media planning definition in business

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Media Planning: A Complete Guide for Marketers

Today’s marketers are often tasked with balancing campaign efforts across a range of different media platforms and assets. This can make it challenging to effectively track each tactic’s success and overall impact on the business’s bottom line. With a thorough media planning strategy in place, teams can more accurately and holistically monitor campaign success and make informed decisions about how to optimize performance in the future. 

Let’s take a look at some of the key considerations to keep in mind when building a media plan:

What is Media Planning?

Media planning is the process by which marketers determine how, when, and where an audience is given a selected advertising message. Media planners analyze the audiences, channels, and advertisements to determine the most efficient way to communicate a message to the intended audience.

In today’s competitive and busy marketing landscape, media planning is essential. Marketers need to serve consumers with the right message, at the right time, on the right channel in order to see engagements. Media planning is where marketers determine what these “rights” are.

Media planning is most often done by media planners at advertising agencies. Media planners must work with media buyers and the client organization to develop a strategy to maximize ROI on media spend . Media planners are required to have a firm understanding of the organization’s brand and target audience, various media platforms and developing media trends.

Media planning consists of formulating a strategy, evaluating its effectiveness, and adjusting, while buying is the execution of the strategy.

As noted, the media planner will evaluate brand and audience to determine the correct combination of messaging and media mix on which to advertise in order to reach consumers in a positive, impactful way.

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What is a media plan.

A media plan outlines which audience will be targeted, across which channels, at what time, and with which message. 

An effective media plan will result in a set of advertising opportunities that target a specific audience and fit in with the organization’s marketing budget. When establishing a media plan, factor in the following considerations:

• Who does the ad need to reach?
• What is the marketing budget?
• What are the conversion goals?
• How frequency should the message be shown?
• What is the reach (how many people will see it)?
• How do we define success?

Types of Media Planning

To create an effective media strategy for your brand, you must decide what types of media (traditional or digital) will be cost-effective and bring in sales. 

There are three main types of media that are considered when building a media plan: 

Paid media refers to advertising that is the result of paid placement from the brand. This includes pay-per-click advertising, display ads, and branded content. This is the most common way for brands to get exposure and boost sales. 

Owned Media

Owned media is content that is owned by your brand, i.e. blog posts and social media accounts. By increasing the use of the company’s owned media, you can increase your customer reach and increase brand awareness. 

Earned Media

Earned media refers to the publicity the brand gets from outlets other than their own company. For example, customer reviews, media coverage, and word-of-mouth are all forms of earned media. This form of media is valuable because it often comes directly from consumers. This feedback can also help improve the quality of the product or service you are offering. 

By weighing the cost and benefits of each platform, your company can decide what resources and forms of media will fit best into your media plan.

What are the Benefits of Media Planning?

Today’s modern marketing often requires marketers to leverage multiple forms of media, and a data-driven media plan provides marketers with centralized information across all platforms. This helps to optimize campaigns and messaging, as well as streamline the campaign review process. 

Key benefits of media planning include:

Establish Processes  

Media buying can be a complicated and time-consuming process. By getting your plans and processes in place, you can improve efficiency and save resources across the board.

Budget Tracking

Marketers have to know their budgets and a good media plan accounts for all costs and estimated ROI. 

Audience Segmentation & Analysis

So much of media planning is understanding your audience and what message will resonate with them. 

Optimization & Testing

A good media plan uses the data at hand to determine what has worked, what isn’t working, and what might work based on existing data.

Improved ROI

It’s called a plan for a reason. Media planning allows you to create an optimized campaign that delivers ROI.

What are the Objectives of Media Planning?

Media planners need to identify the combination of ads to achieve a specific result. Objectives should generally align with business goals, such as long-term growth and improving ROI. 

Media planning will often utilize a wide range of tactics to increase brand awareness, generate leads, or drive conversions to help their organizations accomplish these goals.

Media Planning vs. Media Buying

Many people confuse media planning and media buying but they aren’t the same. Media planning sets you up to buy while m edia buying is the process of purchasing ad space across various channels and platforms in coordination with the agreed-upon media plans and monitoring campaigns as they run. 

This means evaluating platform formats and rates to ensure they coincide with the plan, negotiating costs, keeping abreast of media trends, and building relationships with counterparts at various channels and platforms. 

Media buying often leverages one of the following popular strategies:

• Manual bidding
• Direct buys
• Programmatic buys
• Real-time bidding

Challenges of Media Planning

Media planning can be challenging because there are so many contributing factors that must be accounted for, and because many believe that media planning strategies and processes have not modernized along with marketing.

Challenges include but are not limited to:

Consumer-Level Targeting

The media plan must understand consumers at a granular level to determine what types of messages resonate with them, requiring in-depth marketing analytics and an omnichannel measurement solution

Platform Preference

Brands must also know the various channels and platforms that target audience members engage with and when. This will allow you to effectively choose media on which to run campaigns. All of this must be done with budget and media spend in mind.

Heavy Budget Focus

Media planning continues to revolve around budget rather than customer engagement. Unfortunately, there is limited flexibility when it comes to a budget, preventing marketers from course correcting as campaigns run and new insights are discovered. Modern media planning requires the flexibility to allocate budget to different channels if they prove to be more successful.

Integrating Measurements

Because there are so many online and offline channels, it has become infinitely more difficult for marketers to measure the success of these campaigns alongside each other to determine which are most effective and which should be updated.

Today, media planning has to adapt to focus on the consumer experience using flexible budgets and real-time, unified measurements that allow for media plan optimizations in-campaign.

How to Write a Media Plan (4 Steps to Follow)

Creating a media plan is a detailed process that requires planners to consider the needs of target consumers as well as the goals of the business. 

Here are the essential steps and considerations marketers must make when creating a media plan.

Step 1. Determine Media Goals and Objectives

It might be easy to assume that the goal is to drive conversions or engagement; however, that would oversimplify this step. Goals may vary by department, or there might be multiple objectives for one campaign. The sales team may be targeting increased revenue while the marketing objectives might be to increase brand awareness . Knowing the main goal of the campaign will determine how it runs, as well as messaging.

Once clear goals are established, media planners must conduct research into market trends and the competitive landscape. This research will offer visibility into where similar brands and goals have achieved success in the past, informing planning decisions. For example, if a brand has long relied on email campaigns but research reveals that competitors have had greater success with native ads, it may be time to shift the plan.

Of course, when determining goals and setting objectives, media plans must factor in budgets. Avoid assigning strict dollar amounts to specific channels. A flexible approach to your marketing budget will allow for optimizations to be made as campaigns run.

Step 2. Determine Target Audience

Marketing today is driven by creating positive customer experiences . When developing messaging and selecting where to display those messages across the media mix, marketers need to focus on specific audience needs.

• First, examine which segment of the overall audience you are trying to engage. 

• Look at attribution measurements and engagement analytics to understand the types of ads users engage with, which creative is most effective, and importantly, which channels these consumers use. 

