model and build content that delivers meaningful results for your brand.