Updated: Jun 4, 2023
Media planning is the process of determining when, where, and how often ads should be placed in order to maximize the success of a marketing campaign, whether this is an email marketing campaign or other type of advertising campaign. There is a wide variety of channels - both online and offline - to choose from. The most popular ones are television, magazines, newspapers, radio, social media, and pay-per-click.
The goal of creating a media plan is to transmit the right message to the right audience at the right time, in order to generate engagement without exceeding the determined budget. Often, this process is outsourced to specialized media agencies due to their creative expertise and access to large amounts of data.
The purpose of creating a media plan is streamlining all elements of a marketing campaign or strategy to help you achieve your business goals. It should take into consideration the initial media purchase, as well as optimize the results of the campaign throughout its entire lifecycle.
The assembly of a media plan is broken down into three key stages:
Market analysis and strategy plan. A media plan starts by comparing the business with its competitors in order to identify marketing problems. Common analyses include external reviews and strategy evaluations. This process indicates the audience to target, as well as a general direction of the messaging.
Establishment of attainable media objectives. Each media objective of your campaign should abide by the acronym SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound. The goals you set will have a major impact on how the campaign is run and the messaging that is conveyed. Because of this, it’s important to choose ones that take into account the diverse objectives of each department in your business. At this stage, you’ll also need to establish the campaign budget. Rather than assigning a set amount, take a flexible approach that allows for optimizations to be made during the process.
Media strategy development and implementation. Based on the data gathered in the first two stages, you can plot the best way to reach your goals. You’ll need to decide on the most appropriate media platform for your campaign based on the following factors:
Reach. One of the most important factors to consider, reach indicates the number of individuals you want to expose your campaign to within a particular time frame and budget.
Frequency. The second most important factor is frequency, which determines the number of times your target audience will see your ad. When it comes to getting your message across, repetition is key. On average, it takes three or more exposures to a message before consumers take action.
Cost. The price to advertise on a specific media platform.This cost is usually calculated based on a thousand potential customers, or on one rating point of your target audience.
Impact. Consider if the media platform you have in mind appeals to the appropriate senses in your consumers. For example, magazines access sight and smell, while television appeals to sight and sound.
Selectivity. Based on how narrow the target audience of your product is, you’ll need to measure how well each media platform reaches your niche. For example, an ad for yacht on your local newspaper will get a lot of exposure, but the number of prospects likely to buy is probably too low for the campaign to be considered worthwhile.