Even the most successful and high-quality product won’t sell itself; it needs to be discovered by potential buyers. This is the role of advertising. Before creating a successful creative, it’s essential to conduct thorough audience research, find the right format, and select a key message that resonates with the potential client’s needs. How to make an advertisement a series of consistent actions will help you achieve a solution that will benefit your business and not drain your budget.

Why does business need advertising

First, it’s important to understand the role of creatives. Advertising isn’t just about increasing sales of a particular product. It helps build relationships with customers. Creatives determine how your brand is perceived by society. Effective advertising helps to achieve the following goals:

• creating associations with specific businesses;
• forming an emotional connection with the client;
• maintaining interest in the brand even during a decline in sales.

Creative marketing is essential for small businesses—it helps them go beyond word-of-mouth and scale. It’s also essential for established companies—advertising allows them to stay in front of customers and remind them why their brand is worth their attention.

In a world where competition between similar products is fierce, people buy not products but the experience they create. Advertising helps demonstrate what the customer will ultimately receive or experience.

Advertising Creation: Where to Start

In 2025, users of various gadgets will see up to 10 thousand advertisements furthermore, users are developing banner blindness—they’ve learned to ignore ads on websites and other online resources. This protects them from the overload of information literally pouring off their screens. Therefore, simply creating a catchy ad isn’t enough—it will quickly get lost in the vastness of the internet.

Before that how to create an advertisement, you need to do some in-depth research. Start by defining your goals. Here are some:

• search for new clients;
• increasing brand awareness;
• sale of a specific position.

Next, it’s worth analysing your competitors. You need to understand how you can stand out in the market. Based on this, you can create a unique selling proposition (USP). Explain to potential clients why they should choose you. The USP will become the foundation of your marketing strategy and will help you create advertising for business.

It’s important to understand your potential client—this will help you connect with their needs. Create a target audience profile—identify their gender, age, interests, location, and other details. For example, the target audience for a toy store is young parents, primarily mothers. A family may have one or two children. The store’s visitors are typically middle- or upper-income individuals, living in a city with a medium-sized population. It’s also worth understanding the platforms they spend most of their time on—this will help you determine where to place your ads. Consider the challenges your target audience faces—articulate their pain points or desires. Based on these, you can develop creative that will make the buyer think, “This describes me.”

At creating advertising from scratch, it’s important to consider your brand’s tone of voice. This is the voice of your company, which can be:

• warm and friendly;
• professional and expert;
• light and playful;
• inspiring and emotional;
• rational and businesslike.

Tone of voice determines the style of communication with potential clients—it will be reflected not only in advertising, but across all communication channels.

What is included in creative development

After conducting the analysis, you can begin developing the publication itself. To create an advertisement, you need to use:

• logic – explain why it is profitable to buy from you using facts and figures;
• psychology – understand what motivates a person to purchase a product;
• emotions – inspire confidence in a person, inspire him, use pleasant associations.

Tools such as fonts, composition, and colour palette can help with this. They can either attract attention or repel a brand. These tools help create a company’s image.

There’s no need to sound complicated—simplicity is your strength. Don’t try to say too much in a single ad. The customer might get overwhelmed by the information flow. To overcome banner blindness, your ad will require creativity.

Types of advertising for business

There are many different communication channels in email marketing. Before how to make an advertisement, it’s worth choosing the option that suits your needs and budget.

Advertising format	Where does it work better?	Target	Example
Targeted (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok)	Local services, small and medium businesses	Attracting customers, increasing sales	Advertising a cafe for area residents
Contextual (Google Ads)	Online stores and popular services	Selling or generating leads	Buy a washing machine
Native	Blogs, media, social networks	Increasing brand trust	Blog article: “How to Choose a Mattress for Healthy Sleep”
Offline (billboards, radio, printed materials, exhibitions, etc.)	Local business, image campaigns	Increases brand awareness and presence	A developer’s billboard in the city
Video advertising	YouTube, social networks	Emotional connection, recognition	Brand video in Reels or Shorts
Email marketing	Online stores and services, educational projects	Increased loyalty, customer retention and repeat sales	Newsletter with a selection of new products, notifications about promotions and discounts for regular customers

To improve campaign results, it’s worth testing both online and offline creatives. For example, you can combine social media targeting with billboards or printed materials.

Creatives that work for you

Create an advertisement special formulas will help. You can tailor your creativity to them. Here are some popular options.

AIDA – a timeless classic

The formula consists of the following stages:

1. Attention – attract the user’s attention.
2. Interest – warm up his interest.
3. Desire – through benefit or emotion, awaken the desire to buy.
4. Action — call to action.

