In a world dominated by tech and automation, adding the human touch and a flare of creativity to business has become somewhat of a commodity. The move to remote work and lockdowns has deepened this drive for novel experiences and valuable content – and the solution lies in creative communication.
What is creative communication?
Simply put, creative communication is all about finding ways to spark innovation in the workplace. From incorporating more graphic design into your newsletters or providing more interactive visuals in employee training, creative communication benefits both internal and external stakeholders.
Creativity in business leads to better ideas and decision-making, having a direct impact on your marketing efforts. But it also greatly benefits your employees and company culture. By fostering a safe environment that allows creativity to flourish, employees will feel more valued and trusted by you.
Despite the obvious benefits, many employees don’t actually feel like their companies are making the most of creative communication. According to Adobe’s data results, up to 75% of workers believe they’re not living up to their creative potential – a telling statistic of the kind of culture many businesses are creating.
Instead of creating an environment that nurtures creativity through safe-thinking spaces, many businesses seem to box creative communication into one department. Instead of placing creativity into one silo like the design team, companies need to start approaching creative communication on a much larger scale.
Creativity can be used by all departments, and incorporating it into internal and external communications will help your business flourish. Whether you decide to add more gamification into your marketing tactics or use mood-boards as part of the collaborative process to inspire innovation, it’s clear creative communication is key.
Still unconvinced? We’ve analyzed the top five reasons creative communication is good for business:
Sets you apart from other businesses
Using creative communication as part of your marketing tactics will give you a competitive edge against other companies in your industry. The digital revolution and move to online shopping have made creativity an essential component of any advertising plan.
Consumers have more choices than ever before at their fingertips, and they’re constantly being bombarded with advertisements and content. So you need to differentiate yourself to stand out from the crowd.
Whenever potential users click on your web application, they’re making a choice about whether or not to buy your products and services. The average user’s attention span is just eight seconds, so you must catch their attention. Rather than just using the same media in your content and marketing, consider mixing it up.
Add gamification elements to your newsletters, use more infographics in your blog posts, and make video a part of your marketing campaigns. These are all creative ways of communicating with your audience that will help drive engagement while adding a human touch to your advertising. This human touch will also make users feel like you value them more, resulting in a higher customer retention rate and overall revenue.
Have a look at your competitors and see what’s missing from their communication to customers; maybe your sector lacks multi-media campaigns and focuses too much on email marketing? Once you’ve identified what’s missing you can start implementing it into your own communications to become more creative.
Delivers a more personalized customer experience (CX)
Delivering creatively communicated campaigns to customers offers them a more rewarding and personalized customer experience (CX). By making your content and marketing campaigns more visual, interactive, and gamified you’re much more likely to engage your subscribers and consumers. No matter what industry you’re in, there’s always a way to use creative communication to shape a rewarding CX – and this can often create a culture around your brand.
Lululemon is a great example of a company that’s built a culture around its product through creative communication. Though they sell activewear, their focus on being a brand that embodies the yogic lifestyle has earned them extra brownie points in the fitness community. Their campaigns don’t just sell leggings for yoga; they sell a feeling of becoming part of the Lululemon yoga culture.
As a result of crafting this personalized CX, your chances of achieving a good ROI are high. Campaigns that use creative communication really speak to consumers and create a sense of kinship to your brand; this means they’re more likely to be shared by your consumers across social media. This word-of-mouth advertising doesn’t cost you a penny, so it’s a gold-mine for advocacy marketing. It’s a method you can start encouraging by simply asking consumers to share photos of their experience with your products or by leaving reviews on your socials.
Positively benefits internal communications
As well as benefiting external stakeholders, creative communication can also have a positive impact on your employees and company culture. Employee engagement is one of the most important areas every company should focus on. By fostering a nurturing environment that celebrates creativity and novel thinking, the happiness and engagement of your employees will grow. Your staff wants to be able to put their skills to use, and boxing them into tasks that are constantly manual and repetitive will inhibit their creative thinking. Encourage creative communication by stressing the importance of collaboration, creating safe spaces for free-thinking, and making it part of your company values.
You can also use creative communication in your training efforts: including more infographics and interactive features in training plans. These visual elements are more likely to help information stick. This way employees will be better able to retain information, meaning less time and money needs to be spent on refreshers or top-ups. Even if you operate remotely, creative communication should still be a core part of your interaction with employees. Their work from home routines offer little respite from distractions or novelty, so delivering communication with creativity will really help spruce up their work and engage them. Consider using a VoIP system for small business to ensure all communications are stable regardless of internet connection or location – regular disruptions will only inhibit the creative thinking process.
Leads to innovation
Fostering a culture that promotes creative communication will spark innovation and lead to better ideas in the workplace. By encouraging employees to approach a topic from all angles, you’re more likely to find innovative solutions to problems that your competitors wouldn’t have thought of. An easy way to generate this creative communication is to make it part of your training; regularly hold photography classes or gamification tutorials for employees; so they can upskill. Not only will their skillset broaden, but they’ll be able to take what they’ve learned to create even more creative and personalized marketing campaigns for consumers.
Creative communication will also result in better decision-making, as your employees will have the capacity to approach a topic from all angles – meaning many solutions can be found.
Builds a stronger team with a focus on collaboration
Creative communication in the workplace can only be done effectively with collaboration. If departments simply act as silos there’ll be no way for new ideas to be shared, worked on, and created. Bringing your team together to brainstorm will result in more creative ideas being shared and allow multiple perspectives to be seen and heard. By pooling together your resources and people, team productivity will truly flourish.
The different perspectives and ideas shared also mean you’ll be better able to target your consumers. Your customer base is diverse, so your marketing campaigns should reflect this by targeting as many people in your audience as possible. Encouraging collaboration will not only highlight the diversity of your team; this will also reflect itself in the diversity of your consumers.
In-person collaboration is best as you can brainstorm and pick up ideas quickly, but if you do operate remotely you can still encourage this participation with online collaborative platforms. Consider using a mix of live content and offline tools such as videos with webinars to promote collaboration in a way that works for everyone. Some people might prefer watching a webinar on the project goals and then brainstorming on a document that the whole team can add to. Others might prefer diving straight into video chat and live collaboration, so make sure you cater to everyone on your team.
Takeaway
Whether you’re running an ecommerce marketing campaign or SaaS product launch, the benefits of implementing creative communication are clear. You’ll be able to deliver more personalized and innovative content to consumers that sets itself apart from the regular hum of single-media or written marketing.
So, say yes to creative communication and make it a part of your brand and company culture! Create safe spaces for free-thinking and encourage employees to come together to approach problems from multiple angles. If you operate remotely, make the most of video conferencing to allow this collaboration to happen, and always try to mix up your marketing campaigns with videos, gamified content, and infographics. Make sure none of that creative thinking is disrupted by installing hybrid clouds or a cloud native platform across your network, so employees can be flexible while working, accessing company data and information from any location.
Bio:
Sunny Dhami – RingCentral UK
Sunny Dhami is the Senior Director, EMEA Product Marketing & GTM for RingCentral. He has extensive Marketing experience across SaaS, Telecommunications and Technology sectors within companies such as Vodafone, Reed Elsevier, Calor Gas and SapientNitro. Sunny has also written for websites such as Hubspot.
