Media Planning
A media plan is the strategic planning that we carry out to define the channels that will be used in our marketing campaign with the aim of spreading our message.
Creating this plan involves researching, selecting and determining through which channels and platforms we will communicate with our audience. Choosing the right channels, achieving a mix will facilitate the achievement of the objectives previously established for the marketing campaign.
You have to know that the media plan is also used to determine how and when these messages will be transmitted. It allows you to plan the budget more efficiently and organize the production process to create good content that achieves the maximum possible impact and adjusts to the characteristics of each medium. Through the media plan, it is possible to make the most of the investment in the media and achieve effective follow-up and monitoring of the campaigns.
Media planning considers important factors, such as:
- the schedule of transmission of the campaigns.
- the channel that will capture the target audience.
- which channel will have more impact on volume.
- which medium will have the best cost-benefit.
- among other valuable points.
Here are some points that justify the use of the media plan as a strategic tool.
First thing you should know!
What media exist? An acronym POEM (Owned, Paid or Earned) or BOEM (Paid or Bought, Owned, Earned Media) is often used.
Own media: All web properties, network accounts, that can be controlled and that are exclusive to the company. For example: Institutional website, blogs and social network accounts.
When it comes to own media, the ideal is to keep up with the updating and flow of content, the more the better.
Paid media: they are those that we buy, they are the media where we contract the promotion service of our content to improve the reach and achieve our objectives.
Paying to promote the content of the brand helps to have greater exposure, this has a direct impact on our organic content (those that we publish without investment and that are exposed in our own media) since, as a consequence, they are viewed more.
An example of paid media is: Traditional advertising, such as an advertisement on television or in the newspaper, advertising on social networks, hiring influencers to generate promotions or create publications in Google Ads, etc.
Earned media: they are what we get from the actions we carry out, it is the set of actions that serve to take the audience to our own media.
For example: trends, mentions, publications, recommendations, in general the digital content collected by third parties that works as word of mouth advertising. It is the result of a joint effort of organic actions, search engines and the content provided by the brand.
In order to obtain benefits from earned media, it is very important to create quality content, directed to your target and with a clear strategy.
The combination of owned, paid and earned media allows you to attract, nurture and capture potential customers.
Some concrete examples:
– Owned: Brochures, website, packaging, fanpage, mobile apps, brand channel.
– Paid or purchased: TV, radio, search engines (CPC), mailing, graphics, cinema, public roads, display (CPM).
– Earned: hashtags, trends, posts, notes.
Why is it so important to create a media plan?
Every campaign will have as its objective to impact a specific audience, the choice of each medium or platform has to be oriented towards that audience.
We can say that each medium has a certain trend of consumption by people who are part of the same group, for example: there are platforms that are consumed mostly by people over 20 years old while others have a large young audience. Therefore, we must be clear about who we are looking for to choose the medium where we find them.
The great objective is to reach the targets in the most direct way, achieving greater effectiveness and lower cost through optimization, thus achieving unique efficiency and effectiveness.
The process step by step:
At this point we will repeat some of the points that we have already been working on in the course to understand how everything begins to have a correlation and each point is important to be able to create the strategy in general.
- Determine the objectives:
If they are not defined yet, we must know that they are essential to create the media plan. Let’s ask ourselves: What are we trying to achieve with this campaign? Do we want to directly promote a product or service? Retain customers? Generate brand positioning? The answers to these questions will help you determine the objectives of the media plan, do not forget that all objectives must be SMART (Specific, measurable, relevant, achievable and well limited in time).
- Analyze and segment the audience:
Determine who the campaign is aimed at in order to establish the best way to communicate with them, what type of content will encourage them to participate and at this point start thinking about the formats in which we will create the message. How we are going to define media is very important to investigate the consumption schedules of our target that they do and at what time to start thinking about how and where we find them. Demographic data is a good starting point as it will allow you to determine how your target behaves and what media they consume so that you can focus your efforts on them.
- Design the content marketing strategy:
What message am I going to impact my audience with and how am I going to convey it? You must take into account the image and values the brand wants to convey, to determine the tone and voice you will use in the messages. He also considers that the choice of media will influence the sensations generated by advertising. Therefore, you need to design a strategy that connects with the public, but without losing sight of the essence of the brand.
- Choose media and channels:
The central thing in media planning, defining what is the best media mix for our audience.For that, we recommend being up to date with respect to trends in technology and platforms. When choosing them, it is important to take into account what their weight and relevance will be within the marketing strategy, based on aspects such as the level of coverage, conditions, necessary periodicity, commercial possibilities, seasonality and advertising formats. Remember that the most effective means to convey the message will be those most in tune with your target and the brand image you want to project.
- Select formats:
Each medium and channel makes different ad formats available to advertisers. You will have to choose the formats that best meet your marketing goals and budget. As a general rule, larger, more visible, or more complex formats are more expensive, but creativity often counts more for building brand recall.
- Set time:
We must consider how long the campaign will last, if we can establish cut-off times to evaluate and optimize the results up to that moment, with the aim of achieving maximum coverage, number of impacts and affinity, which will guarantee you the best return on investment. possible.
- Measurement of results:
It is key to establish the KPIS to follow the performance of the campaign.
With real-time measurement technologies you will be able to check the impact that each medium is having so that you can make the necessary adjustments as soon as possible or even allocate more budget to media that demonstrate their profitability.
Let’s look at an example:
In the following Excel you will find an example of a media plan designed for a company that aims to sell cell phones.
There you will be able to see how to structure a media plan integrating all the aspects that we were seeing during the reading.
Among them they will see the stage of the campaign in which it is, the means by which it will circulate, the investment to apply, the KPI’S to measure, the objective and the scope.