AIDA is relevant for various communication methods. The formula is used in articles, videos, and newsletters.

4Ps – Preparing for Sales

This method was proposed by marketer and sales specialist Henry Hock. It consists of the following steps:

1. Picture – show an ideal picture of the result the client can achieve.
2. Promise – promise him a benefit.
3. Proof — provide evidence in the form of reviews, figures, or case studies.
4. Push – nudge someone to take the action you want.

The formula is effective for social networks, email newsletters, and videos.

Before-After-Bridge — from problem to solution

Another marketing technique for increasing sales. It uses the following steps:

1. Before – show the problem the person is facing now.
2. After – demonstrate how it can be solved.
3. Bridge – visualize the path to the result using your product.

Identify your audience’s key pain points and offer a concrete solution. This formula is effective across various customer communication channels.

Advertising Mistakes: How to Avoid Wasting Your Budget

Creatives for promoting products and building relationships with audiences require investment. Unfortunately, they don’t always pay off. Even large companies sometimes make mistakes and waste their budget. However, you can protect yourself by ensuring your creative avoids common mistakes.

One of them is a lack of strategy. You need to think through every detail. In particular, make sure the creative aligns with the brand’s goals. Another problem is too much text. Formulate your messages clearly and concisely.

Beware of excessive creativity—it’s important that your audience isn’t simply entertained by the content, but that they pay attention to your product. When creating a publication, always keep your target audience in mind—tailor your content to their needs. Speak their language.

It’s important not only to launch a campaign, but also to analyse its results. It’s important to understand whether it’s helping the brand or simply wasting budget. Performance indicators, or KPIs, can help with this. These include ad clicks and their cost, return on investment, frequency, and audience reach. These and other metrics are available in your Google Ads dashboard.

When is the best time to seek help

Creating creative for a company is a complex task consisting of many stages. It’s important to choose a working strategy, define the audience, formulate a unique selling proposition, and more. At the beginning, it’s easier to handle this on your own. However, as the brand scales, difficulties can arise. After all, you need to oversee the running of the business and product development, and often there’s little time or energy left over for presentation.

Art-Marks can take on this task. Professionals will help you create a positive brand image, develop a working strategy, handle social media promotion, set up your Google Ads account, and track and optimize metrics. With them, you can focus on the product itself.

Advertising is an essential part of a company’s life and requires attention. It helps connect with potential customers and boost sales. With the right strategy, creatives won’t lead to unnecessary expenses, but will instead help your business grow and prosper.

KPIs (key performance indicators)—Progress tracking metrics that allow you to measure and evaluate the progress toward a specific goal. They are used in various areas of business, including marketing, sales, HR, and production KPIs.—milestones for assessing progress and simultaneously providing analytical data. They help employees make informed decisions to move forward at a strategic level. According to the data serviceGlobal Growth Insights Approximately 41% of IT companies participating in the study use KPI dashboards to monitor performance in real time. Interest in them is growing every year.

KPI (Key Performance Indicators) value

Understanding what KPI is—These are significant financial and non-financial indicators, providing insight into the importance of their measurement. For proper operational and strategic development, it is necessary to consider:

• KPI—Key performance indicator. Accurate data gives a company a clear understanding of its progress toward its stated goal. Measuring KPIs allows for strategy adjustments and optimization of operations to achieve desired results.
• Employee KPI—A specific, measurable indicator of a specialist’s productivity. It is important for developing a fair compensation system, monitoring employee performance, and motivating them.
• KPI system—A performance evaluation method based on a set of measurable indicators. It is a comprehensive platform that helps managers determine the degree to which a company or organization is achieving its strategic and tactical goals.

The core idea of ​​working with KPIs is clearly demonstrated by the quote of a successful American entrepreneur: “In business, what gets measured gets improved.” This means that there is a direct correlation between performance indicators and company growth.

The Importance of Key Performance Indicators

Working with KPIs at enterprises and organizations in any field of activity allows for the following:

• Performance monitoring and measurement. Performance indicators transform abstract business goals into concrete, quantifiable metrics.
• Identifying strengths and weaknesses. KPIs help determine which processes in a company are being implemented effectively and which require improvement. For example, a sales conversion rate below expectations is a signal that the customer engagement strategy or employee training needs to be adjusted.
• Making informed decisions. KPIs allow managers and executives to quickly respond to changes, reallocate resources, and adjust development strategies. This is done based on real data, not assumptions.
• Focus and motivation for the team. Thanks to KPIs, company employees know exactly what results management expects from them. Setting specific, measurable goals helps the team focus on key areas.
• Transparency and accountability of processes. KPIs allow us to accurately determine which actions lead to the achievement of goals, and which—No. Each employee or department is responsible for a specific amount of work. There is a clear understanding of who is expected to deliver a certain result.

