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The Importance of Media Planning for Your Business

January 10, 2019January 10, 2019 by Bloom Ads

Media planning entails sourcing and selecting the optimal media platforms for your marketing campaigns, and at the end of the day the importance of media planning comes down to determining the best combination of media to reach a marketing campaign’s objectives.

Creating an effective marketing strategy is a crucial and necessary part of marketing. Nevertheless, the importance of media planning often gets lost because business owners and marketers don’t have the time, tools, or experience required to do it on their own. For example, do you know which marketing platforms to prioritize first? Do you know which have the best ROI? How about what media mix is needed to supply the ideal number of consumer touch points to drive leads and sales? Each marketing platform has its strengths and place in a media plan, dependent on your budget and business goals.

Although the fundamentals of marketing change very little over time, strategic media planning is not entirely as cut and dry as it was in the age of traditional marketing. Today, marketing is all about data and the ability to find statistically significant information within piles and piles of statistics. There is so much more possible than simply applying demographics and having a limited range of media placements on TV, radio, and in print.

The digital landscape is vast and complex, and the importance of media planning and buying has never been more obvious.

Start with Questions

When putting together any marketing plan, it is most important to start with questions. What is the goal of the campaign: sales, leads, in-store visits? What will the measure of success be? What is a typical sale or lead worth? Are there individuals that you aren’t reaching, but would like to? What is a reasonable budget to spend? All of these questions, among others, should be answered as soon as possible.

Without having a firm grasp of your goals and objectives from the start, it will be hard to measure success later. And without case studies and proof of success, being able to show stakeholders and executives the importance of media planning will become more and more difficult as time goes on.

Know Your Market and Define Your Audience

The second step after defining goals and ironing out how you will measure them is research. What do you know about the geographic area you want to target? Do people need to drive to your store? How far is too far to drive? What are the commonalities of your current customers? What are their ages? What interests do they share? Are these interests common in your market? Can you create an audience profile that will have enough people in it to support your advertising spend? Are there too many people? Should you refine your audience to be more manageable?

By working with a media buying agency like Bloom Ads, you’ll have access to a group of experienced professionals who not only understand the importance of media planning but have access to the research tools and data necessary to properly define your target audience.

Map Your Consumer Journey

There’s typically a specific path a customer takes before converting to a sale or a lead and knowing this path (or customer journey) is crucial because you want to be able to speak appropriately to users at every stage and offer valuable information which will lead them promptly to the next step. Most of this time, the path is represented as a funnel. The people who have just found out about your or your products or services represent a more significantly sized number of people at the top of the funnel. As people progress, they drop off and move on. This is inevitable for any number of reasons.

The thing to note is that as people become more informed about your company and the audience gets smaller, the people that remain are more and more likely to become customers or new leads.

Prioritize High Intent Users First

If you desire to have the most significant return on investment, you’ll want to go after that smaller, more qualified audience first. It makes sense that if they convert at a higher rate, you should be talking to them first. However, since they are often a much smaller audience, you’ll always need to be reaching out to new potentials and creating a buzz around your brand.

The Right Media Mix

The importance of media planning lies in making sure that you devote budget to the high intenders, but also lay the foundation at every step of a user’s journey to guarantee that you don’t miss opportunities. We recommend starting at the bottom of the consumer funnel and working backward with your marketing budget, trying your best to fill in as many steps as possible.

ROI is at the forefront of every ad campaign we run at Bloom Ads. We recognize the importance of media planning and work to create the best possible marketing strategy for your brand. Learn more about our media planning services on our website or call 818-703-0218 to speak with one of our professionals today.

What are The Objectives of Media Planning?

January 3, 2019January 3, 2019 by Bloom Ads

Media planning is an essential part of any marketing strategy. As a business owner, not only should you be thinking about your day-to-day plan, but you should also be thinking about your overarching goals for 2019 and into the future.

So, how do you focus on both long-term and short-term goals? Media planning!

What is Media Planning?

So what exactly is media planning? The objective of media planning is to identify the ideal combination of media outlets for marketing a product, service, or brand. It involves market research, identifying target audiences, analyzing their propensity to engage with your business, planning your marketing execution, and working with specific marketing budgets.

Successful media plans require strategic balance. Today’s customers interact with dozens of mediums on a daily basis. Your business goal should be to meet them at as many of these points as possible. A lot of these touch points will be online, but others will be offline, like television, radio, or print. Media planning uses data, research, and previous experience to deduce the optimal mix of all these platforms.

