What are Creative Services | Your Guide to Creative Services
PR Newswire reports that the creative agency market will have an incremental spend of more than $320 billion between 2021 and 2026. The increased spending for creative services proves that businesses need fresh ideas to keep their customers interested and engaged.
But what are creative services exactly?
Creative services are basically creativity for hire - like writing, design, and production - that give your business some oomph. They handle the creative messaging that lets the world know your business exists. You can tap into these services at design studios, advertising agencies, and branding agencies. Creative agencies play a vital role in helping businesses stand out in their market and increase profits. So why should your business consider hiring one? Let’s see what makes them worth your while!
What Services Does A Creative Agency Offer?
A creative agency provides marketing initiatives and creative solutions to help businesses improve their marketing, ad presence, and brand identity. They can help your business with any creative strategy, work, or promotion. This includes:
- Advertising, brand, content, marketing, or social media strategy
- Measurement and analysis
- Content creation
- Communication services such as media buys, paid placement, sponsored content, influencer marketing, and PR
You’ll find the following positions in a creative services company:
- Account manager
- Art director
- Brand and content strategist
- Copywriter
- Creative director
- Campaign director
- Editor
- Graphic designer
- Producer
- Videographer
- Web designer or developer
How a full-service creative agency provides its services can vary from company to company. For example, some creative agencies work within a specific industry, such as plumbing or HVAC. Other agencies may only work in-house for a large corporation. At EraserFarm, we’ve worked with many clients in diverse industries, such as food and beverage, medical, and nonprofit sectors to invigorate the brand voice and get messaging out there to be seen and heard. We love showcasing what our teams have created - take a look at our creative work to see some of our best creative projects to date. Creative agencies can offer an extensive range of services, but we’ll focus on four of the most common services available below.
Advertising Services
Most businesses don’t have the knowledge or bandwidth to create and execute a successful advertising campaign. They also often know what they want to say, but don’t know how to say it. Thus, a creative agency will generate advertising ideation based on market research to understand the target audience and oversee the execution of the campaign. And they’ll do it in a way that sounds like your authentic brand. Depending on the campaign, the agency may need to hire out some of the services. For instance, the designers at a creative agency can create a billboard, but they may need to hire another company to print and hang it.
Consulting Services
You can hire a creative agency to consult with your business on a variety of topics. Some common examples include:
- New products or services
- How to lower marketing overhead
- New markets and demographics to target
If you require consulting services for many aspects of your business, a full-service agency in your area is your best bet.
Design Services
If your business needs to revamp its image or create new promotional materials, a creative agency can help. Whether you need a new logo, design templates, or even new signage, you’ll want the design expertise of a creative or design agency.
Digital Services
Digital marketing has increased global touchpoints, but IT demands can be intimidating unless you have experience in the field. With the growing importance of technology, many creative agencies now offer expert digital services. Using digital services can create an entirely new user experience. Even making technical advances to your website or app can go a long way with new and returning customers. Digital offerings can also give your customer an immediate answer or pathway to a solution for those with an urgent need, or even entertain them.
What’s the Difference Between a Creative Agency & Other Agencies?
A creative services company is an umbrella term that can include other agencies. Different agencies you may be familiar with include:
- Ad agencies
- Design agencies
- Digital agencies
- PR agencies
- SEO agencies
- Social media agencies
While these agencies have a specialized focus, a creative agency usually encompasses more than one of these services. For instance, when a business works with a digital agency, they are working with a company that focuses on a specific digital space instead of a company that has a more diverse list of services.
How Can a Creative Services Company Help Your Business?
There are many ways creative services can help grow your business. Below we highlight the top five benefits to consider.
Brand Strategy & Identity
Your brand identity drives every aspect of your business, such as
- Your tone
- The design of your website and business cards
- How employees speak to consumers
- Your pitch to prospective clients
A creative agency can help you craft a brand identity that aligns with your target audience. Then they will create a brand strategy that is the driving force behind your business. This includes everything from copywriting and graphic design to brand standards and competitive analysis.Having a polished brand identity and strategy can help make your business recognizable and memorable.
Brand Engagement
After implementing your brand strategy, a creative agency can help you analyze how well customers respond to it. Examining and interpreting data is crucial in driving brand engagement.Your business can use the data to take actionable steps toward increasing customer engagement.
Video Marketing
Video marketing often helps improve a business’s success on social media and search results. Data shows that video content generates leads and enhances engagement. Although anyone can do their own video production, having the professionals of a creative agency handle your production is best. They can take care of the strategy, scriptwriting, post-production, and everything in between. This will give your video marketing what’s called “high production value,” so that your messaging shines through and gets your customers interested in what you have to offer.