KPIs not only accurately reflect the current state of affairs, but also help predict future results according to the company Foundernest the share of organizations tracking 5 or more KPIs has grown from 22% in 2015 to 63% in 2025. By measuring and accounting for performance indicators, executives and analysts can anticipate potential risks and opportunities.

Types of KPIs

KPIs are typically classified by various criteria, such as the type of information they provide and the company’s areas of activity. Let’s look at the most common KPIs:

• Strategic—reflect the overall health of the company and its progress toward long-term goals. They help assess profitability, market share, and customer satisfaction. For example, EBITDA—earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (NPS)—customer loyalty index.
• Operating—Focus on the efficiency of day-to-day business processes. Key Performance Indicators help evaluate order processing speed, resource utilization, and team productivity. For example, AHT—average processing time, CRR—customer retention rate.
• Financial—reflect the profitability and efficiency of resource management. For example, ROI—return on investment, ROE—return on equity.
• Marketing—measure the effectiveness of advertising campaigns and brand strategies. For example, CAC—customer acquisition cost, LTV—customer lifetime value, CTR—clickability.
• Absolute—Specific numerical values ​​that provide precise information about the necessary metrics. For example, the number of products sold, the number of customers acquired, or the average order value.
• Relative—They are calculated as percentages or ratios of certain values. These key performance indicators allow for comparisons across different conditions or time periods. For example, the conversion rate helps evaluate the effectiveness of advertising campaigns by comparing visitors with buyers.
• Short-term—are used to monitor operational tasks. For example, SR—FCR (Fast Response Time)—problem resolution on first contact.
• Long-term—help evaluate business progress over months and years. For example, CRR—customer retention rate, CAGR—average annual growth rate of the market.
• Lagging—reflect the results of past actions. For example, quarterly profit or market share after a marketing campaign.
• Leading—indicate future trends. For example, counting the number of new leads provides an idea of ​​the expected future sales growth.

Companies don’t need to measure every KPI. Among the commonly used ones, they should select those that reflect the success of certain actions, initiatives, or resource deployment. 

How to choose the right key performance indicators for specific areas of activity

There’s no universal approach to selecting KPIs. The set of relevant indicators is determined by the specifics of the business, the type of operations, strategic goals, and other factors. To select the most relevant KPIs from existing ones, it’s necessary to analyse:

• Business type. For B2C, customer interaction control is a priority. Key KPIs: customer satisfaction, conversion rate, sales revenue. In B2B models, long-term partnerships, scaling, and evaluating negotiation effectiveness are important. Key KPIs: number of closed deals and new contracts, partner satisfaction.
• Industry. In e-commerce, key performance indicators—average order value and customer acquisition rate, conversion rate. For service companies, – order fulfillment speed, customer satisfaction, and repeat purchases. For manufacturing companies—volume of manufactured products, their cost and quality, efficiency of resource use.
• Strategic business goals. For companies focused on rapid growth, KPIs should focus on revenue growth, market expansion, and customer base growth. If business stability is a priority, KPIs reflecting cost optimization and improving customer retention should be considered.
• The company’s internal specifics. For companies focused on developing new products, the number of product categories and the time to market are important. If the priority—Quality requires taking into account the percentage of positive customer reviews, the number of complaints, and warranty claims.

Measuring all performance indicators takes more time, and there’s no guarantee that the resulting data will be used correctly and in a timely manner. It’s important to focus on those metrics that play a key role in achieving business goals.

Examples of KPIs for different positions

A few examples will help you understand what it means to identify key performance indicators.

KPIs for accountants

Among the key indicators for assessing performance are:

• accuracy of financial reporting;
• speed of accounting operations;
• timeliness of tax reporting.

KPIs for sales managers

Their effectiveness is tied to quantitative and financial indicators. Among the main ones:

• sales volume;
• number of new clients;
• average order value;
• lead to customer conversion rate.

The general algorithm for calculating KPIs involves several simple steps: defining a goal, creating a simple formula, choosing a measurement period, and interpreting the results. However, without professional knowledge and skills, this can be a challenging task. The team at the Art-Marks advertising agency has been successfully working with projects of varying complexity for over five years. We help develop businesses and take them to the next level. We successfully implement complex projects using proven tools. We will define KPIs for your business to accelerate the achievement of even the most ambitious goals.

References:

1. Kaplan, R. S. & Norton, D. P. (1992). The Balanced Scorecard: Measures That Drive Performance. Harvard Business Review, January–February, 71–79.
2. Key Performance Indicators for Dummies./Marr, B.//—Wiley—2021—pp. 110–183