What Do Media Planners Do?

Media planners will first speak with your business leaders to understand your key objectives and goals. One of the first objectives of media planning is to ask probing questions about your business, what you offer, who your current customers are, and what your customer’s motivations seem to be.

Once this initial fact-finding discovery conversation is complete, a media planner will conduct external research. Our media planners will gather and analyze insights about your marketing region, research current industry trends, analyze what your competition is doing, identify the ideal target audiences, and strive to understand where those audiences are most active.

This manner of analysis is where marketing meets intuition and experience. This stage is where our experienced media planners delve into the nuances of their research and audience behaviors. These behaviors include where they go for information, what other products and interests they share, and why they interact with specific media channels.

TV, Radio & Print vs. Online Channels

After identifying the target audience and their habits, the next objective of media planning is to determine the best media outlets on which to place your advertisements. Our media planners decide how much of the marketing mix should be on traditional media like television, radio, or print. They also figure out how much budget allocation goes to online channels like paid search, social media ads, display, and video campaigns, or even email marketing.

Consumers experience and engage with content in a multitude of ways, both traditional and digital. Our job is to find the ideal media mix for your target audience across all media channels. Once channel selections are final, one of the final objectives of media planning is to reach out to traditional media outlets with RFPs. They also give digital media buyers the plan for the digital platforms, this way the media buyers can set up the online campaigns through all the digital channels.

Budgeting Properly is Key

In pretty much all marketing scenarios, the discussion about marketing budget decisions should happen at the start. It’s a business imperative that you not only determine how to advertise your brand’s message but that you allocate funds so that you will have ample return on your investment. Proper budget projections should prepare media planners to understand precisely how to spend your budget effectively. Spreading budget should encompass reaching your most likely customers first, while still balancing engagement and branding.

Media planning is an integral part of any business strategy, but it can also be time-consuming for business owners. Fortunately, we know all the objectives of media planning and are here to help. Our full-service advertising agency offers media plan services that help generate ROI. Our media planning experts will help you craft a successful campaign that drives consumer traffic and improves your overall brand presence.

Learn more about the media planning services that we offer, or you can call 818-703-0218 to speak with a media planning specialist directly.

The Top Marketing Terms You Need to Know

January 11, 2019November 28, 2018 by Jason Martinez

If you’re new to the marketing world, you’re probably going to start hearing a lot of words and abbreviations that sound strange to you — SEO and ROI can seem to be another language. But there’s no need to get a headache trying to figure out all these meanings! Start by learning the top marketing terms you need to know!

A/B Testing

This term refers to switching out different variables in an advertisement in order to gain a better result. When A/B testing, you change something as simple as the image or call-to-action in your ad to see what your audience responds better to.

Call-to-Action

This is the request you add at the end of a blog post, advertisement, or landing page in order to have the person become a lead. These can include “click here,” “call us today,” or “subscribe now,” to name a few. You should always strive to create a strong, enticing call-to-action to earn better conversions.

Cost Per Lead

This is the amount of money it costs you to get one conversion. You can sometimes increase your cost per lead by making little mistakes such as bidding on wasteful keywords or targeting too large of an area — so make sure you avoid those errors.

Keywords

These are the terms that you use to optimize your webpage and help you show up higher in searches. You should aim to use keywords that are relative to your brand and services that will show up in relevant searches. These terms can either be one or two words or longer phrases.

Optimization

This is a wide term that essentially refers to tweaking your website to be the best version of itself. Properly optimized websites will include a good number of searched keywords, include the proper headers, adapt to mobile devices, and include relevant imagery.

ROI

This is your return on investment and refers to how efficient and effective your marketing efforts are for the amount of money on your spend on your campaign.

If you have any questions about the services that we offer, do not hesitate to reach out by calling 818-703-0218. You can also visit our website to learn more about our media buying and planning services.

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Adapting Your Communication Style for Different Kinds of Employees

January 10, 2019November 27, 2018 by Jason Martinez

If you think about the way you talk to the people in your life, you’ll probably notice that you use different tones and ways of wording things with different people. For example, you may speak more frankly with family members while you talk more casually and jokingly with friends.

There should also be a difference in how you speak to your different employees. If you want to have the best company communication, you should be adapting your communication style when speaking to individual employees.

