Media Planning: An Inclusive Guide in 2023

In this digital world, for a business to stand out, it must create and share media content with its prospective consumers. Boosting brand awareness, engagements, ROI, and conversion depends on how the content is published. It also helps to stand out from the competitors. It is an analytical method of making a media decision and describing the process to take the information to the audience at the right time and place with the correct media medium.

What is Media Planning?

It is a series of decisions that include producing promotional campaigns for prospective consumers. It is a process that determines how, when and what message to present to the audience. To maximize ROI and engagements, marketers learn when, where, and how often they will advertise by using the appropriate channel at the proper time and place.

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What is the Aim of Media Planning?

It aims to search for the sequence of media that lets the marketer communicate the message most effectively to large potential customers at the lowest cost. A media planner interprets the information as to how it will intend to support the advertising or marketing strategy and then develops the tactics to share that information in the right place with the right people.

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People Involved in a Media Plan:

In the marketing agency, the services and duties of a media planner will be allowed to the marketing manager, content director, account manager, and combination of people knowing media, content creation, budgeting, and other areas of expertise related to media planning. No matter who is responsible, it requires an in-depth understanding of the process of media planning, the factors for an effective plan, and the platform that can deliver the message.

Often marketers are tasked to balance campaign efforts with different media platforms and assets. It is a challenge to track each success and its impact on the business. But with a precise media planning strategy, the media organization can accurately monitor campaign success and make informed decisions about how to optimize the media performance in the future.

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Benefits:

Marketers need to leverage multiple forms of media, a well-researched and analyzed media plan renders marketers with centralized information across all platforms. It helps in optimizing the campaign and streamlining the campaign review.

An effective media plan can help you stay more organized throughout the campaign. You can set track of the campaign budget. Moreover, you can understand your target audience effectively.

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Points to Consider Before Media Planning:

1) Objectives of Advertising:

Getting a favorable response from the customer is the main objective of every advertising campaign. An advertising campaign aims for immediate effect, so marketers consider fast communication media like pamphlets, newspapers, and banners. If the aim is to build brand equity and corporate goodwill, then television, magazines, neon signboards are considered.

2) Product Nature

An advertising product could be a consumer product or a technical/industrial one. Publishing of these products will be through a different medium. You can advertise technical or industrial products better in trade magazines or journals. And consumer products through mass media such as newspapers, radio, television, outdoor advertising, and others.

3) Product Distribution

A product to distribute regionally or locally, a medium with local reach and coverage in the regional or local area should be considered such as cable-network, a local newspaper.

If you want to sell the product on a national level, the media with national coverage like national-level television channels, a national newspaper is suitable. And to sell the product at the international level, mediums to consider are the internet, television channels having worldwide coverage, and international magazines.

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4) Nature of the Audience

While advertising a product, an appropriate media plan should consider the type or number of audience. The audience differs in age group, sex, personality, income, attitude, educational level, others. The audience groups could be children, women, men, professionals, businessmen, literate and illiterate groups, young, old, high-income groups, low-income groups, etc.

5) Nature of the Message:

A newspaper will be suitable if the nature of the advertising message is informative. But, if you want to convey an ad message to the audience and convey rational-appeal, product demonstration, and emotional appeal to the potential audience, then television media will be suitable for advertising.

Banners, posters, newspapers, and so on, used to advertise ad messages to inform potential customers of discounts, sales promotions, festive offers, exchange offers, and many more.

6) Media Used by Competitors:

The media used by the competitor must always be examined by the advertiser while making a media plan. If not done, then there is a possibility that the competitor can take up the advertiser market share.

An advertiser must have a close watch on the budget, strategies of the competitors. If the competitor uses television as a medium, then he must also consider the same. But, one cannot follow the competitor’s strategy blindly, as the competitor’s decision may be wrong.

7) Ad-Budget Size:

High-cost media like national dailies, television are used if the budget of advertising is more. Low-cost media like banners, local newspapers, pamphlets, posters, cable networks are suitable for low budgets.

8) Availability of Media:

Sometimes, the desired space in print media is booked by other advertisers, making it unavailable. When an advertiser wants his ad message on the magazine cover page or the newspaper front page, but will already be booked by others making the media unavailable.

Hence he makes a plan for some other media he will change the timings of the advertisement. Likewise, an advertising time on television during a program may have been booked or sponsored by another advertiser. Thus for an effective media plan, media availability is considered.

9) Media Reach and Media Coverage:

When an advertiser has two different media, having the same cost, the one with more coverage and reaches for the prospective audience is selected. A media reach is the total circulation of media in a given period. It estimates the number of people exposed to the media (at least once) in a specific period.

