Many of our clients don’t know where to start when it comes to their digital advertising efforts. With more and more brands taking their digital marketing efforts in-house, the challenge becomes to find a digital production agency that delivers an all-in-one solution, so your team doesn’t waste valuable resources building the creative concepts OR looking for multiple vendors to provide the project components piecemeal (creative, production, media).
So, how can you get the most bang for your buck? Start looking for a digital production agency that does it all – creative and production.
Digital Creative Production agencies – the multipurpose tool of digital advertising
Digital Production Agency
Some digital production agencies really do just specialize in production. Give them assets and a detailed storyboard/scope of work and they’ll build what you need.
But, ask them to deliver a strategy or mock up a concept based on objectives that need creative direction – boosting sign-ups, opt-ins or purchases for a product or service – and they’ll direct you to a creative agency.
Creative digital production agencies are digital production specialists that have processed and built hundreds or thousands of pieces of creative. They know ad formats and capabilities like the back of their hand, and they also know how to repurpose your existing assets (photos, videos), drive metrics with a particular design and translate your messaging into a high-impact, engaging ad experience.
You don’t want just any creative digital production studio, though. It’s important to find a partner that handles everything in-house – strategy, creative and production. Outsourcing is often what creates a disconnect in the first place, spreading your messaging across too many players. It also notches your final bill upward.
The benefits of a creative digital production agency
High impact ad formats
These are just a few of the benefits of working with a digital production agency that provides in-house creative development services, too:
Get a fresh perspective (and new creative concepts)
Coming up with new ideas for campaigns can be tough. Figuring out how to advertise something new or build a new campaign strategy for your core offerings is even tougher.
You may have assets – video, photo – or just objectives (to promote a new product line, event, etc.). A creative digital production agency can take those assets or objectives and translate them into multiple, viable concepts, from digital ads to landing pages.
Digitaland – Make the most of your budget
Not every concept needs a full-scale marketing agency deployment. But every concept will eventually need a digital production partner. Working with a partner that has creative development capabilities minimizes back and forth.
You’ll also save money while quickly testing the effectiveness of different digital advertising initiatives.
Enjoy stronger steering for your campaign
Your digital production agency can double as a display advertising consultant. They know all the creative possibilities and the associated pros and cons of various ad formats – slow load times, geo location technology, rich media technology capabilities, etc. – and can present a suggested strategy.
They’re also an excellent resource when there are too many competing voices in your team, providing a voice of expert reason (often with case studies to back up their suggestions).
Support brand messaging
It’s easy to get lost in the barrage of digital advertising do’s and don’t’s, best practices, cutting-edge tactics and more. A creative digital production agency can craft effective digital ads that engage your target audience and stay aligned with your brand messaging.
How we do it – a creative digital production agency’s method
HTML5 Banner Agency
We started out with a focus on digital production almost a decade ago, back when the online advertising space was still relatively slow-paced. Advertisers had the luxury of time and typically invested in marketing and creative agencies that outsourced their digital production needs.
Fast forward to today. Everything has changed. Creative matters more than ever, but brands don’t have the time to develop it. Launching before someone else snags your audience’s eyeballs is more important to staying relevant and solvent.
With the push for speed, a rapidly growing segment of brands don’t know how to approach their digital advertising needs. There isn’t the bandwidth to develop concept after concept, and there aren’t the resources to bring in a creative agency or team.
Relying on a digital production agency for developing creative concepts may seem strange, but consider our process.
Discovery
Every project starts with an initial discovery call to get clear on what the client wants to accomplish with their campaign. Sometimes they know exactly what they want or need – we just build it to spec.
Other times, they’re not so sure. Or they think they know what they need – a certain ad format, a specific number of emails or a certain landing page layout – but once we look at their objectives, assets and target audience, we realize they need something different.
It’s not always a scope expansion either. Sometimes less is more. Quality creative always wins out over low-quality quantity.
Test for tone
Many of our clients come to us with creative assets (photos, video) and objectives, but not much else. We take what we’ve learned during the discovery process and create a storyboard or test for tone piece, if they need copy crafted for the deliverables.
While presenting the concept to our client, we review their feedback, brainstorming the best approach to meet their goals and stay within their budget.
Design
When we first got started, most of our clients had creative concepts mocked up and ready to go. They just needed a digital production partner to bring those ideas to life.
Nowadays, clients often look to us for full design direction on their campaigns. During this stage, we mock up one or two different concepts, incorporating the chosen copy, client assets and digital advertising best practices.
Production
Once designs are approved, that’s when the ‘typical’ digital production experience finally begins. We build the deliverables – standard or rich media ads, landing pages emails and social ads – run them through a rigorous quality assurance process and then deliver the files to our client.
Finding a good creative digital production agency
Rich Media Production
It’s never easy to find a go-to vendor, but don’t resort to DIY digital ad building tools quite yet. Robust vetting programs, like the selective Certified DoubleClick Marketing Partner are slowly emerging to help clients identify experienced creative digital production partners.
Look for digital production partners who align with the Better Ads Standards, so you can be a part of creating the next generation of great ads – ones that your target audience will be happy to see.
Ready to streamline the creative and digital production process for your next campaign with Digitaland? Drop us a line!