• While marketers often utilize demographic information such as age, location , general interests, etc., be sure to incorporate person-level data gathered through a unified measurement approach to get the most tailored results.  

Step 3. Consider Frequency & Reach

Another key component of a media plan is reach and frequency. 

• Reach refers to how many people the campaign will be in front of over a specific amount of time.

• Frequency refers to how many times the consumer will be exposed to the ad over the course of the campaign.  

There are a few popular approaches that marketers take when selecting frequency.

Continuity : Ads will run on a consistent schedule over the course of the campaign: for example, two ads per week. The continuity strategy is often used for goods that are not seasonal and require regular reinforcement to stay top of mind.

Flighting : “Flights” refer to internment or alternating periods of advertisements followed by pauses in advertising on the channel altogether. Flighting works well for seasonal products or for those with less ad budget. For example, when there is a pause in a flighted television campaign, marketers may choose to run print ads instead.

Pulsing : A combination of flighting and continuity. Pulsed campaigns will incorporate low-intensity consistent advertising that is augmented by flights of higher-intensity ads during times when additional messaging can have a high impact. 

Step 4: Analyze and Optimize Campaign Performance

One of the most important steps to building a media planning strategy is to continuously monitor, track, and analyze performance. Marketing campaigns are not “set-it-and-forget-it,” instead, they require ongoing management to drive maximum ROI. This hands-on approach allows teams to identify opportunities to optimize performance in real-time based on what is or isn’t working for each campaign.

Selecting the Right Media Channels

There are a variety of online and offline channels for marketers to choose from. We must use the information gathered in the research and goal-setting phases to determine which channels will drive success.

Here are some of the most popular forms of media that marketers choose when media planning, along with their attributes.

Offline Media

Magazines have a long shelf life and often stay in a consumer’s possession for two to four weeks after being read. Information in this medium tends to be retained longer, since people read faster than they can listen. Research has shown there is a higher amount of trust in magazine ads than in other forms of media ( 60 percent of readers trusted the advertisements they saw in magazines).

Consumers are also less resistant to these kinds of advertisements, as these often tie in with their interests. Publications tend to be very targeted (e.g., running magazines or cooking magazines). They reach a secondary audience in addition to the target audience, since they are passed along to family and friends.

Advertising with local newspapers is a great way to ensure a brand’s message stays local. When selecting this medium, marketers can choose which section of the newspaper ads are placed for further targeting. If you want to target those interested in fashion, you can select the Style section of the newspaper. Additionally, newspaper readers are more likely to have higher education and 7 out of 10 of households earning above $100,000 read the newspaper. This can be important when selecting ad space based on demographics. 

Radio ads have a local appeal, allowing you to target specific areas or regions of the country. It is also an easy medium to build frequency with your target audience, and is considered a lower-cost medium. According to research, exposure to a radio ad and time to purchase is the shortest of any medium. Additionally, when paired with other forms of media, the overall campaigns were more effective .

TV & Cable

TV and cable are highly visual and can demonstrate products in everyday life. For example, if you sell a cleaning product, consumers can see the benefits of the product and how they can be applied in their home. This medium is of course very prevalent, as the average American watches approximately five hours of television a day.

Out of Home

Media such as billboards are large and get attention. In a busy area, your message can reach 10,000 people in a month. Out of home isn’t limited by billboards, only your creativity is. Out-of-home is also an extremely mobile option. (e.g., using displays to advertise luggage at an airport).

Online Media

Digital publications.

Many digital publications have opportunities for you to email their database through a personalized email or newsletter. They can track open rates and understand conversion rates to your site or asset. These are often specialized publications, making it easy to reach your target audience, and are great tools for lead generation campaigns.

Advertisers can capitalize on search intent. Advertisers can retarget people who have visited their site. PPC is an extremely cost-effective medium.

Social Media

Like PPC, social media is an extremely cost-effective medium. It is also extremely targeted, allowing marketers to target by interests, age, marriage status, etc. Social platforms are constructed on a basis of community, which allows your brand to connect more personally with consumers. It also gives your brand the chance for content to go viral.

Programmatic Advertising

Programmatic advertising is extremely targeted, using an algorithm to find and target specific audiences across digital platforms. When looking into this, there are two methods to consider:

Programmatic Bidding - uses demand side platforms to buy ads on the digital market based on target audience.

Real-Time Bidding - allows advertisers to bid on impressions to their target audience. If their bid wins, the ad is displayed right away.

Tips for Building a Media Planning Strategy

As marketers begin to strategize new media plans, keep these ideas in mind:

Select outlets and times that will best reach your target audience. For example, buying ad space during a live televised event (such as a sports game) ensures that viewers will be watching the program live and not fast forwarding through the commercials.

Establish Clear Goals

Is this a branding campaign or are you looking to generate leads? How many people are you looking to reach?

How do you encourage people to talk about your brand? Make sure your ad has a clear direction on what would resonate with this target audience based on demographics and viewership. Additionally, make sure you have a way to test the effectiveness of your ad.

Attribution Models

Make sure that your team is using a marketing attribution model that can effectively track offline and online media. Using the right attribution model can ensure your team is making choices that make sense when planning media.

Media Planning and Marketing

Since the pandemic began, more customers have started shopping in an online space. 77 percent of online “window” shoppers make impulse purchases. Since this number is only expected to grow, it is important to have an effective media strategy . This means separating your budget appropriately between print, digital, video, and broadcast ads. 

To ensure that your brand is saving money and delivering content to the correct audience, it would be wise to know the costs and importance of using each form of advertising. From here, your company can delegate the correct amount of resources to each campaign to increase website traffic and brand awareness.

Getting Started with Media Planning

With a comprehensive media planning strategy, organizations can make more data-driven decisions about how to improve marketing ROI and drive conversions. Today, many teams are leveraging tools that allow them to make smarter, faster, and more accurate media planning choices. 

With Marketing Evolution’s Scenario Planner , organizations can strategically build out their annual media strategy and plan, and even run “what if” scenarios that allow them to modify key campaign factors without impacting active initiatives. This enables teams to truly optimize their media mix while simultaneously cutting down on ad waste.

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Ready to take a generative approach to media planning and measurement?

Media Planning: The Ultimate Guide

Discover the importance of media planning and how the process can save you valuable time, boost conversions, and increase engagements.

FREE MEDIA PLANNING TEMPLATE

Track and organize your media planning and media buying with this free paid media template.

Updated: 06/09/22

Published: 06/09/22

Today's digital landscape is a competitive one. For any business to find success today, it must create and share media content (such as images, videos, written content, and podcasts) with its audience.

Publishing new media is how you boost brand awareness, engagements, conversions, and revenue for your business. Not to mention, media content helps you stand out from competitors.

Over time, it can become confusing to keep track of, plan, organize, distribute, and analyze all that media content.

The best way to combat these issues is through media planning.

What Is Media Planning?

Benefits of Media Planning

Media planning process, how to create a media plan, media planning templates, media planning and buying, what is media planning.