Media coverage is the number of the target audience of the advertiser in a specific period. Sometimes the reach of the media will be broad, but the coverage will be poor, as in, the media will be widely circulated but may not be popular among the target audience. So, such media will be of no use to the advertiser. An advertiser must select a media with high coverage and reach.

10) Media Frequency:

The audience exposed to the media in a particularized period in the average number of times is media frequency. With greater frequency, the advertising messages make a deep impression on the minds of the audience.

A newspaper frequency is less as the audience does not use the same media for a long time. The audience will get a new newspaper, and they will discard the old one. In the case of a magazine, the media frequency is high as the audience might use the same magazine for a longer time, as the next issue will be after a week or after a month. For a better impression of a target audience, select media with higher frequency.

11) Media Image:

Media image magnifies the communication value of an advertising message. Product image and image of advertisers also get affected by media image.

12) Media Discount:

Sometimes attractive discounts are provided by some media. Advertisers consider these discounts to reduce media costs for their advertisements. Sometimes, to get a media discount, advertisers use just one medium or one class of media regularly to offer media to their regular users.

13) Language:

An advertiser selects media that communicates in well-known language to the target audience.

Factors of Effective Media Planning

Purpose, audience, and reach are the three essential components of an effective media plan. Although they are interconnected, an advertiser must consider them separately during media planning.

• Purpose: While making a media plan, one must decide the goal or objective of the campaign. What is the goal of the campaign? How to generate brand awareness? How to encourage the audience to fill a form or share their contact details? Answer these questions during an early stage of planning.
• Audience: During the media planning, decide who will be the target audience? Who will benefit from reading, listening, or watching the content? Who will buy the product or the service to develop a long-term relationship with the brand?
• Reach: Reach is the statistical data that states how many audiences are targeted and at what frequency? Not all potential audiences consume the content at the same rate.

Strategies of a Media Plan

With media plan strategies, marketers choose the right platform to campaign their message to the target audience.

1) Choose a Suitable Time and Media Channel:

Select a suitable time and channel that will be best to reach the target audience. Determining time depends on the message goals, product or service, audience, and calendar of events. A project plan is necessary to establish a time to learn what assets support the campaign. Channels are the platforms that serve the campaign message to the audience. The chosen channel should be the one that targets audience visits.

2) Set Clear Goals:

While media planning, it is necessary to set clear goals. Decide whether the brand or you look to generate the leads. How many people to reach and more. The measurement of the number of views, listeners, content served readers is known as reach.

The number of times they are likely to hear or see the message over a fixed period is frequency. The marketers with reach and frequency should decide what the intent to accomplish during media planning.

3) Choose a Voice:

The tone used to convey the campaign message is voice. In the visual media, the use of shapes and colors conveys the voice. It is essential because people react to authentic messaging. They reject messages that sound irrelevant or inauthentic to them. Developing personas derives an authentic voice.

Determining factors such as personal and professional interest, level of education is the essential element of personal creation. Different portions of the population have their own inherent, to achieve success with the media plan, marketers need to capture the pitch-perfect voice.

4) Determine Audience Targeting

Determining how to find an audience and who to share a message with is audience targeting. The audience targeting process by most marketers begins by developing fictionalized versions of the people they hope to reach or personas of the consumer. Once target audience personas are developed, companies can choose a better marketing platform to attain the predetermined audience.

5) Engagement:

Marketers having creative content should have a clear direction on what would resonate with this target audience. They should also be able to test the content effectiveness.

Process of Media plan

Building a media plan is a detailed process. While making the plan, marketers need to consider both needs and goals of a business. A well-planned media guarantees that the content will perform effectively. Advertisers must establish the right media plan for effective outcomes. Below are some essential steps to consider while making a media plan.

1) Conduct Market Research

Before setting a goal, develop a piece of content. To know people that may purchase the product or services which require good market research. Market research explains the characteristics of buyer personas, such as age and other demographics, which gives data about their personal preferences and buying habits. Based on customer feedback and data tested, the research should be conducted and updated regularly.

2) Determine Goals and Objectives of the Media Plan

A goal varies for every department, or there may be various objectives for one campaign. Increased revenue is the main objective for the sales team, but the marketing objective is to increase brand awareness. Recognizing the goal of the campaign will define how it will run. Once clear goals are set, media planners should research the competitive landscape and the market trends.