Social Media
Social media marketing may seem easy to handle in-house, but realistically, building a strong social media presence takes a lot of time and effort. When you join forces with a creative agency, you don’t have to worry about spending hours figuring out which platforms to join or what content to create. Instead, a creative agency can easily help your business develop a winning social media strategy.
Digital Marketing
The world of digital marketing is admittedly overwhelming, making it difficult to know where to spend your ad dollars. However, a creative agency can use data to understand where your customers are on the internet and how to reach them best.
Should you invest in SEO, content marketing, or PPC marketing? The professionals at a creative agency will be able to tell you, and they’ll craft a plan to maximize that investment.
Get Started With Creative Services in Tampa
At EraserFarm, we offer a personalized, boutique creative agency experience. Want to create brand loyalists? We know how to do it. Need help with an overall marketing strategy? We got you! Our agency is small - on purpose. Our team works closely with each client to create tailored marketing and creative solutions that build an emotional connection with your consumer.
We’d love to have a chat. Reach out to us today to book in, and find out how we can help grow your business.
What is Website Content | Website Content & Its Importance
According to HubSpot, 75% of internet users don’t scroll past the first page of search engine results pages (SERPs) when searching online. Thus, your website must appear on the top of SERPs in order to gain new website visitors.
Creating high-quality website content is one of the best ways to snag that coveted real estate. But what is website content, and why is it important?
Continue reading to learn everything you need to know.
The Definition of Website Content
Let’s start with the question, “What is content for a website?”
Content refers to any creative element on a website. It includes everything from applications and data to archived e-mail messages and images.
Therefore, website content is any of the following on your website:
- Text and writing
- Multimedia
- Audio content like podcasts and recordings
- Visual content and photos like infographics and videos
Why Website Content Is Important
There are numerous reasons why your website content and content marketing are vital to the success of your business. First, web content provides your customers with valuable information. This keeps them coming back to your website.
But more importantly, when potential customers search online for solutions to a problem your company solves, you want to be their go-to choice. So, having high-quality web content is a top strategy to get your business in front of the eyes of new customers.
To do this, you need to implement search engine optimization (SEO) into your content strategy. If you need assistance with improving your website’s SEO, Eraser Farm’s content marketing services can help.
Types of Web Content
As you may have gleaned already, there are different types of web content. Let’s review three common types of content.
Written Content
Any copywriter will tell you that written content comes in many forms, including
- Blog posts
- Case studies
- Checklists and FAQs
- eBooks
- Templates
- Website copy
- Calls to action (CTAs)
- Heading and subheadings
- Homepage
- Landing pages
- Product descriptions
- Testimonials
- White papers
You add written content to your web pages as text blocks or within images. You always want your written content to be unique and free from plagiarism.
You also want to add internal links to your website copy to help readers access more information.
Search intent for written content can be divided into four categories.
Informational
Informational intent is when someone is doing research. The most common type of informational intent is broad search queries.
For example, if someone types “digital marketing” into Google, they likely want more information about the topic. They probably don’t want to purchase any tools or software to help them with their digital marketing strategy.
Informational keywords correspond to the beginning stages of the marketing funnel, “discovery” and “interest.” Content ideal for informational keywords includes
- Guides
- Listicles
- Opinion pieces
Transactional
Transactional intent is when the customer is one step away from making a purchase or at the “conversion” stage of the marketing funnel. Using transactional keywords in your written website content helps to generate more sales. Examples of these keywords include:
- Buy
- Discount
- For sale
- Near me
Customers often combine these keywords with the brand or product they want to buy. Web pages best for transactional keywords are
- Discount pages
- Landing pages
- Product pages
Navigational
Navigational intent is for those customers who know where they want to go. These customers will search for specific brand names, products, or services they are interested in.
For instance, if someone wants to buy a Prada bag, they might search “buy Prada bag.”
Navigational intent is for those who are at the “interest,” “consideration,” and “retention” stages of the marketing funnel. Website content best for these keywords includes the following pages:
- About
- Category
- Pricing
Commercial
Commercial intent is for customers in the “consideration” stage in the marketing funnel. These customers are interested in your product and could make a purchase.
For example, if someone searches for “best bookkeeping software,” they probably want to purchase bookkeeping software. While commercial keywords may include brand names, other common examples include:
- Top
- Review
- Vs
Web content ideal for commercial keywords is:
- Comparison posts
- eBooks
- Product reviews, roundups, and tutorials
- White papers
Video Content
Video web content is any content format that features or includes video. Some examples are
- Animated GIFs
- Customer testimonial videos
- Recorded videos
- Live videos
- Vlogs
- Webinars
Video content is becoming increasingly popular with social media posts, which you can repurpose on your website.