Media planning is the process of determining how, when, where, and why your business shares media content with your audience. The process includes deciding what media will be shared and which channels you’ll use to boost reach, engagements, conversions, ROI, and more.

Media planning has many moving parts, and the process can be difficult to get right.

By working through the media planning steps as well as using media planning templates , you’ll keep any media-related challenges at bay.

Free Media Planning Template

• Organize your paid media placements
• Easily calculate total spend
• Analyze performance and revenue

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Media planning aids with parts of content creation and distribution, including:

• Getting to know your target audience on a deeper level so you can effectively reach them through your media content
• Deciding on which media channels and platforms you’ll share your content
• Determining the timing and frequency of the media and content you publish and share
• Keeping up with the latest media trends and technology
• Sticking to your budget as you work to create, publish, and share high-quality and engaging media content
• Conducting analyses to measure the success of your media planning process

Now that we’ve discussed the benefits of media planning, let’s review the steps in the media planning process so you can begin developing a strategy for your business.

• Conduct market research.
• State your media planning objective.
• Create your media plan using a template.
• Implement your media plan.
• Evaluate your success.

As you work through the steps in media planning, keep in mind that how your business applies the results and conclusions derived from each step will be unique based on your audience and needs.

1. Conduct market research.

The first thing you’ll want to do when developing your media planning process is conduct market research . Market research allows you to tailor the content you create and the media plan you implement to your target audience and customers.

Start by creating and studying your buyer personas as well as developing an understanding of who your target audience and current customers are.

With this information, you can determine what media will reach, resonate with, and convert your audience. In addition, it’ll help you decide about the platforms and channels you will use to publish and share your content.

Featured Resource: HubSpot's Market Research Kit + Templates

2. State your media planning objective.

When planning a media campaign, keep a goal in mind to help you navigate the process effectively. Moreover, goals can help you know what content types and platforms you can say "no" to.

Here are some examples of media planning objectives you might have:

• Strengthen cross-team collaboration (e.g. content, graphic design, animation, video, blog, social media) while creating and sharing media.
• Enhance and streamline the publication and distribution processes for all media.
• Improve media distribution timeline to ensure our content is shared efficiently so it’s relevant to our target audience.
• Amplify the success of our media content by allowing for ample time to analyze its impact and reach our audience.

For instance, let’s say you're looking to create a media plan for your Facebook and Instagram social content. Your objective may be to streamline the content creation process in a timely fashion and then schedule posts on both platforms in advance.

This way, you can ensure your posts are relevant to your audience. Consequently, that will help to boost engagement and stay on top of their minds.

3. Create your media plan using a template.

Now it’s time to make your media plan, but before jumping into templates, let’s go over what exactly a media plan is.

It's not enough to simply do the planning and then assume everyone else is on the right page. You need to outline your strategy in a media plan document. When you do that, you'll be able to ensure alignment on your team and keep all parties accountable.

What is a media plan?

A media plan details what kind of media you will create and where and how you'll publish it to best engage and convert your audience. Some media plans align with larger company initiatives and campaigns, following along with pre-approved messaging and content.

Other media plans are standalone strategies that detail how organizations plan to leverage media (written, video, audio, etc.) to connect with followers and customers.

Media planning templates ensure you stay efficient and effective while working on all aspects of your media content. They keep your media content organized while publishing and sharing it among your audience members.

Due to the variety of templates available for different types and parts of the media planning process, the templates you incorporate will be unique to your business. Don’t be afraid to experiment with or combine different templates.

For example, if your business is looking to create a media plan for your Facebook and Instagram social media, you might choose to implement a social media calendar template .

This type of template will help you coordinate your content across both channels, boost engagement, and improve productivity among your team members — and therefore, achieve the objective you set in step two.

4. Implement your media plan.

Ensure all parties who should be aware of the plan have the necessary details to help you execute accordingly.

In addition, share the contact details of the media planning coordinator in your company, in case anyone has questions or comments.

To get a better understanding of what it means, let's refer back to our example of steps for your social media plan designed for Facebook and Instagram.

If you implement a social media calendar template as part of your media plan, ensure everyone who will be working on it, be it on the creatives team or the publication team, has access to it.

Free Paid Media Template

5. evaluate your success..

Whether your media plan revolves around individual posts on Instagram or a month-long, company-wide campaign, be sure to measure the success of your plan.

Ask yourself and your team questions like, “How did this media plan help us achieve our specific goals? If it didn’t, why?” and “How did the media planning templates and tools we used add value to our media creation and publication processes? If they didn’t, how do we move forward?”

The way you evaluate your media plan’s success should be directly tied to the specific goals of your business regarding your media content, the teams who create the media, and the value you hope to derive from the media (e.g. boost conversions, engagements, revenue, etc.).

Let’s look back at the example above one last time. Think about whether your social media content plan and the calendar template you implemented have helped you reach your target audience and achieve the objective you set.

In addition, ask yourself whether your media plan helped you boost engagement on the social platforms you focused on. You should also strive to find out how to collaborate and coordinate more effectively to increase team-wide productivity.

Media Planning Strategy Components

There are a few additional things to consider when crafting your media planning strategy.

First, what's your media planning budget?

Media Planning Budget

If you're aiming for free media, you can disregard this question. But if part of your media planning involves media buying , you'll need to sit down with your marketing leadership to understand what funds you have to work with.

Set this budget before you start researching platforms and creating content. You don't want to start formulating a campaign that you can't afford down the road.

Second, consider the key messaging points you want your media to communicate.

Media Planning Messaging

You don't have to pre-write all your media content, per se, but you should establish the main themes at the beginning so all media is consistent and on theme.

These messaging points will come from your audience research and may also influence what content types and platforms you pursue, so be sure to establish these early on.

Media Scheduling Strategy

Media scheduling allows you to generate content when your creative juices are flowing. It also helps you work on your advertising strategy when you’re ready, which saves time in the long run.

Your scheduling strategy will look different based on the kind of media you’re working on.

For example, timing is everything for social media posts (free or paid ads). You need to schedule your posts based on when your target audience is online, even when that time is inconvenient for you. Thankfully, there are many tools, such as HubSpot’s social media management software , that allow you to do this.

On the other hand, consistency is important when it comes to newsletters and blog posts. You want your audience to be looking forward to your media content, which in turn will boost traffic and build a community around your brand.

My top tips for your media scheduling strategy include:

• Study your readers and prospects to know when they’re available on specific platforms
• Prepare your content in bulk to avoid any inconveniences such as delayed deadlines, which will affect your frequency
• Choose the correct automation tools for each platform
• Be consistent — consistency is everything!

With these points in mind, let’s walk through how to create a media plan of your own.

1. Target your buyer personas.

As a marketer, you don’t want to advertise to just anyone. You want to attract the type of buyer who has interest in the media you’re creating — otherwise known as your buyer personas .

A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers.