Such research will help to know where similar brands and goals achieved success in the past. A brand might have relied on email for campaigning, but research shows that competitors had great success with native ad campaigning. While making the media plan, both the goal and objective must be under an estimated budget. A flexible approach to a marketing budget will help in optimizing the campaign.

3) Determine Target Audience

Targeting an audience is the process of differentiating consumers based on their requirements. Marketing depends on creating a positive customer experience. Marketers need to focus on a specific audience while developing and selecting where to promote those messages.

Monitor which section of the total audience to target, then look at engagement analytics and measurement attributes to understand the type of ads they engage. Marketers must incorporate person-level information with audience age, location, and general interest to get effective results. The purpose of targeting is to make sure that the right audience is receiving the message. These people are those who are likely to buy the service or the product.

4) Define the Objective

Before creating a successful marketing asset for the media plan, it is essential to establish why the campaign is necessary. The objective is the fundamental necessity of the content.

The Marketing Team can Achieve the Following Goals:

Thought Leadership: Tell a consumer why the people and their organization are experts.

Information: Gives the audience data used in their personal or professional lives.

Loyalty and Brand Awareness: Gives detailed information about the company and its people. Lead conversation provides consumers with the substance to actively seek more data and create a continuing connection with the organization.

By setting goals ahead of time allows the creators to form their work with direction and a purpose. It reduces the time required for revisions and streamlines the creative process.

5) Set the Budget

A possible cost is taken into account while creating a media plan. A campaign may require an amount for social media ad placement, paid search engine ad placement, sponsored social media posts, display advertising, influencer marketing expense, and more.

The role of the media buyer is to accommodate the cost for all these details. An “emergency fund” should also be built to cover extra costs as commissions, unforeseen expenditure, fees, testing.

6) Analyze and Optimize Campaign Performance

While building a media plan strategy, track, monitor, and analyze performance continuously. These are the essential steps of the media strategy. Marketing campaigns require continuous management that helps in driving maximum ROI. This approach enables teams to recognize opportunities that help optimize performance in real-time based on what is or what is not working for each campaign.

Choosing the Right Media Channels

Marketers can choose from a variety of online and offline media channels to broadcast the content. The goal set and information gathered by the marketers help to determine the channel that brings success.

Below are some popular channels that help marketers choose the correct media to broadcast their message.

Offline Media

• Magazines:

Magazines have a long life as they usually stay with the possession of the consumer for at least two to four weeks after being read. Content in this medium retains longer as people read faster than they listen. According to research, readers trust advertisements printed in magazines more than in other media forms.

• Newspapers:

A local newspaper is a great way to advertise the message of the brand stays local. Marketers can choose a section of the newspaper to print the ads to target the audience further.

• Radio: Radio advertising has a local appeal and allows it to target specific areas. It is considered a low-cost medium and easy medium that enables it to build frequency with the target audience.
• TV & Cable: This medium usually demonstrates products of everyday life. The television and cable medium is very prevalent, as the people watch approximately five hours of television every day.
• Out of Home: Few media such as billboards are large and can comfortably get the audience’s attention. In a busy area, the message can reach a maximum number of people.

Online Media

• Digital Publications:

Digital publication allows an email database by a personalized newsletter or an email. This medium can understand the conversation rates and track the open rates to websites or assets. These are great tools to generate campaign ads and are often specialized publications.

• PPC:

PPC is a cost-effective medium and enables marketers to retarget people who have visited their site.

• Social Media:

Unlike PPC, social media is also a cost-effective medium. It allows marketers to target by age, interests, marital status, etc. Social platforms enable brands to connect more personally with the consumers as they occur based on community.

• Programmatic Advertising:

Programmatic advertising uses an algorithm to determine and target a specific audience across digital platforms. This type of medium has two methods:

• Programmatic Bidding

This medium uses market-side platforms that have demand to buy an advertisement on digital markets.

• Real-Time Bidding

This medium enables marketers to bid on impressions to the target audience. The ad is displayed right away if the bid wins.

Frequently Asked Questions on Media planning

1. What should a media plan include?

The media plan include details such as:

• Particular media channels are best for delivering the message to the target audience.
• The number of impressions.
• Creative development specifications.

2. What are the objectives of a media plan?

These objectives include:

1. building relationships.
2. raising awareness.
3. growing sales as a result.

3. What is the goal of media planning?

The goal of a media plan is to know the ideal combination of media outlets for marketing a brand or service product.

Conclusion

An integral part of a company to successfully create, share, and publish media content is media planning. With a complete media plan, an organization can make more marketing ROI and drive results. Many teams are developing tools that let organizations make faster, smarter, and more reliable media plan choices.