Your Creative Workflow

Discover the reasons why your creative workflow isn't working and find solutions to improve it and optimize the processes in your design projects.

Yes, your creative workflow is broken, and we're here to help you fix it for good.

Let us guess… you’re probably spending a fortune on in-house design teams or freelancers for your creative projects, unless you do everything yourself, as is the case with many startups and small businesses.

In addition to the cost of human resources, the entire team needs tools to carry out their tasks and communicate effectively. Then there's project management...
How do we know this? We've seen it many times in our experience running a creative agency and creating ads for small businesses. We also know how much work, time, and money goes into this ongoing process, which can be truly demanding.

But we're happy to tell you that there's a simpler solution, involving fewer team members and requiring less coordination: a structured creative workflow that makes your life easier. Here's how.

What is a Creative Workflow and Why is it Important?

A creative workflow is a series of activities required to develop new design projects and marketing materials, such as ads. It's not limited to ads; we'll focus primarily on the creative workflow process for your advertising campaigns.

Typically, a creative workflow involves team members in various roles, all necessary to complete the creative work and produce a final product. It's a list and sequence of tasks to transform your creative concept into reality. Without this structure, it's like sailing the open sea without a map.

Understanding the Principles of a Creative Workflow

For effective creative workflow management, creativity and structure must coexist. With unbridled creativity, you can lose focus and direction, wasting time on meaningless creative activities that detract from the main goal.

Likewise, focusing too much on structure and detail can stifle the free and unlimited creativity that often generates high-impact ads.

However, by adding structure to the process through clear goals, concrete tasks, visual guidelines, and creative briefings, you can provide the creative team with space to explore, but also boundaries to maintain focus. This approach empowers them to play freely within the established rules—everyone appreciates clear boundaries.

Creative agencies have been using creative workflows for years because they produce better results and create that satisfying feeling of receiving final approval from a happy client.

What are the stages of a creative workflow?

While creative workflows may vary from company to company, they should have a similar structure and sequence. You should, however, adapt your workflow to the specific needs of your business.

The general structure of a creative workflow is as follows:

1. Ideation
2. Planning
3. Execution
4. Review

While there are multiple elements to each stage, this simple structure works well for most businesses. Let's explore it together 🎒

Ideation

It all starts with a big idea.

The best ideas can come during a compulsive scrolling session or while taking a walk. Sometimes, inspiration strikes in the shower. Rarely does it strike while you're at work trying to brainstorm. So, how do we get around this problem? Whether you work alone or in a team, organizing brainstorming sessions is essential.

Here's how you can create an environment that fosters creativity:

- Formulate problems as questions - use thought starters to stimulate creativity
- Make time - whether alone or with the whole team, make sure you make it happen
- Develop a creative strategy – without it, you're flying blind.
- Use tools that help you collaborate in real time, wherever you are - great for asynchronous brainstorming sessions

Planning

What is the number one rule of marketing?

Know your audience.

The research phase is crucial if you want to be successful. When you research your target audience, define your goals, and establish a clear plan and strategy, your creative work will be more effective.

Furthermore, by gathering this information into creative briefings and plans, you ensure your team has all the details they need to complete their work. In your creative strategy, you clarify who you're targeting, their problems, how to reach them, and your message. With research, you crystallize your insights to create a clear plan, improving the management of your creative workflow.

Execution

Whatever the creative concept, you need a design professional to bring it to life. Typically, you have a creative team or a trusted freelancer, but producing enough creative ads can be expensive! Don't forget that you need several ads to properly test the creative elements.

Make sure you have a detailed briefing ready for your designers so you don't waste time on frustrating revisions. Furthermore, once the creatives are approved, you need to launch the ads and implement the associated strategies. This can become tedious if you have to manage multiple files and versions of each batch of ads.

Revision

Finally, you need to test your creatives and measure the results to understand what's working and what's not. When you analyze your ad performance, you can get insights into where to improve.

It's important to test creative variations and make small adjustments along the way to achieve the best possible outcome. These findings can then guide the ideation phase, creating a continuous cycle.

How to Develop an Efficient Creative Workflow

Now that we know the stages of a creative workflow, let's see how to implement it:

- Collaborate effectively from the start: Involve all team members from the beginning to get better input through a variety of thoughts and experiences.
- Identify potential problems: Evaluate your current workflow to find areas for improvement and make necessary adjustments.
- Clarify goals and responsibilities: Clearly define goals and ensure each team member knows their role.
- Define the flow of the creative process: Standardizing a process increases efficiency.
- Choose the right tools to support your workflow: Using collaboration tools like Slack, Asana, or Canva helps you better manage the process.

Conclusion

A well-structured creative workflow can make a big difference in improving your team's efficiency and the quality of your creative work.

If you're looking to optimize your creative workflow and achieve better results, contact Yastime for more information and a personalized consultation. We're here to help you streamline your creative process and take your campaigns to the next level!