When you know exactly the type of buyer you need to target with your media plan, you’ll be able to attract the most valuable customers to your business.

When making your buyer personas, center them around these important attributes:

• Demographics: Age, income, location, or identity
• Background: Job, career path, and lifestyle
• Identifiers: Communication preferences and social media platforms
• Goals: Primary, secondary, personal and professional
• Challenges: Their roadblocks preventing them from achieving their goals

Buyer Persona Templates

Organize your audience segments and make your marketing stronger.

• Learn about personas.
• Conduct persona research.
• Create targetted content.
• Build your own personas.

2. Define your SMART goals.

You want to write out SMART goals for your media plan. The SMART acronym (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-Bound) is a framework that will enable you to better track and drive greater impact from your proposed plan.

It’s important to determine these goals before jumping into your work so you have a media plan that sets a clear direction for you and your team members, and ensures you're able to celebrate the wins when they occur.

Some examples of SMART goal-setting in media planning could look like:

• Specific : “We want to generate a greater number of qualified leads.”
• Measurable : “We want our media plan to gain 2,000 followers across Twitter, Metaverse, and Instagram.”
• Attainable : “We previously reached 70% in customer engagement online over the past quarter, so we’re aiming for 75% in the next.”
• Relevant : “We want to achieve more positive customer engagement to better the brand’s reputation and gain more fans.”
• Time-Bound : “We want our media plan to gain 2,000 followers in the next three months across Twitter, Metaverse, and Instagram.”

Once you’ve determined your goals, you can begin looking at resources to assist you in reaching them.

3. Find the media planning tools best suited for you.

We will talk in further detail later in this post about some amazing media planning templates your business can use, but there are software tools that can do some of the heavy lifting for you.

To draft, plan, schedule, and collect conversion analytics, your business could benefit from HubSpot Marketing Hub .

Or if you still want to explore more options, we have a list of 12 essential media planning tools for you to use.

4. Analyze historical data.

You have to know where you began before you can start going forward. Look back at your previous media planning strategy and analyze its impact and reach.

For example, if your business was already on Instagram, check your business page insights to see just how far you got on your old posting schedule and content. Look at the posts that got the most engagement, the time period you had the most traffic, and what content helped to turn prospects into customers.

Make note of the effective elements of your previous strategy and let that drive some of your brainstorming for your new media plan.

5. Choose your media mix.

It’s important that you are up to snuff on the most popular marketing channels, along with your buyer personas preferred ones.

According to the HubSpot’s State of Marketing Report , 1,000 global marketing professionals believe that the top marketing channels are:

• Social Media
• Websites/Blogs
• Email Marketing
• Video Marketing

You want an omni-channel media plan to reach your target audience where they are, and by researching your buyer personas most frequented channels, and exploring new channels, you can decide upon the right mix for you.

6. Put your media plan into action.

As you conduct your media plan, track your insights and see how you’re doing in comparison to your SMART goals.

Also, understand that you can adjust your plan as necessary over time. Marketing is a rather volatile industry, and knowing when to change your approach is key.

Now that you know what it takes to create a plan, let’s review some resources available to simplify the media planning process.

There are a plethora of media planning templates available online that you can purchase or download for free. The great part about using media planning templates is that you can customize and tailor them to your business’s specific needs and goals.

Depending on the media software your business uses, such as HubSpot’s (free) CRM , Marketing Hub , or Sprout Social , there may be customizable planning templates included (similar to this menu of options from HubSpot).

You may also elect to create templates on your own with the help of Google Sheets .

Either way, how you choose to implement and use media planning templates will be unique to your business and needs — so don’t be afraid to modify your templates over time as your goals evolve or audience grows.

Free Media Planning Template [Download Now]

Types of Media Planning Templates

To help get you started, here’s a list of common types of media creation and planning templates. (Click the links to be directed to an associated template resource.)

You might use one or several media templates based on your needs. Remember, there’s no right or wrong answer to which template you should use — it’s about preference and what works best for your business.

• Use a media planning template to organize your paid media efforts and expenses in one visual location.
• Use a social media strategy template to align your media content with your audience in a way that provides value for your business.
• Use a social media calendar template to customize a timeline for when you’ll share your social media posts in a simple, organized, manageable, and effective format.
• Use an editorial calendar template to plan and optimize all of the marketing content you’ll publish and share, including blogs, social media posts, and campaigns.
• Use a blog post template to simply fill-in-the-blanks and begin writing engaging, relevant, and well-optimized blog content for your audience (all while avoiding writer’s block!).
• Use an ebook design template to take the guesswork out of how to make your ebook professional, eye-catching, and beautiful, all while saving yourself valuable time.
• Use an infographic template in PowerPoint or Illustrator to quickly customize the way you present data, share insights, and promote offers in a way that looks and feels professional.
• Use an analytics and reporting template for Excel, PowerPoint, and Google Drive to make the processes of pulling, organizing, and sharing data simple no matter which metrics you track.
• Use a budget template to manage and review your spending and budget with Excel or Google Sheets.
• Use an advertising template to help you plan and manage advertising campaigns in a way that’s sure to convert audience members into leads and customers.

Media Plan Examples

Although we’ve discussed media planning and even shared a few media planning templates, doing it practically may still pose a challenge. Therefore, I’ve created media plan examples and linked the templates I used for more clarity.

Social Media Plan

When it comes to social media, it’s important to focus your efforts on the platform where your customers are active. However, if you’re in the discovery stage, it’s okay to experiment with a couple of platforms and see which ones work.

Here is an example of a social media plan inspired by the HubSpot Social Media Content Template that will help you explore multiple platforms.

Blogging Media Plan

Keeping tabs on how often you publish your blog content is very important as it helps track your progress. A blogging media plan also helps manage your writers without sending several emails asking about the progress of the blog posts.

Here is a simple example of a blogging media plan you can download from HubSpot .

PR Media Plan

A PR media plan is different and a little intensive because you have to include other organizations. You also have to decide on the form of advertisement that will work for your business, the resources you’ll need, and the people whom you’ll contact.

In this sample template, I’ll only share the reach out and content planning phase. However, the complete template from HubSpot has everything you need, including resource planning. As a bonus, if you’re a beginner, you can even take the free course on PR Media. Check out the complete HubSpot PR Plan template .

We’ve spent a lot of time discussing the ins and outs of media planning, but there’s another side that can help marketers on the job — media buying. Let’s get into it.

Digital media planning and media buying are closely related and work in tandem with one another. Depending on the size of your business and your budget, your team members who plan your media may also handle the media buying process.

So, what makes these processes unique?

Well, media planning is the process where you decide which media content is created, published, and shared among your customers and target audience. The media referred to here is all-encompassing, meaning it doesn’t always include paid ads and paid content.

This is where media planning and media buying differ.

What is media buying?

Media buying is related to paid media — whether that means your business is buying campaigns or ad space on various channels, paying to share targeted campaigns and ads, or negotiating with media vendors.

