An advertising case study is a marketing tool that describes how an advertising agency or a media company helped an advertiser meet marketing objectives, overcome problems and achieve successful results. Organizations use case studies as part of the sales process to illustrate their skills, capability and approach, as well as to demonstrate how they work with customers.

Write a brief overview of the case study to provide a snapshot of key benefits. Grab the reader’s attention by highlighting strong results, such as “the campaign increased sales by 20 percent.” Include a quotation from the client in the overview to give the case credibility.

Create a logical structure that is easy for the reader to follow. Provide background that gives context to the case study. Set out the client’s marketing and advertising objectives. Describe the challenges to meeting the advertising objectives. Explain the advertising strategy recommended by the agency or media company.

Describe the advertiser’s business and its main market sectors. Outline the challenges and opportunities in the market and set out the advertiser’s position in terms of market share and sales volume. Provide details of the advertiser’s existing sales and marketing activities. Set out the advertiser’s marketing objectives in specific terms, such as “to increase market share by 4 percent” or “grow sales by 10 percent in the third quarter.” Describe how advertising could support those objectives, for example by raising consumer awareness of the company’s products or by generating additional leads for the sales force.

Describe the challenges the advertiser faced in meeting the objectives with current sales and marketing activities. If the advertiser had a small sales force, for example, it would prove difficult to achieve growth by direct selling alone. The advertiser may have a limited budget and previously used advertising media that had proved expensive and failed to reach the target audience.

Set out the advertising strategy. Provide details of the media and its coverage of the target audience. Give details of the comparative cost of reaching the audience compared with other more expensive media. Describe how the creative treatment delivered the key messages to the audience.

Summarize the most important results of the campaign. Show how the results met or exceeded campaign objectives. Include a quotation from the advertiser describing the benefits of working with the agency or media company. Describe any future plans to build on the success of the campaign.