Creative assets: What are they, importance and best practices

Creative assets: What are they, importance and best practices

May 22, 2024
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6 min read
Learn all about the importance of creative assets in marketing and advertising campaigns, best practices to follow and how to use AI.

Creative assets are the make or break of an ad campaign. But how do we define a great (high-converting) creative asset? Ever scrolled past multiple ads, but one specific ad caught your attention and made you click through? That’s the power creative visuals in ads hold.

In this post, we explore creative assets in-depth and learn how to ensure they deliver high ad performance and ROI.

What are creative assets? 

Creative assets are the files you upload for ad content. For example, image files, HTML5 files, rich media files, and other illustrations are all creative assets needed for quality ad content.

These are the files that generate the creatives in your ads. A creative is the ad content your audience sees, while the assets are files used to make up the creative. 

A default creative asset you upload is just a single image file.

Brands today create and manage creative assets in a variety of formats as they help increase brand awareness and keep the ad content fresh and engaging.

What are the main types of creative assets?

Here are the 5 best-performing creative asset types to use in your upcoming marketing campaigns:

1. Brand logos

A logo makes a brand instantly recognizable. It’s a fundamental asset to your brand’s awareness. A logo visually represents a brand’s ethos as it encapsulates brand identity and familiarity.

2. Design elements 

Website design elements, such as copy, imagery, headers, and CTAs, can fuel conversion and are the visual storefronts of your brand.

Using user-friendly and interactive website designs can boost user experience and, eventually, increase dwell time and conversions.

3. Ads

With ads popping out of every nook and corner, the creative elements of ads are what set the asset apart.

Be it static ads, videos, copy, or interactive elements, visually appealing ads can capture the audience's attention, tell your brand’s story, highlight product benefits, and prompt action.

4. Product images and videos

High-quality product images and videos help the target audience get a look and feel of your products. These assets can ensure users are offered a virtual experience of what using the product would be like and can significantly influence their decision-making.

5. Social media content

Social media content, such as images, audio, videos, memes, stories, infographics, and other creative elements, helps ignite the audience’s interest and drive them to your website.

Impact of creative assets on performance marketing 

With dwindling attention spans and increasing ad costs, high-performing creatives are what come to marketers’ rescue. Creative assets have a significant role in improving your return on ad spend (ROAS).

Well-executed creative assets can further boost user engagement, reduce ad fatigue, and increase click-throughs. After all, who would resist a visually appealing creative that resonates with them at first glance?

Let’s explore creative assets’ impact on performance marketing:

1. Reducing ad fatigue with creative assets 

Ad fatigue happens when the target audience is tired of seeing the same old ads being run for a brand or when creatives are not diverse enough compared to competitors'.

Ad fatigue can thus cause decreased engagement and performance due to repetition and lack of a unique touch.

You can curb ad fatigue by continuously refreshing and testing your ad creatives and ensuring you deliver fresh content to re-engage with your audience.

2. Enhancing click-through rate with unique creative assets 

The click-through rate (CTR) is a key marketing metric used to gauge your assets’ performance.

And one aspect that can get users to click through your ads or posts is a dash of your brand’s unique touch in every creative asset. Unique and engaging creative assets can boost not just your CTR but also your overall sales and conversions.

3. Optimizing ad spend through strategic creative asset management 

The goal behind optimizing ad spend is to receive the maximum ROI for your overall expenses. The secret to this is strategic creative asset management, which is when you create and use the right assets effectively to reach a business goal.

Creative asset management mainly involves selecting high-performing creative assets, continuously testing them, and optimizing them by tracking various performance metrics, such as CTR, conversion rate, ROAS, ad spend, and cost per conversion.

Using creative AI to make the most of creative assets 

The conventional approach to creatives was putting the campaign first and then playing around with some variations and placements of images/videos and text.

This process can easily take a brand some days to weeks to find the right creative asset combination that drives the best results. Eventually, brands stagnate and run out of fresh creative content that can capture the audience's attention.

But with creative AI, brands can now make the most of creative assets without any second guessing.

Here’s how:

Creative analytics with AI

Creative analytics involves using AI to gather insights into the performance of your marketing campaign and its creative elements.

It helps you delve into the intricacies of elements in various assets, such as images, videos, logos, text, fonts, etc., and measure their impact on your marketing collateral.

Creative AI tools like Eacel can help you analyze ad creative performance and gain deep insights into what worked with each campaign and how to improve your creatives for the best ROAS.

Eacel tracks and identifies creative trends, suggests replacement creatives, and continuously analyzes and monitors performance to ensure you’re never stuck in a loop of creative fatigue.

Creative AI generation

AI’s generative capabilities are unlike any other. You no longer have to spend weeks building multiple creatives by yourself, only for them to fall short of expectations.

Creative AI generation with AI-powered tools like Eacel can eliminate the guesswork by generating high-performing ad creatives in a fraction of the time. It builds your performance creatives from the ground up so your brand’s ads have their own unique touch.

With Eacel, you can generate a wide range of creatives with a few clicks and within a few minutes, so you can start working on your next campaign as soon as possible.

Wrapping up

It’s now safe to say that the stronger your creative assets, the better your marketing campaigns’ results will be.

Creative assets are not just used to beautify campaigns. They have a significant role in boosting your ROAS, evoking emotions, conveying the right message, and improving the overall campaign performance.

So, creating high-performing assets requires strategic thinking and a very user-centric approach. This outcome is only possible if you regularly test, analyze performance, and optimize changes accordingly.

With AI’s help, you can do all this and more in a fraction of the time.

Where can you start?

Generate and analyze creative assets in minutes with Eacel’s AI capabilities. Access hidden insights to understand each campaign’s performance so your assets continuously perform better.

Request a demo to learn more!

FAQs

What are creative assets in digital marketing?

Creative assets in digital marketing are the files you upload for ad content. These can be image files, video files, infographics, ad copy, audio files, rich media files, or HTML5 files.

Why are creative assets important for brand identity?

In today’s saturated market, it’s easy for brands to lose their unique touch. That’s when creative assets help create an emotional connection with a target audience. They build a strong brand identity by visually telling the brand’s story.

How can I improve the quality of my creative assets?

You can improve the overall quality of your creative assets by: 

  • Diversifying asset types across campaigns 
  • Replacing low-performing assets often
  • Tracking and analyzing asset performance 
  • Giving clear calls to action

What are the best practices for designing creative assets?

Some best practices for designing high-performing creative assets:

  • Make visually appealing creatives by understanding audience preferences 
  • Diversify asset types
  • Avoid clickbait
  • Comply with every asset’s style rules
  • Align with your brand’s voice and style
  • Engage your audience with conversational text and compelling visuals

How do I manage my creative assets effectively?

These tips can help you manage assets effectively:

  • Explore a wide range of creative formats to understand the performance of each creative type
  • Organize your creative assets using Metadata for quicker access
  • Optimize assets with reporting 
  • Regularly backup your assets

Can creative assets improve my marketing campaign's conversion rates?

Yes! Research suggests that good creative assets can improve a marketing campaign’s conversion rate by about 50%.

How can I measure the impact of my creative assets on campaign performance?

Track and measure metrics, such as CTR, conversion rate, ROAS, ad spend, and cost per conversion, to measure creative assets' impact on campaign performance. Further, run multiple variations of creatives to compare how these metrics perform.

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