In a world where your business can share media and successfully reach your audience for free, media planning can happen without media buying.

However, media buying requires media planning. (It's like, "a square is a rectangle, but a rectangle is not a square" lesson that baffled us all in elementary school.)

Media planning sets the tone and direction for the buying that needs to occur. Once ad space is purchased or content distribution plans have been negotiated, there needs to be a strategy (or media plan) for getting that media to your audience and customers.

Media Planner

A media planner is also known as a brand strategist or a brand planner. They’re responsible for planning advertising strategies and creating campaigns for businesses.

If you don’t have an in-house media planner, you’ll need to consider hiring one to help you with the campaigns. But what does a media planner do? And how much will you need to part with to pay one? Below are the answers.

What Does a Media Planner Do?

A media planner takes over your whole media planning strategy, evaluates it, and advises you on the way forward.

Here are some roles that a media planner will handle in your company.

• Maximizing the impact on all advertisements you pay by networking with media buying agencies
• Coming up with creative ways to reach out to your target audiences for better engagement and conversion rates
• Identifying the best platforms for your business to ensure you’re spending your ad money where you’re likely to get returns

How Much Do Media Planners Make?

When working with a media planner, expect to pay them between $30,000-$150,000. According to Comparably , the median salary of media planners in the US is $54,500.

If you need an expert planner with many years of experience, then you’ll need to plan for $155,000.

However, you can always save money by paying a freelance media planner. Their hourly charges may be a bit higher, but you’ll only need to pay them when you have a project.

Begin Your Media Planning Process

Media planning is an integral part of your business’s ability to successfully create, publish, and share media content. It’s how you streamline cross-team communication and collaboration around your media, as well as ensure it’s shared with your audience in a timely fashion. So, work through the media planning process steps above and choose which templates you’ll use to begin reaching and converting more audience members.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in February 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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What Is Media Planning? – Components, Objectives, & Process

Today, marketers are spoilt with choices when it comes to media. There are the traditional touchpoints such as TV, radio, and print. Then there are the digital options such as search, social, and display.

So, how do they decide where to allocate their precious marketing budget? This is where media planning comes in.

But media planning isn’t just about selecting the right touchpoints. There are also many other considerations, such as the target audience , their media habits, and the business’s objectives .

So what exactly is media planning, and how does a marketer write a media plan?

What Is Media Planning?

Media planning is the process of identifying the appropriate marketing mediums and channels to reach the target audience, targeting the right messages, at the right time, in the right place.

It involves understanding the target audience, defining the message, and selecting the right channel to reach them.

In simple terms, it includes planning what media to use, which channels to use and how much to spend to boost a company’s ROI.

Who Is A Media Planner?

A media planner, also referred to as a brand planner or brand strategist, is a professional working at an advertising agency, responsible for planning, buying, and placement of advertising.

They work with advertisers, advertising agencies, and media outlets to orchestrate their clients’ most effective marketing campaigns .

Importance Of Media Planning

Not every marketing medium will work for every offering, brand, and industry. For example, TV might be a great way to reach an older demographic and sell FMCG products, but it will not work for a tech startup targeting Gen Z .

This is where media planning comes in.

It helps to match the right advertising medium with the right product. This, in turn, helps to achieve the client’s objectives while also staying within their budget.

Objectives Of Media Planning

The main objective of media planning is to reach the target audience with the right message at the right time and in the right place.

Besides this, it also aims for:

• Efficiency: Media planning aims to reduce costs by reaching the target audience with the right message through the most efficient channels.
• Effectiveness: It also aims to increase efficacy by ensuring that the target audience is reached with the right frequency and at the right time.
• Fulfilling Long-Term Goals: Media planning also looks at the bigger picture and strives to achieve long-term goals such as brand awareness and building relationships with customers .

The Components Of Media Planning

A media plan has the following main components:

• Target Audience: The target audience refers to a defined group of consumers or businesses that are potential customers for the business’s offering.
• Message: The message is the key point the business wants to communicate to the target audience.
• Channels: The channels refer to the specific touchpoints that will be used to reach the target audience. These can include TV, radio, print, digital, etc.
• Timing: The timing refers to when the message will be delivered. This includes frequency, reach, and exposure.
• Budget: The budget refers to the amount of money that will be allocated to the media plan.
• KPI: The KPI or key performance indicators are the metrics that will be used to measure the success of the media plan.

The Media Planning Process

The media planning process can be broken down into the following steps:

Market Analysis

Establishing media objective, media selection, budget allocation, message development.

• Media Scheduling
• Measurement and Evaluation

Here’s a closer look at each of these steps:

The first step involves researching the market to gain insights into the target audience, their media habits, and the business’s objectives. This involves studying existing data and conducting focus groups, surveys, social listening etc.

The audience can be classified according to demographics, geography, psychographics, and behaviour.

At the end of this step, the media planner understands the target audience’s needs, desires, challenges, etc.

The market analysis results in an understanding of the potential reach, frequency and exposure.

Now, the media planner determines what they want to achieve with this campaign. For this, they set objectives, that could be anything from increasing brand awareness to generating leads or sales .

But to establish this objective, the media planner needs to determine the goal for:

• Reach: This is the number of people the marketing message will be in front of over a period of time. The industry norm is to have a minimum of 80% reach in any given month.
• Frequency: This is how many times each person will be exposed to the campaign on average.
• Continuity: It involves the strategy of how advertising is allocated during the campaign’s course. It can be either continuous scheduling, pulsing scheduling, or flighting scheduling.
• Cost: This is the total cost of the campaign. It is broken down into two costs: CPM (cost per 1000 impressions) and CPP (the cost per person).
• Penetration: This is the percentage of a target audience that will be reached or who will see the message at least once.

Once the objectives have been established, the next step is selecting the channels that will be used to reach the target audience.

The media planner considers various factors such as:

• Campaign objective: The type of campaign will dictate the most appropriate channels. For example, a brand awareness campaign might use TV, radio, and print, while a direct response campaign would use TV, digital, and direct mail.
• Audience characteristics: Some channels may appeal to some demographics more than others. For example, people are more likely to use smartphones for online shopping rather than PCs or laptops. Also, certain shows on cable networks may attract a younger audience compared to prime-time shows on a network.

Once the channels are selected, the next step is to allocate a budget for each channel. The budget is allocated to allow the marketing message to be seen by the target audience multiple times.

The message is developed keeping in mind the target audience and the objectives of the campaign.

The developed message is clear, concise, and persuasive.

Media Buying And Scheduling

Media buying is the process of negotiating rates and placing ads with media outlets.

Once bought, media is scheduled in a way that will allow the target audience to see the marketing message multiple times.

The frequency is kept high enough so that the target audience can remember the message but not so high that they get tired of seeing it.