Personal People

These are employees that are very in tune with people’s emotions and want to get to know their co-workers on a more personal level. Often, the best way to speak to these employees is to build a strong sense of rapport and trust with them early on so they are more comfortable with you.

Intuitive People

These employees often look at the big picture and how certain tasks and projects will affect it. You’re best off avoiding small-talk and getting right to the brunt of things when it comes to explaining tasks to these employees. You should also be prepared to immediately answer any and all questions they have about projects — because they’ll likely have a lot.

Analytical People

As the name implies, these employees like to focus on facts and data, so you should always explain the logic behind tasks. You’re best bet to getting them on board with a project, is by using the scientific method and explaining the facts of the task.

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Choosing Images That Improve Your Visual Marketing Results

January 3, 2019November 26, 2018 by Driven Local

A picture’s worth a thousand words, right? That means when you’re choosing the imagery for your advertising and marketing campaigns, you want to use photos and graphics that will help bolster your ads and get your message across.

That’s why you need to do your best to choose imagery that will help improve your visual marketing results. Here’s how you can do that:

Choose Royalty-Free, High-Quality Photos

You shouldn’t just be taking any photo you see online and using it in your advertisements or social media posts. Not only do blurry, low-quality photos not grab a person’s attention, but you could get yourself into some copyright trouble if you don’t have the proper permissions to use the picture.

There are plenty of free or inexpensive stock photo sites you can get high-quality photos from, so take advantage of them.

Feature Your Target Audience

If you’re running an advertisement for school supplies, you should feature children using those supplies. This helps display what you’re selling and can help consumers who would buy those products better relate to your ad.

Choose User-Generated Content

Some of the best photos you can use are of actual customers using your product or service. If you’re a food establishment, check social media to see if any of your customers tagged you in photos dining at your restaurant or eating your take-out.

You can feature those photos in your social media campaigns — just make sure you give them proper photo credits.

Pick Pictures That Pop

Whether they be more fantastical photos of cartoon characters or photos that use bright, eye-catching colors, you should include imagery that pops and stands out from the other photos in magazine advertisements or online posts. You can choose to make these the brunt of your campaign or just sprinkle in a few of these photos throughout the campaign.

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PPC Mistakes That Are Costing You Money

January 3, 2019November 21, 2018 by Driven Local

Pay-per-click, or PPC, advertising often makes up a good amount of your online advertising budget, so you wouldn’t want to make any mistakes in your targeting or budgeting — but you could be! Make sure you’re not making any of these common mistakes that could cost you money.

You’re Bidding Too Broad

You should always be doing your best to use your budget carefully and target keywords that will get you your lowest cost-per-click. This can be done by using more specific, long-tail keywords that not only double the number of keywords you can use but also rank higher if they more closely match searches.

You’re Not Geo-Targeting

Consumers tend to prefer using companies that they know are familiar with their local area. By creating more ads that include your service areas, you can convince a consumer that you are familiar with their location, making them more likely to click on your ad.

You’re Boring

Do your due diligence and look at your competition’s ads. Once you see the types of ads they’re using, create your own ads that are engaging and stand out from the rest. You don’t want your PPC efforts to blend in with everyone else’s — you want them to be unique and relevant. Use different graphics, calls-to-action, and copy to give your ads a leg-up.

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Understanding a Buyer’s Journey Towards a Purchase

January 3, 2019November 21, 2018 by Driven Local

How often do you go into a store and decide to buy the very first thing you see, regardless of what is it or if you even need or want it? We’re guessing never. That’s because there is a process that every buyer goes through before actually making a purchase.

When it comes to marketing your product or service, it’s crucial to understand a buyer’s journey so you can ensure your efforts end with a purchase.

The Awareness Phase

In the first phase of the buyer’s journey, a buyer becomes aware of the problem they have. This could be something as simple as needing something for dinner or as complex as having a broken arm and needing a doctor.

During the Awareness Phase, buyers consider how to educate themselves about their problem, what will happen if they don’t make a purchase, and if the problem is a challenge or easily obtained. In the example of needing dinner, the buyer could: decide takeout is easier than cooking, realize not getting dinner could result in their being famished and thus dinner is easily obtained.

The Consideration Phase

In this phase, the buyer considers the options for solving their problem and weighs the pros and cons of each option. In our example, this is when buyers would start researching local eateries and determine the pros and cons of each, such as price, waiting time for food or a table, and distance from their home.

