The Beginner’s Guide to Media Planning & Ad Campaigns
Last update: 8 September 2022 at 09:51 am
3.00/5Every business wants its ad campaign to be effective and successful. For this to happen, media planning is a necessary and crucial step. A media planning strategy has to be in place, and it should be able to have a positive impact on the potential customers of the business.
Media planning in advertising has to be developed and polished through several phases of planning and designing. With the advantages of a good advertising strategy, many companies are still not making the most of it.
The first questions to ask when it comes to learning this process are “what is media planning?” and “what happens in media planning?” Let’s find out!
What is Media Planning?
A media plan is a necessary tool for advertising. When you have a media plan, then you can use this to manage the various advertising activities of your business. The media plan will tell you what ads to use, when to use them, and where to advertise the promotions.
Both traditional and digital ads use a media plan to make sure that it can effectively reach the target audiences of a business. So, the advertisements and promotions you see in newspapers, television, radio, magazines, and websites all rely on a media plan.
Why You Need Media Planning
Advertising is the most used method for businesses to reach their target audience. Ads are important in letting people know that a certain brand offers a particular product or service. But it’s not simply putting ads everywhere for everyone to see. It has to have a strategy.
Having a calendar for your ads is the first thing you have to work on. For example, if you’re going to place ads on social media platforms, then you’re going to need a social media planning calendar. It will guide you on the best site to post ads, as well as the best time to post them.
In traditional and digital media planning, it’s also crucial to place ads that are appropriate for the target audience. It means that the media planning group should have a good idea of who their potential customers are so that they can create a campaign that will entice the audience.
Stages of Media Planning
There are three stages in the media planning process:
- Creating and developing various strategies.
- Assessing the effectiveness of the process.
- Making adjustments to the plan whenever necessary.
If the initial plan proves to be ineffective to the target audience, then changes need to be made so that the ad campaign will have the maximum effect on potential customers.
When you create a media plan, the goal in mind should be to give your audience a message that they can relate to. For the ads to truly register to the audience, they should be posted at the right time and on the right platform.
Having a media planning agency to help you will also be advantageous for your business. Media planning agencies can work on the development of the ad campaign. They will also be able to determine the answers to important questions such as:
- Who are the target audiences?
- What are the goals of the ad campaign?
- When should the ads be posted?
- How much will the ad campaign cost?
- And How successful are the ads in converting leads to paying customers?
Planning and Structuring Different Communication Media
There are numerous steps involved when it comes to media planning. You need to have the right parameters to measure and analyze so that you can target the right audience. Also, it’s vital to determine what kind of impact the company wants to achieve. After these steps, then the development of strategies may begin.
Setting Your Objectives
One ad campaign may have a number of objectives at one given time. Apart from that, such objectives may belong to various fields. Generally, your goal for your media plan is to increase the revenue of the business by boosting its sales. Such an approach will not only improve the bottom line of the business but also increase brand visibility.
When you set your objectives, it’s also crucial to know the budget that the company is willing to invest in the campaign. Doing this allows you to study how feasible your objectives are in relation to the available budget.
Allow some flexibility when planning, especially when discussing the budget. One of the best steps to take would be to have a certain price range of the intended budget. Do this for each of the ad campaigns.
Knowing Your Target Audience
User experience is vital in determining customer satisfaction. That’s why one of the first steps in media planning should be to know the needs of your target customers. This stage of planning should be done first before selecting what message you want to send in your ads.
This part of the planning stage is where you gather the necessary information about your audience. It means knowing their age group, gender, social class, interests, and others. Knowing this information will allow you to examine what their needs are and how your business can fill the gap.
Using what you know about your target audience, you may now develop ads that will get their attention and make them curious about what you have to offer. Part of what you should also determine would be the channels or platforms where your audience spends the most time. If it’s social media, then make the most of social media planning tools for a smoother process.
Identifying the Scope and Frequency of Your Ad Campaign
When you launch your media campaign, you should have an idea of the impact of the ads. It means knowing how many people found the ads to be effective. As for the frequency of the ads broadcasting, it could be twice a week throughout the campaign period. It depends on what has been agreed upon during the planning stage.
By knowing these things about the scope and frequency of the ads, you can continue to make changes to the campaign and strategy. The media planning group can improve it to better create a more effective campaign.
Choosing the Relevant Media Platforms
Businesses always have to be updated on the latest trends in communication media. It’s vital to know which media channels are most frequented by your target audience. Doing so will allow you to narrow down your options on where to conduct your campaign.
Additionally, you have the option to go for traditional or digital advertising or both. With online media, you’ll be putting out digital ads that can be seen on emails, websites, or social media sites.
With digital advertising, you can better target your audience by age, gender, location, and others. If you can get really creative with your ad campaign, it just might go viral on social media and reach a broader range of potential customers.
With traditional media, one of the advantages of using it is that it is something tangible, and customers may choose to keep them. Newspapers and magazines are some examples of traditional or offline media.
Takeaway
Media planning is necessary if you want to have an effective ad campaign. When planning, you and your team need to have knowledge of your business goals, who your target audiences are, the scope and frequency of the campaign, and the platforms where the ads will be broadcasted, posted, or published. Lastly, don’t forget to determine the budget range for each campaign.
Get in touch with the best media planning agencies today to talk about how you can get the right message to your target customers!