Measurement And Evaluation

Finally, the campaign is evaluated to see how effective it was in achieving its objectives. Various metrics can be used for this purpose:

• CPM (Cost per thousand): This refers to the cost of each 1000 impressions.
• CPP (Cost per person): This is the cost of each person who sees the ad.
• CPA (Cost per action): This is the cost of each action taken, such as a sale or a lead.
• ROI (Return on investment): This is the most important metric as it measures the profitability of the advertising campaign . It is the total revenue generated minus the cost of the campaign and divided by the cost of the campaign.

Media planners keep a close eye on all these metrics to see how effective their campaign is and make necessary adjustments.

Benefits Of Media Planning

Media planning isn’t just about laying out which channels to use and how much budget to allocate. Many benefits come along with it, such as:

• Allocating budget efficiently: A good media plan will allocate the budget in a way that is most efficient. This means that more people will be reached with the same amount of money.
• Generating leads: An effective media campaign can generate leads which can be converted into customers.
• Increasing brand awareness: Media planning can help increase brand awareness by reaching a larger number of people.
• Improving brand image: A good media campaign can improve the brand image by showing the target audience a positive image of the product or service.
• Building relationships with customers: An effective media campaign can help build relationships with customers by creating a connection with them.
• Analysing customer behaviour: Media planning can help to analyse customer behaviour and understand what they want. This information can be used to improve the product or service.
• Creating loyalt y: A good media campaign can create loyalty among customers by making them feel like they are part of a community.

Challenges Of Media Planning

It isn’t all smooth sailing, however. Various challenges come along with media planning, such as:

• Budget constraints: Companies may not have the funds to allocate for an effective campaign.
• Competing brands: Brands competing in the same market will be trying to get their message across, which can make it difficult for a brand to stand out.
• Changing trends: Trends in the media landscape are always changing, which can make it difficult to keep up.
• Low attention span : People’s attention span is getting shorter, which means that a brand has less time to make an impression.

Factors Affecting Media Planning

Several factors can affect media planning, including:

• Audience demographics: The target audience’s age, gender, income, location, etc., affect the choice of media as different channels are better suited for different demographics. For example, a younger audience is more likely to be reached through social media .
• Audience behaviour: The target audience’s browsing and buying habits affect the choice of media. For example, someone who is always on the go is more likely to see an ad on a mobile device than someone who is always at home.
• Product type: The type of product being advertised also affects the media choice as some products are better suited for certain channels than others. For example, a luxury product would be better advertised on more personalised channels like Google Ads , while a mass-market product would be better advertised on more public channels like newspapers.
• Media availability: The availability of channels play a role in media planning. For example, a renowned TV channel might not have ad spaces during its prime time shows.
• Media costs: The cost of reaching a target audience affects media planning. For example, an advertisement on television will be more expensive than advertising on the radio because television reaches a larger audience.
• Campaign objectives: Different objectives will affect the choice of media as different channels help achieve different goals. For example, an objective might be to reach a large audience quickly, which would mean using more public channels like newspapers or radio.
• Competition: Other players in the market also influence the choice of media and may force the business to use a similar strategy as theirs.

Media Planning Vs Media Buying

Media planning and media buying are two different but equally important aspects of a marketing campaign. Media planning is the process of determining which channels to use to reach the target audience, while media buying is the process of negotiating with and purchasing ad space from those channels.

That is, media buying comes into the game after media planning has been done and involves actually purchasing the ad space.

Compared to media buying, which can be a long and tedious process involving multiple negotiations with different stakeholders, media planning is much simpler. This is because experts in their respective fields have already decided upon the channels that are chosen during the media planning stage.

Media Planning Examples

Every brand that wants to advertise needs to do some media planning. The media planning process can be different for every campaign, but there are some common elements that all plans include.

Here are some examples of media planning:

Local Fast-Food Restaurant

A fast-food restaurant operating in a busy city centre would probably focus on media like print and outdoor advertising since their audience is most likely to be out and about in the city. They might also choose online advertising or social media marketing to reach customers during peak meal times when they’re looking for quick but healthy options.

A software as a service (SAAS) brand might focus on digital media like Facebook and Google Ads since their audience is more likely to be online.

This includes both pull and push strategies as they attract the customer through SEO and SEM keywords and then push content through digital channels.

It might also use LinkedIn Advertising to target business professionals who require its software.

Go On, Tell Us What You Think!

Did we miss something? Come on! Tell us what you think about our article on  media planning  in the comments section.

A startup consultant, digital marketer, traveller, and philomath. Aashish has worked with over 20 startups and successfully helped them ideate, raise money, and succeed. When not working, he can be found hiking, camping, and stargazing.

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What Is Media Planning? Definition and Guide

Media planning is the process of identifying and selecting media outlets – mainly newspapers, magazines, websites, TV and radio stations, and outdoor placement – in which to place paid advertisements.

Media planning is the process of identifying and selecting media outlets—mainly websites, TV and radio stations, magazines and newspapers, and outdoor placements—in which to place paid advertisements.

The person responsible for evaluating the many media options and strategizing campaigns to support a particular product, service, or brand is called a media planner. Media planners typically are employed by advertising agencies.

A media planner’s job is to develop a coordinated plan for a particular client’s advertising budget. They decide where, when, and how often to feature a specific ad.

The more the planner can optimize (or stretch) a client’s budget to reach the largest number of people, the better the odds of seeing results. The whole purpose of advertising is to make potential customers aware of a company’s products or services and to persuade them to buy.

Media planning is one of four key divisions of most advertising agencies, which also include:

• Brand planning
• Account management

Some agencies specialize only in media planning.

How to create a media plan

The goal when creating a media plan is to reach target customers —those who are most likely to buy from you, at the exact moment that they have decided to buy.

Using advertising, you can educate and inform those likely customers to make them aware of your business and to persuade them to buy a particular product from you rather than another business.

To make that happen as cost-effectively as possible, it is important to weigh the following when developing your media plan:

• Reach:  One of the two most important factors to consider, reach is the number of people you want to get in front of during a particular timeframe, such as a week or a month.
• Frequency:  The second most important factor is frequency, which is the number of times your target customers will see your ad. Obviously, the higher the number, the better, but cost is also a factor. For example, you may want to run an ad daily in your local newspaper, but the cost for such a purchase may exceed your annual budget.
• Cost-per-thousand:  One way to measure the cost of advertising is to divide the total cost of advertising in a particular outlet by the media’s thousands of customers, to get the cost-per-thousand value. For newspapers and magazines, you’d divide the cost by total subscribers. For blogs, you’d divide by subscribers.
• Selectivity:  Depending on how targeted your product is, you may want a measure of how well the media outlet reaches your particular prospect. For example, advertising Rolls Royces through the local newspaper will attract attention, but what percent of the newspaper’s subscribers are likely to buy? It might be too low a number to make sense.
• Impact:  How many senses can the media outlet reach? Magazines can appeal to sight, and perhaps smell (with those perfume inserts), while websites can appeal to sight and sound. The same is true with TV. You should consider what senses will make the biggest impact on a customer’s purchase decision.

Media planning is a science designed to generate maximum sales from all the advertising your company invests in.