The Decision Phase

Here is where buyers actually make a decision using knowledge gained in the Consideration Phase and choose what to purchase. Finally, our buyer has determined that, since he or she doesn’t want to wait long and is looking for reasonably-priced food, they choose an Italian restaurant less than 10 minutes away, that is well in budget.

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Showing Your Employees You’re Thankful for Them

January 3, 2019November 21, 2018 by Driven Local

When you run a business, few things equal the value of having good, happy employees. Your employees work tirelessly, day in and day out, to help your company succeed and deliver your customers the best service possible.

With all that they do for you and your business, don’t you think it’s a good idea to show them a little gratitude? There are plenty of ways you can show your employees you’re thankful for them!

Plan Fun Outings

Did one of your teams put in a lot of extra hours to reach a goal or help improve your company’s efficiencies? Treat them to a dinner or send them to a sports event — whatever best fits your company culture. Not only will this show your employees that you’re grateful for their hard work, but it’s a great way to help your teams bond.

Offer Parking Spaces

If your company parking lot is a bit short on spaces but has executive spots, save one to be offered to employees who do a stand-up job. You can offer it each month or more frequently, depending on the size of your company. Either way, making an employee’s morning commute easier is a great way to say “thank you.”

Celebrate Special Days

A little acknowledge of a work anniversary or birthday goes a long way. Surprise employees with a bottle of wine or a gift card to their favorite restaurant as a little treat. If you know an employee is getting married, offer him or her a wedding present.

Give Time Off

After all the hard work and effort your employees have put in, reward them with a bit of paid time off. You can decide to give an employee a full work day off or simply allow them to come in a little later or leave a little earlier.

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Earning More Positive Reviews for Your Brand

January 3, 2019November 14, 2018 by Driven Local

One of the first things a person does before using a product or service is look up reviews of the brand. While most business owners worry about whether their reviews are good or bad, there’s something else you should consider — do you have any at all?

Since some consumers can be deterred from using a business without good reviews, here’s how you can ensure you earn more positive reviews and are seen in the best light.

Give People A Space to Leave Reviews

You can’t earn positive online reviews if consumers have no place to leave them. Have your web developer add a page to your website where users can describe their experience with your business and give your service a rating.

You should also make sure all your listing pages, such as Yelp, Google My Business, and the Better Business Bureau, are all up-to-date and verified so users can leave reviews there as well.

Give Incentives

This doesn’t mean offering people prizes if they give you only a positive review — just if they give you one at all. Use an email list to send your customers an offer of a free beverage, coupon, or raffle entry if they head to your website and write a review of their experience with you. You’ll be surprised by how many reviews come flooding in.

Respond to All Your Reviews

Responding to reviews shows past, current, and future customers that you are listening to their feedback and using it to better your business. You may be tempted to only respond to the positive reviews and express your gratitude, but don’t ignore negative reviews.

Instead, craft a response that lets that customer (and potential customers reading it) know that you want to make things right and will use their feedback to avoid future issues.

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Productivity Tips to Work Smarter, Not Harder

January 3, 2019November 12, 2018 by Driven Local

In a professional position, you always want to be as productive as possible. But we know that things happen and sometimes, the clock can strike 5 p.m. and you feel like you didn’t accomplish anything all day. When that happens, you may think you need to put in more hours and stay later to get your work done — but that’s not always the case.

More often than not, you just need to make a few changes to work smarter.

Figure Out Your Best Schedule

Do you get into work every morning, raring to go and accomplish a ton of tasks, or does it take you a while to wake up and get into a groove? Whichever person you are, you should plan to work on your bigger or more difficult projects during your more productive times. Knowing what times you’re most productive can help you better plan your day and avoid procrastinating.

Get Rid of Distractions

When your brain is trying to avoid a task, something as mundane as a stack of sticky notes can be an easy distraction. Do yourself a favor, and clear your desk of clutter. You should also put your phone away and… wait for it…close your email. If you’re like most people, a single “ping” from your inbox is enough to pull you away from a task, so just close out of it for a bit each day to focus on actual work.

Do Single Tasks

While some swear by multi-tasking, sometimes, trying to focus on multiple tasks at one time can inhibit productivity and allow for more mistakes to happen. Try to do one task at a time and check them off a list as you complete them. Not only will you know, for sure, that something is done, but crossing it off your to-do list is very satisfying.

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