The best advertising starts with a great idea. There’s no point in following every best practice in the book if your marketing campaign doesn’t have a chance of resonating with users at its core.

Breakthrough ideas don’t usually come out of nowhere; they need inspiration and encouragement. Coming up with an idea to kick-start an advertising campaign can be the most confusing step in the entire process. It requires creativity, insight, and a deep understanding of your target audience.

What’s the Big Idea? 6 ideas to promote B2B events

With these proven methods and techniques, you can reduce risk and maximize the benefits of your B2B marketing strategy. They are sure to set your team up for success and create repeatable models for “aha moments.”

Create a process or framework

The creative process can’t be tightly controlled or automated based on budget and competition. That doesn’t mean you can’t create a decent entry.

Use popular storytelling conventions

Stories are generally an excellent way to conceive and communicate ideas. If you want your ad campaign to make a good impression and be remembered, putting a story in place is a smart plan.

Thinking about your brand, its solutions, and the problems it solves from different perspectives can help generate new ideas and perspectives. Create a simple vision or perspective focused on your target audience.

Big ideas can be transformed from small, subtle beginnings. Understand your target audience’s challenges, idiosyncrasies, and experiences more deeply. The best ads are often driven by messages that connect uniquely and directly with a variety of buyers.

The idea behind an ambitious campaign from our team at LinkedIn Marketing Solutions centered on a simple sentiment that many in our B2B audience can relate to no one gets what you do. This distinction between the professional and esoteric nature of B2B business has inspired many creative suggestions, such as those from parents confused by their children’s use of acronyms or careers during cloudy weather.

Provides a new perspective on important business issues

You probably have your finger on the pulse of your industry or niche. You may be aware of the issues that people care about. Talking too much about social media and competitors won’t hurt your competitors, but add something new or thought-provoking around the topic.

Challenge your tendencies and assumptions

For marketers who use data, publishing can be the hardest part. If you have an idea or method that has worked in the past, it may feel safer to stick with the old plan. But in a world where user habits, preferences, and plumbing are rapidly changing, sticking to the old script can lead to poor planning.

As a leader, you can challenge this by using exercises and taking the time to develop new ideas and encourage new thinking.

Take an experimental, yet measured mindset

The problem with a lack of creativity is that it can be negative and, at worst, wasteful. Business leaders, limited by budgets and goals, can’t follow every idea or suggestion and understand them all.

Use historical ad data to guide your decisions. How has our audience responded to these types of messages or ad types in the past? Use A/B testing to analyze how different options and changes affect user response just make sure you get enough data to conclude. Gather as much feedback as possible when creating and running campaigns to stay flexible and responsive to trends.

Ultimately, nothing will be more crucial to your B2B ad campaign ideation than a talented and creative team that is empathetically tuned into the brand audience. From there, following the right frameworks can help ensure your ideas convert to impacts.