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What Is Media Planning? FAQ

What is meant by media planning, what is media planning with example, what is media planning and its importance, what is the primary goal of media planning.

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What is Media Planning? Definition, Types and Importance

Last updated on: July 3, 2024

Media planning plays a pivotal role in the success of any marketing campaign , serving as the strategic blueprint for how advertisers reach their target audience effectively. In today’s dynamic and ever-evolving media landscape, understanding media planning is essential for businesses aiming to cut through the noise and make meaningful connections with their customers. This article will delve into the definition of media planning, explore its various types, and underscore its paramount importance in the realm of modern marketing.

Table of Contents

What is Media Planning? 

Media planning is the strategic process of determining how and where to allocate advertising resources to effectively reach a target audience. It involves analyzing consumer demographics, market trends, and media consumption habits to select the most suitable channels for delivering brand messages. By identifying optimal platforms, such as television , radio , print , digital , or social media , media planners aim to maximize the impact of advertising campaigns within allocated budgets. This meticulous approach ensures that marketing efforts resonate with the right audience, driving desired outcomes and maximizing ROI.

Types of Media 

1. Paid Media

Paid media refers to external marketing efforts that involve a paid placement. It’s a vital component of revenue growth and brand awareness strategies. Here are the key types of paid media:

Types of Paid Media

• Display Ads : These are banner ads, video ads, and other visual ads that appear on websites, apps, and social media platforms. They are typically used to build brand awareness and drive traffic to a website.
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM) : This involves placing ads on search engine results pages (SERPs). The most common form is pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, where advertisers bid on keywords and pay when their ad is clicked.
• Social Media Ads : These are ads placed on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and TikTok. They can be highly targeted based on user demographics, interests, and behaviors.
• Native Advertising : This type of advertising matches the form and function of the platform on which it appears. Examples include sponsored content on news websites or social media platforms.
• Affiliate Marketing : This involves partnering with affiliates who promote your product or service and earn a commission for each sale or lead they generate.
• Influencer Marketing : Paying influencers to promote your brand or products on their social media channels. This leverages the influencer’s audience to reach potential customers.
• Video Ads : These are ads that appear on video-sharing platforms like YouTube. They can be skippable or non-skippable and are used to engage users with compelling video content.
• Programmatic Advertising : Automated buying and selling of online advertising using software. This allows for real-time bidding and precise targeting.

2. Owned Media

Owned media refers to the marketing channels that a company controls. These are assets that belong to the brand and can be used to reach and engage with customers directly.

Types of Owned Media

• Website : The company’s own website where they can share information about their products, services, and brand story.
• Blog : A section of the website where the company can publish articles, news, and other content to engage with the audience and improve SEO.
• Email Marketing : Emails sent to a company’s own subscriber list to nurture leads, provide updates, and drive sales.
• Social Media Profiles : Company-managed profiles on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. These platforms allow the company to engage directly with their audience.
• Mobile Apps : Proprietary apps developed by the company to provide services or engage with customers.
• Branded Content : Content created by the company that showcases their expertise, products, or services. This can include ebooks, whitepapers, webinars, and more.

3. Earned Media

Earned media refers to the exposure a company gets through word-of-mouth. It is the most credible form of media, as it involves third parties sharing the brand’s message without any payment involved.

Types of Earned Media

• Public Relations (PR) : Media coverage gained through press releases, news stories, and features in media outlets.
• Social Shares : Content from the brand that is shared by users on social media platforms.
• Customer Reviews and Testimonials : Feedback and reviews from customers shared on review sites, social media, or the company’s website.
• Mentions and Features : When other websites, blogs, or social media users mention or feature the brand or its products.
• Influencer Endorsements : When influencers voluntarily endorse or mention the brand in their content without being paid to do so.

Understanding the different types of media and how they can be leveraged is crucial for developing a comprehensive marketing strategy that effectively reaches and engages the target audience.

Types of Media Channels

Media channels can be broadly categorized into online and offline channels, each serving different purposes and audiences.

1. Online Media Channels

These channels utilize the internet to reach audiences and include:

• Social Media : Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn enable businesses to engage with their audience through posts, stories, and ads.
• Email Marketing : Sending newsletters, promotional offers, and personalized messages to subscribers’ inboxes.
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM) : Paid advertisements that appear on search engine results pages (e.g., Google Ads).
• Content Marketing : Creating and distributing valuable content like blogs, videos, and infographics to attract and retain customers.
• Website and SEO : Optimizing a website to rank higher in search engine results, increasing organic traffic.

2. Offline Media Channels

These traditional channels do not require the internet and include:

• Print Media : Newspapers, magazines, brochures, and flyers used for advertising and informing audiences.
• Broadcast Media : Television and radio advertisements that reach a wide audience through scheduled programming.
• Outdoor Advertising : Billboards, posters, and transit ads placed in high-traffic areas to capture public attention.
• Direct Mail : Physical mailers such as postcards, catalogs, and promotional letters sent directly to potential customers’ addresses.
• Events and Sponsorships : Participation in or sponsoring of events, trade shows, and community activities to engage with audiences in person.

Both online and offline media channels are essential for a comprehensive marketing strategy, each offering unique advantages and reaching different segments of the target audience.

Media Planning Process

The Media Planning Process involves a series of steps to ensure that advertising campaigns are effective and reach the intended audience. Here’s an explanation of each step:

Step 1: Determine Which Partners Are Relevant for the Campaign

The first step in the media planning process is to identify potential media partners who can help achieve the campaign’s objectives. This involves researching various publishers, platforms, and channels to determine which ones align with the target audience, campaign goals, and budget.

Step 2: Prepare an RFP Specifying Requirements and Send to Publishers

Once potential partners are identified, a Request for Proposal (RFP) is prepared. The RFP outlines the campaign’s requirements, including target audience, objectives, budget, timeline, and any specific creative or technical specifications. The RFP is then sent to the selected publishers or media outlets.

Step 3: Receive Publishers’ Responses and Select Suited Proposals

After sending out the RFP, responses from publishers are reviewed. These responses typically include detailed proposals that explain how the publishers plan to meet the campaign’s requirements. The media planner evaluates these proposals based on factors such as audience reach, cost, and alignment with campaign goals, and selects the most suitable ones.

Step 4: Media Buyer Negotiates Best Possible Deals with Selected Publishers

Once the suitable proposals are selected, the media buyer negotiates with the chosen publishers to secure the best possible deals. This negotiation process involves discussing pricing, ad placements, added value opportunities, objectives, including their pricing, audience reach, ad formats, and any added value they can provide. The media planner evaluates these proposals to select the ones that best match the campaign’s goals and budget..

Step 5: Get Client’s or Stakeholder’s Approval

After negotiations, the proposed media plan and deals are presented to the client or stakeholders for approval. This step ensures that all parties are aligned on the strategy, budget, and expected outcomes before moving forward.

