Decided to promote your project? Great! Have you developed an advertising strategy? Have you calculated everything? All that’s left is to put everything in its place. For that, you need a media plan.
What Is Media Planning and a Media Plan?
Media planning is making media plans, planning advertising campaigns, selecting distribution channels and optimizing the placement of advertising materials.
A media plan is a detailed plan that provides a complete outline of the advertising campaign, including all related activities, advertising costs, timing, channels, etc.
The goal, which is achieved by carrying out work according to the media plan, is to choose the most effective advertising channels and to remove the ones that do not work.
Elements of a Media Plan
Like in the process of gambling on tonybet.com, in order not to waste your budget, you need to clearly define a few basic aspects of your work. It is important to understand where the market is moving, identify the target audience, and based on that develop an advertising strategy. Analysis of your direct competitors and their advertising campaigns as well as customer reactions to their work are important factors.
A Step-by-step Guide for Media Planning
Market Analysis
First, understand whether your product meets the needs of the market, to determine its relevance. Your job is to show potential customers that your product is better than the rest, and to do that you need to know what your competitors are offering. You also need to understand if your target audience needs your product.
Target Audience Analysis
The next step is to analyze your target audience. Determine: what does your customer need, what is “it” that’s needed? Who are your customers in general: age, interests, gender? In the media plan with the accuracy of detail should be thought through all the advertising moves to attract the customer.
Consider the basic offline methods for analyzing your target audience:
- Oral survey or written questionnaire of the selected customer segment
- Face-to-face interviews – focus groups.
- Surveys by phone or mail.
- Observation of consumers at the point of sale (“mystery shopping”).
And now turn to online methods of analysis of the target audience:
- Studying customer profiles on the Internet, social networks.
- Targeting, i.e. processing of search queries.
- Similar Web.
Target audience analysis is done by marketers. They conduct an analysis based on the benefits of the product and make a portrait of the customer who needs this product and can appreciate it.
Defining the Goals and Projections of the Campaign
The goals of advertising can be different, so you need to understand what you and your product need. Depending on this will make all further calculations of funds, time, will come up with a slogan, design, etc.
Your goals may be different: to demonstrate a new product, attract new customers, attract people to an event, increase brand awareness and more. The main thing is the result. And the result should be as follows: your advertising campaign should pay off.
Media plan allows the client to understand in what way the marketer wants to achieve the desired results, and how much it will cost. But there is no 100% guarantee that everything will go according to plan. Different situations can arise in the process:
- The level of competition may change.
- Advertising may not like the target audience.
- The main channel will be ineffective, etc.
So, media planning includes an analysis of the intermediate results at each stage of the advertising campaign, and, as a consequence, the change media plan based on the results.
At first glance, it seems simple. But it is much easier to create a media plan based on the experience of previous advertising campaigns – there is a chance to avoid all the possible pitfalls. But what if you don’t have experience, and if this is the first ad campaign? Sure, you can follow your instincts and write down the numbers you want to achieve. But be prepared for a disappointing result.
Determine Promotion Channels
You need to understand where the advertising will be presented. Websites, apps, outdoor advertising, etc. It can be anything, the main thing to remember is this:
- The site must be visited by your target audience.
- The resource for placement must fit the budget.
- The strategy and communication message must be different from your competitors. For example, an ad for a university admissions office may be aimed at prospective students, or it may be aimed at their parents.
Based on an analysis of the market and your business, marketers will select appropriate advertising channels, such as contextual advertising, targeting, online PR, etc. In the media plan, each channel is prescribed separately, a certain budget is allocated for it, the terms of implementation are prescribed, as well as the frequency and schedule of screenings. In the course of marketing strategy implementation it will become clear which channels are more advantageous and which are a waste of budget. In this case, make adjustments to the media plan, recalculate the budget in the direction of more effective marketing tools.
It is also important to understand what the choice of promotion channel will depend on from the point of view of your goal.
Determine Budget
The basic component of a media plan is a budget, which must be competently and accurately prepared. It is usually calculated for three to six months. First of all, when calculating the budget, the result you want to achieve is taken into account. Then it is necessary to analyze the prices of placement in the channels that you have chosen. In addition, you can analyze the prices of your competitors with the help of a specialist to assess the risks and benefits.
Determine the Terms
Time is money. Calculate the schedule, the time of the campaign, etc. You need to make an estimate, according to which new advertising additions will be introduced to promote your product. It is important to determine:
- The date and time of the release of the advertisement.
- The deadline for each advertising channel.
- The frequency of shows.
- The duration of the impressions.
The Launch of Advertising
So, all calculated, prepared. It’s time to launch. But not everything is so easy. Firstly, it is important to control the beginning of advertising and closely monitor the reaction of clients. Secondly, for the first time, you need to monitor whether the turnover increases due to advertising, whether it works.