Leads. Everyone wants more of them. Constantly. So much so that there are plenty of articles debating the best ways to qualify, grade, and then distribute these leads to sales reps. And more articles will direct you on how you should properly engage and market to these leads. However, both of these commentaries still leave out an increasingly influential part of the process: creativity.

There’s Room for Creativity

It’s easy to focus on a new marketing tool, platform, or channel where you plan to connect with your audience without really considering the impact of your efforts. But consider for a moment just how you are connecting with your prospective B2B customers. Are you using a fresh, creative approach that hasn’t been tried before in this way? Because the marketing opportunities that exist in the B2B building products category certainly open the door for more creative approaches.

Let’s be honest, the B2B building products category isn’t often regarded as the guardian of creativity as an industry. For building products marketers, that could a very good thing: an opportunity. It means there is room for your brand to be noticed and stand apart from your competitors.

In a 2013 Harvard Business Review (HBR) article, “Creativity in Advertising: When It Works and When It Doesn’t,” authors Werner Reinartz and Peter Saffert found that advertising creativity, measured in five dimensions, can lead to higher sales. The authors, a marketing professor and a research associate with the University of Cologne in Germany, determined that, “A euro invested in a highly creative ad campaign had nearly double the sales impact of a euro spent on a non-creative campaign.”

Creativity works. It’s a key contributing factor to marketing ROI and it can help separate your brand or product from the competition.

Put Creativity To Work For You

As you are developing your marketing plans for 2017, remember that there is another dimension to everything you are doing beyond your strategies associated with lead generation, media planning, content marketing and tooling. Consider how great your creative can be and the lift it can give to everything you are doing.

So please don’t ask for that “down and dirty” brochure.

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