What are The Objectives of Media Planning?

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.

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