Media planning and buying are distinct and extremely important functions for any successful advertising campaign. To become a successful media planner, you will know what media will be the most effective for a new campaign. You will have to conduct internal and external market research, and set the exact goals and objectives for your campaign.
On the other hand, to be an efficient media buyer, you need to be able to develop and leverage contacts. You also need to know when and how to pivot a campaign all ready to gain success.
What Is Media Planning?
Media planning is about figuring out which media platform to use for a new campaign. To make the most effective decision you can seek the help of media planners where they will completely research to understand how to achieve what the client needs.
These people will then set a budget, outline objectives and goals for the campaign, and select more than one platform if needed. A media planner will have particular skill sets to get the job done, like:
- Commercial awareness
- Attention to detail
- Negotiation skills
- Confidence
- Understanding of numeracy and data analysis
- Organisational skills
- Thought leadership
- Interpersonal and communication skills
The method of media planning includes these four steps:
01Internal Market Research
Performing internal market research includes learning everything possible about the client. A media planner will soon identify the client’s brand identity to understand what their unique selling point is.
02External Market Research
External market research is about understanding what the competitors in the same industry does. A media planner will discover how a brand is creating ads at present and how it compares to the competition.
They will even look at the intended audience and what attracts them. This will support them to decide on what media outlets to use.
03Setting Objectives and Goals
A campaign is developed with the connection of what the client wants and what the media planner believes they should attain. They can make every dollar of your marketing budget work in your favour.
03Making a Budget
Understanding the message of a brand is just one step of the media planning process. A planner will then allocate funds to make sure the message is seen on the respective platforms.
While making a budget, the media planner will allocate a percentage to every channel. For instance, a brand may spend 50% of the budget on social media and leave the rest for billboards, mobile ads, radio, etc.
What Is Media Buying?
Media buyers will get the strategy created by the media planners. When they get that idea, they will work on the most useful media channel and look for cost-friendly options.
A good media buyer will have an overall understanding of the present marketplace. They are also responsible for developing relationships with vendors.
Media buyers and planners may be brought under the same umbrella, but media buyers sometimes come from a different agency. To become a great media buyer, these skills are necessary:
- Communication and negotiation skills
- Decisiveness
- Understanding of media analytics software
- Organisation skills
- Ability to multitask
- Attention to detail
- Ability to understand a lot of information at once
- Identification of target audiences
The Media Planning and Buying Process in Simple Terms
The digital media buying process and media planning process take just five steps to complete and these are:
- Discover your target audience through research
- Identify the interest of the audience
- Finding the audience at their most responsive times
- Giving content that drives the audience to take action
- Testing ad placements again and again to see what is and is not working
These five-step processes can support a brand engaging with its audience as they are going through the buyer journey. The four steps of a buyer’s journey are attract, convert, close, and delight.
In the attract stage, a brand can reach the audience from any of the following digital media buying tactics:
- SEM
- SEO
- Digital display
- Social media
- Radio
- Outdoor
- TV
- PR
Brands will target the audience using social media, video, content, retargeting, and landing pages at the convert stage. They are then taken to the close stage where lead nurture campaigns, email optimization, and CRM database marketing can be utilised.
And last but not the least the delight stage. This stage is where a customer really falls for the brand after it has worked so hard with media planning and buying. This stage actually involves client communications and social media engagement.
Role & Importance of Media Planning
While conducting any major activity, Planning for it is always the first thing you would do before executing it. The plan is something that gives the activity a sense of direction.
As a result, Media Planning is basically the first stage in the execution of an advertising campaign. It is the interface used by advertising agencies alike to execute their Media Strategy.
Media Planning helps in these following things:-
Guarantees Best Utilisation of Resources:
There is no doubt that Advertising involves huge costs. Media planning supports advertisers to use available resources in the most optimum manner.
Media Planning includes the selection of a combination of media, for a period of time. This assists the advertiser in communicating the advertising message to the largest target audience at a very minimum cost. Lack of media planning may cause the advertiser to select costly media which may not have good coverage of the target audience.
Achieving Advertising Objectives:
Media planning is developed for the need of gaining the marketing and advertising objectives of the organisation. Media planning involves all such decisions like selecting specific media and determining the scheduling of advertisements.
These decisions lead the organisation in attaining advertising objectives, i.e. to communicate the message to the target audience and hence to promote sales.
Selecting the Appropriate Media:
While choosing media the advertiser confirms that selected media matches with the characteristics of the target audience.
For instance:-
If our target audience is kids, then Television and Digital Platforms will be appropriate media, and so on.
Allocation of Advertising Budgets:
Media planning helps to determine the amount to be allocated to various media. It supports the advertising manager in allocating the ad budget among various media types in an optimised way.
Assures Appropriate Timing of Advertising:
Advertising can provide excellent results only when ads are shown at the right time. Media planning involves Media Scheduling i.e. it determines the space and time of advertisement in media. It determines the month, day, and time of advertisement.
It makes sure that advertisement is shown more frequently in seasonal months and less often in off-season months. It also confirms the most suitable time to show the ads to the target audience.
Guides future decisions depending on past performance:
Media planning supports exercising control over media. Some standards of performance are fixed in a Media Plan. For example, advertisers can assess performance depending on Historical Data or by reviewing the performance of their competitor’s campaigns.
Estimates like these help in assessing the effectiveness of media, i.e. if actual coverage is in accordance with the estimates or not. If it is not, advertising managers can think of some other media type/media vehicle for their future campaigns.
Benefits of Media Planning
Media planning helps with parts of content creation and distribution, which includes:
- You can know your target audience on a deeper level so you can successfully reach them by your media content
- Choosing on which media channels and platforms you’ll share your content
- Deciding the time and frequency of the media and content you publish and share
- Competing with the latest media trends and technology
- Keeping up to your budget as you work to create, publish, and share high-quality and engaging media content
- Performing analyses to measure the success of your media planning process
Wrapping up
Many people have a mindset that a successful advertising campaign needs good ad copywriting and appealingly pleasing visuals.
When these are important, you will not be able to run a successful ad campaign without proper media buying and media planning methods in place. They are required to help decide where and when to run your advertisements and to understand what works and what doesn’t.
