Media Planning

Media costs are often the largest chunk of your advertising budget.  So, it only makes sense to have a good plan to manage your investment.  A comprehensive media plan is the key to maximizing your marketing dollars.  Even the most creative campaigns can fall flat without a well-balanced media plan to reach maximum exposure.  By maximum exposure, we don’t necessarily mean the most people, but rather the right people at the right place at the right time with the right method.

Here are few basic steps to get you started on developing a media plan:

1. Identify your objectives.  What are you trying to accomplish?

2. Who is your audience?  Knowing where they are is not enough; it is not usually that easy. You may need to know demographic information, as well as some statistics on lifestyle or likes and dislikes.  Once that information is determined, you can start reviewing media outlets available to help you reach that audience. Traditionally, there is print media, internet, outdoor, radio and television.  Depending on your objectives, a combination of a few or all of these could work best. You need a good strategy on how to use these outlets.

3. Finally, create a budget and calendar to show when, where and how the money will be spent.

Here is a basic overview of a few media outlets available to consider when creating your media plan.

Print Advertising - Prices for a publication will vary depending on the circulation and type of publication. For example, full-color magazines cost more to produce than black and white newspaper. Typically, the higher the publication’s circulation and the better it looks, the higher the cost to advertise in it. On the flip side of that, the more you increase your frequency, the lower you may be able to negotiate the price per run. However, don’t let ad cost alone determine which publications you advertise in. Choose those that best fit your target audience.

Internet - Online advertising is experiencing rapid growth.  With this growth comes a lot of opportunities and challenges.  Internet is unique in that it can serve as a transaction and distribution channel in addition to being a communications channel.  People can get information and make purchases and payments through the internet.  It can also carry graphics with audio and video content instead of just text and graphics. Internet also provides detailed reports on who’s viewing your ad, who is clicking through and who is actually making a purchase.

Outdoor  - Billboard advertising audiences are often measured through driver surveys.  The cost for billboards will vary depending on location, right- or left-hand read, whether a board is lit at night, and production costs. Consider billboards more of a general audience, rather than targeted.

Radio & Television - Audience is the equivalent of circulation for broadcast media.  Audience size will vary during different times of the day as people tune in and out. The price for advertising on radio will vary based on the audience size that day-part delivers.  Reach and frequency are important in broadcast media.  Reach is the total number of people exposed to a message at least once in a certain time period.  Frequency is the number of times those people are exposed in that same time.  To get a high reach, you have to buy a wider market area.  To increase frequency, you have to buy more ads during that time period.  The key is to find a good balance with reach and frequency that fits within your budget.

Measuring effectiveness
When it comes to costs, advertisers often use CPM, or cost per thousand impressions.  CPM is calculated by multiplying the unit cost by 1,000 and dividing the result by the audience size.  For example, if a TV commercial costs $1,000 and the program has an audience of 100,000, then the CPM for the commercial will be $10.

A media strategy specifies the means for achieving the media objectives.  Once the budget is set, and the media outlets are identified, it is important to negotiate rates.  Media buyers are professionals who are knowledgeable in estimating media costs and skillful in negotiating these rates.  Media buyers can also monitor the implementation of a media plan and manage the buys through the entire budget and calendar.

Sounds easy, right?  We'll admit this is a simplified approach to developing a media plan.  Lots of research goes into the strategy for making decisions on who the audience is, which outlets to use, and how to use them.  It all starts with asking the right questions each step of the way.

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