Media.
It’s a tiny word with wide-ranging applications throughout the field of marketing. Being in media can mean different things depending on one’s area of expertise. Media can refer to web development, public relations, building an app, digital banners, streaming audio or even an old-fashioned print magazine. For the purposes of this article, we’ll be looking at media in terms of paid media advertising—including all the different platforms contained under that umbrella. This category involves an extensive variety of tactics and channels marketers may use to deliver your brand’s message.
Here at RMG, one of our core areas of expertise is media planning & buying. We believe having a deep understanding of the kinds of media available and how each platform works is key to a successful media planning & buying engagement.
Why should you hire a professional media planner/buyer?
To answer this question, let’s start by taking a look at the meaning behind key paid media terms and explore how an investment in paid media can help your business or nonprofit organization grow.
What is Media Planning?
Media planning is the process of gathering detailed information, conducting competitive research, evaluating potential delivery options, negotiating pricing, and recommending the most appropriate and cost-efficient blend of advertising tactics that we believe will meet our clients’ specific ROI goals. A finished media plan is the culmination of an extensive effort, often conducted by an experienced media planner like our resident owner & media director, Anne Richardson.
It all begins with asking smart, strategic questions and becoming familiar with your media investment goals. We use the information we gather to formulate our strategic media recommendations.
Start by Asking the Right Questions
We begin the media planning process by asking a series of carefully crafted questions that help us learn key facts about your brand and your marketing objectives:
- Campaign Objectives: What is the goal for this media plan? Do you want to raise awareness or generate leads? Or both? Do you seek to increase enrollment or membership? Are you trying to sell products or services?
- Audience Profiles: Who are your target audiences? Here, we define the demographic, psychographic and geographic profiles for each audience segment being targeted.
- Brand Identity/Level of Competition: How is your brand currently perceived in the marketplace? What characteristics differentiate your brand from its competition? Who owns the greatest share of voice in your local, regional or national market?
- Prior Communications Efforts: Describe how you have been communicating with your customers and prospects thus far. Have you been using both paid and organic methods? What tactics have worked well in the past? What haven’t been as effective?
- Budget: Have you settled on your media budget? Have you thought about a separate budget for creative and production?
- Timing: Do you have a timeline in mind for the campaign? Is there seasonality we should consider as we plan your media flights?
Choose the Right Media Tactics to Drive Your Campaign
Once we have collected the answers to our strategic questions and have a clear understanding of your goals, budget, and other resources, we’ll work with your team to determine the right combination of tactics to drive your campaign.
- First, we’ll examine the desired reach of your media campaign, which can be broad or narrow. Certain media vehicles naturally offer wider reach, meaning they expose your brand to a broader, less targeted audience. Examples of wide reach vehicles are: outdoor billboards or broadcast television. On the opposite side of the spectrum, we find narrow reach vehicles such as content-aligned podcasts, paid social media ads targeting specific audience verticals or geotargeted banners focused on a particular radius around your store or campus.
- Next, we’ll determine frequency, the number of times your brand’s message is exposed to your target audience. High frequency delivery vehicles showcase your brand to your target audience many times during a campaign. Examples of high frequency vehicles might be a traditional billboard on a busy highway or a video campaign running nationally on YouTube or TikTok.
Using what we’ve learned in the strategy intake session, we’ll craft the ideal combination of tactics taking into account our recommended reach and frequency, staying within your budget, and targeting your specific audiences. It’s all about finding the most effective ratio of reach and frequency to drive a successful ad campaign.
Make the Most of Your Advertising Dollars
It’s important for you to get the most out of your media investment and our priority is making sure you get the best price and the best placement for your dollar. Our long-standing relationships with media vendors gives us the necessary leverage to ensure that our clients never pay more than they should for the most effective and accurate placement. We want to ensure that your message reaches the right audience at the right time and in the right place.
Bring it all Together for Success
Once we’ve completed the process outlined above, our focus will be on presenting our media recommendations to you. We’ll review each step, explain how each media platform will work, forecast the type of data we expect to see once your campaign goes live and listen carefully to your questions along the way. Once our media recommendation meets your approval, we’ll launch into the Media Buying phase.
What is Media Buying?
Media buying is the implementation of a client-approved media plan. Our team will build out the various elements of your advertising campaign one tactic at a time.
Implement the Media Buy
Implementation starts with the purchase of media space from our designated list of media vendors while we guide your team through our customized list of ad specifications and work alongside your web and design partners to produce the necessary campaign assets.
- We provide our creative partners with necessary ad specifications and creative delivery deadlines and work closely to support overall messaging and visual appeal.
- We prepare formal insertion orders to reserve space with each of the media vendors included in your media plan.
- Once your creative assets are finalized and approved, we traffic the ads to our vendors and follow-up to confirm receipt.
As each element of the media plan goes live, we demand proof of placement from the vendors to ensure we meet your start dates and achieve guaranteed impression delivery.
Measure and Optimize Your Campaign
When you work with RMG, you’ll receive access to a customized media metrics dashboard to keep tabs on the progress of your campaign. We also use the same dashboard to review and analyze digital platform data for purposes of optimizing your campaigns. Our goal is to be accountable to all of our advertising clients by offering real-time reporting so you know exactly how your investment is performing.
As the campaigns deliver over time, we’ll continue to review key performance indicators, allowing us to make informed recommendations on ways to improve results. In addition, we’ll work to reconcile your monthly media accounting and make sure all vendors have delivered in full on their contracts.
At this point, we’re well on our way to delivering a successful campaign designed to meet your goals and introduce your brand to your desired target audiences.
