Advertising is an essential part of business and is typically used to bring in new leads, move prospects along the sales pipeline, or remind current customers of how they could use your services. But how do you decide where the ads go and how much you should be paying for them? This is all done through the media planning and buying process, the foundation of any ad campaign. The media planning and buying process tries to put you in the best position possible to achieve the goals of your specific marketing campaign. Let’s take a closer look at the stages of the media planning and buying process:
Although knowing how to inform and create your plan is the very core of the media planning and buying process, many other elements are needed to make it perfect. For example, without understanding how each of the different media channels work and their features, you won’t be able to realize your objectives and get the best value for your advertising spend. The same is true of digital media buying and understanding how ads are bought and placed.So here we’ll look at some of the most common channels for ad placement and what you need to know about them.
PPC advertising is a standard medium for digital ads and is likely to be a core aspect of your media buying strategy. As the name suggests, advertisers only pay for each click they get on their ads, with a predetermined acceptable price for each. Usually, you will set a time-limited budget and when that runs out, the ads no longer show. Unfortunately, pay-per-click may not always be effective, particularly if the ads are being shown to the wrong audience, who will click and cost you money without much chance of conversion.
This refers to the use of automated technology in the media planning and buying process. While traditional ad buying methods involve proposals, tenders, quotes, and plenty of negotiation, programmatic buying uses software to buy and sell ad space. Though they may sound like drawn-out processes, there are thousands of auctions happening every second, and these auctions decide which bidder meets the criteria to appear on a specific person’s page.
All major social media platforms have their own advertising features, which allow you to target very specific demographics on either a CPC or cost per mille (thousand impressions) basis. This can be very effective for reaching niches that search advertising can’t and is a vital tool when considering your target audience. There are also other avenues, such as social media influencer marketing, which can help define your brand in your audience’s eyes through a personality they already have a connection with.
With the move to digital marketing, some might have thought that ad buying on TV and radio was finished. But, the numbers don’t lie and data shows that people still watch TV shows and listen to the radio. Now, however, this element of media planning and buying is focused on OTT streaming advertising, podcast advertising, or advertising on music platforms such as Spotify.
Successful marketing campaigns are built on great plans and execution. Meeting your objectives and delivering excellent ROI for your marketing spend comes from having an effective media planning and buying process. This process is something you should analyze and improve constantly to keep up with new trends and the shifting needs of your business.If you want to up your marketing game and create a media planning and buying process that delivers consistent results for your organization you can always talk to the experts. To get in touch with us to find out how we can help at any stage of the process, you can contact us here.