Interactive Content
Interactive web content is any material that conveys a message by encouraging user participation. This allows the experience to go from passive consumption to active engagement.
Common examples of interactive content include
- Animated infographics
- Calculators
- Quizzes
The difference with interactive content is that brands can understand if and when readers have consumed their material and even gain feedback.
Interactive content significantly heightens the user experience, thus increasing engagement.
The Difference Between Good and Bad Website Content
Good website content understands your target audience or buyer personas and uses appropriate language and style to connect with them. It also answers questions that people are searching for and presents a solution to a problem.
Most importantly, quality copy builds rapport and trust with readers.
You can follow these content marketing tips to help you better understand more about high-quality content.
Conversely, bad web content hasn’t clearly defined the target audience or tries to reach the largest audience possible. It also attempts to sell products or services without building trust.
You can identify bad content when the company uses first-person pronouns but doesn’t ever mention the customer (you). Likewise, businesses should never go on and on about how great their product is without proof.
Further, relying solely on photos and videos or posting huge blocks of dense text is not advisable.
How to Create Good Content for Your Website
It’s not enough to know the difference between good and bad. You also need to understand how to create quality content that keeps readers coming back for more.
Here are some tips to follow:
- Create unique topics and target niche subtopics
- Diversify with multimedia content
- Research to maintain trust and authority
- Format for readability
- Know your search intent and call to action
- Use data to measure content performance
Content Creation Experts
Now that we’ve answered the question, “What is website content?” you have a much better idea of how to create fantastic web content to get your website in front of more peoples’ eyes.If your business needs help with its online marketing, let’s have a chat! Contact us at EraserFarm to learn how our team can help you with your creative and content strategy.
What Is an Advertising Agency? | The Ultimate Ad Agency Guide
Today, quality alone is insufficient to sustain a business; you also need to portray your products and services in a manner that attracts customers. If you do not have your own marketing staff specializing in this area, it can be difficult to achieve effective results with your advertising. The solution, oftentimes, is outsourcing your advertising tasks to an ad agency.
Advertising agencies are a type of creative agency that ensure your products and services attract your target audiences while staying consistent with your brand’s image. Their aim is to create impactful, visually powerful content that captures your target market’s attention and brings customers to you. Let’s look at their work in detail:
The Objectives of an Advertising Agency
Your advertising agency’s job is not as simple as to entice people to buy your products; in addition, their focus is on generating brand awareness and putting your story out in a way that you gain loyal audiences. While their primary goal is to get viewers to respond to your call to action, their secondary role is far more intricate – and perhaps more critical – and involves influencing people’s attitudes and perceptions.
An effective advertising agency will keep your brand in the minds of your consumers, ensuring that when the consumer thinks about buying a product or service in your business niche, your business will be the first one they consider.
The Functions of an Advertising Agency
The services performed by an advertising agency can include:
Market Research
No effective advertisement can be planned without knowing your industry’s current market landscape. You may not have the best technology to stay on top of all market trends on your own, but an advertising agency makes it their job to know.
Advertising agency experts monitor trends in consumer preferences and know what elicits the right responses. More importantly, they track your competitor’s marketing strategies to design advertising campaigns that distinguish you from other companies in your niche. As a result, your campaigns are planned after carefully considering all external and internal market factors.
Design
Designing an effective advertisement is arguably the most important yet challenging aspect of marketing. It’s resource-intensive, time-consuming, and requires careful planning. It’s an advertising agency’s job to design ads that are impactful but stay true to your brand’s values and stories. They won’t make you choose between your brand’s culture and their version of a good ad; instead, they will integrate both of these into a combination that lands you customers who share your values.
Media Planning
A well-designed advertisement will be of no use if you do not use the right platforms to leverage it. Advertising agencies know the trends in electronic media consumption, so they’ll design your campaigns accordingly. This goes beyond looking at popularity statistics, including your audience’s age, demographics, geographical region, and your product’s niche. Their strategic approach will ensure that your efforts and budget are spent in the right direction.
Endnote
To a business owner, their brand means more than a source of income. The brand story and connection – and the effort that goes behind design and creation – can be hard to portray if you do not have the right talent working for you.
An advertising agency will take this burden off of you and use its expertise to create content that represents you and lets consumers build connections with you. We’ll recommend that you outsource your marketing campaigns to experts so that you can focus on what you’re best at. Contrary to popular belief, the smaller an agency, the more closely it will work with you.
Start the discussion today and contact EraserFarm for a consultation with a multifaceted advertising agency dedicated to communicating your brand’s unique personality.