Step 6: Issue an IO (Insertion Order) to the Relevant Publishers

With the client’s or stakeholder’s approval, an Insertion Order (IO) is issued to the selected publishers. The IO is a formal agreement that outlines the specifics of the ad placements, including the agreed-upon terms, schedule, and payment details.

Step 7: Launch Campaign

The final step is to launch the campaign according to the plan. This involves coordinating with the publishers to ensure that ads are placed correctly and on time. During the campaign, performance is monitored to ensure that it meets the set objectives, and adjustments may be made as necessary based on real-time data and feedback.

This structured approach helps ensure that media campaigns are well-planned, cost-effective, and capable of achieving the desired reach and impact.

Factors Influencing Media Planning

Media planning is a multifaceted process influenced by various factors that shape the strategic decisions of advertisers. Three key factors that significantly impact media planning are audience analysis, budget considerations, and market research and trends.

1.Audience Analysis

Understanding the target audience is paramount in media planning. Factors such as demographics, psychographics, behaviors, and media consumption habits play a crucial role in determining which media channels are most effective for reaching and engaging with the desired audience. By conducting thorough audience analysis, media planners can tailor their strategies to align with the preferences and characteristics of their target demographic, ensuring that advertising efforts resonate and drive meaningful interactions.

2. Budget Considerations

Budget considerations are central to media planning, as they dictate the scope and scale of advertising campaigns. Media planners must carefully allocate resources across various media channels to maximize reach and impact while staying within budget constraints. Factors such as advertising costs, media rates, and potential return on investment (ROI) are taken into account when determining budget allocations. Effective budget management ensures that resources are optimally utilized to achieve campaign objectives and deliver a strong ROI.

3. Market Research and Trends

Market research and trends provide invaluable insights into the evolving landscape of consumer behavior, industry dynamics, and emerging media platforms. Media planners continuously monitor market trends, competitor strategies, and technological advancements to stay ahead of the curve and adapt their approaches accordingly. By staying abreast of shifts in consumer preferences and media consumption patterns, media planners can identify new opportunities, anticipate challenges, and optimize their strategies to capitalize on emerging trends effectively.

Difference Between Media Planning and Media Buying

While media planning and media buying are closely related aspects of advertising, they involve distinct processes and responsibilities:

1. Media Planning

Media planning involves the strategic decision-making process of determining which media channels to use, when to use them, and how to allocate resources effectively to achieve campaign objectives. It focuses on understanding the target audience, selecting appropriate media channels, and developing a comprehensive media strategy.

2. Media Buying

Media buying, on the other hand, refers to the actual purchase of advertising space or time within selected media channels. It involves negotiating with media outlets, securing ad placements, and managing contracts and budgets to ensure optimal exposure for the advertising campaign. Media buying is the executional aspect of media planning, implementing the strategies devised during the planning phase.

Importance of Media Planning

Media planning is crucial for several reasons:

1. Targeted Reach

Effective media planning ensures that advertising messages are delivered to the right audience segments through carefully selected media channels, maximizing the impact of marketing efforts.

2. Optimized Budget Allocation

By analyzing audience demographics, media consumption habits, and market trends, media planning allows advertisers to allocate resources efficiently, minimizing waste and maximizing ROI.

3. Brand Visibility and Awareness

Strategic media planning enhances brand visibility and awareness by ensuring consistent and impactful exposure across relevant media channels, fostering brand recognition and recall among target audiences.

4. Campaign Effectiveness

Media planning lays the groundwork for successful advertising campaigns by defining clear objectives, identifying key performance indicators (KPIs), and developing tailored strategies to achieve desired outcomes.

5. Adaptability and Innovation

In an ever-evolving media landscape, media planning enables advertisers to stay agile and responsive to changes in consumer behavior, emerging technologies, and industry trends, facilitating innovation and adaptation in marketing strategies.

In conclusion, media planning stands as a cornerstone of effective marketing strategies in the contemporary digital age. By meticulously analyzing target demographics, selecting appropriate media channels, and optimizing budget allocations, businesses can enhance their visibility, amplify brand messaging, and ultimately drive desired consumer actions. As technology continues to reshape the media landscape, the role of media planning will only become more complex and crucial. Therefore, embracing its principles and leveraging its methodologies will be imperative for organizations striving to thrive in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

FAQs on Media Planning

1. what are the five steps in the media planning process.

The five steps in the media planning process are: – Set objectives and goals. – Conduct research and gather data. – Define the target audience. – Develop a media plan. – Implement and evaluate the plan’s effectiveness.

2. Is media planning a skill?

Yes, media planning is a skill that involves analyzing data, understanding target audiences, selecting appropriate media channels, and developing strategies to effectively communicate messages. It requires a combination of creativity, analytical thinking, and strategic decision-making.

3. What are the elements of media planning?

The elements of media planning include setting objectives, conducting market research, defining target audiences, selecting appropriate media channels, determining budget allocation, scheduling ad placements, creating the media plan, implementing it, and evaluating its effectiveness through metrics and analytics.

4. What are media objectives?

Media objectives are specific goals set by advertisers to achieve through their media campaigns. These objectives outline what the advertising aims to accomplish, such as increasing brand awareness, driving sales, reaching a target audience, or generating leads, within a defined timeframe.

5. What is a flowchart in media planning?

In media planning, a flowchart visually represents the sequence of steps involved in the planning and execution of advertising campaigns. It outlines the process from setting objectives to selecting media channels, scheduling ad placements, and evaluating campaign effectiveness.

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What is Media Planning? Definition and Guide

What is media planning.

In the competitive landscape of today’s digital world, only those businesses that manage to rally a passionate audience truly stand out. And the best way to boost brand awareness and to generate the right kind of engagement is through compelling and unique media content with text, images, podcasts, and videos. Yet regardless of how creative and captivating your content is, planning, producing, organizing, distributing, keeping track of, and analyzing it all can be overwhelming. This is where media planning comes in.

Media Planning: What is it?

A media planning strategy helps you to determine why, when, where, and how your brand should create and share media content. The use of media planning in advertising is practically mandatory as this process is the only way to decide what methods and channels you should favor based on your short- and long-term objectives. Whether you are looking to boost your ROI, engagement, reach, frequency, conversion, or brand awareness, it provides a concrete road map.

Media Planning vs. Media Buying: What’s the difference?

Although they are two sides of the same coin, media planning and media buying are not exactly equivalent.

Media planning oversees the creation, publication, and sharing of your media content. It encompasses any content you wish to incorporate in your overall strategy, be it what you produce in order to keep your social media accounts going, or paid ads and other types of paid content.

Media buying, on the other hand, relates to paid media. It includes negotiating with media vendors, as well as paying to post target ads, or buying ad space for your campaigns.

It is possible to reach your media objectives without any media buying if you limit yourself to what you can create and share with your audience for free. As for media buying, it would not be successful without media planning: it would be like buying ingredients without having a kitchen to turn them into food!

What are the benefits of Media Planning?

Media planning can be instrumental in the success of your marketing strategy as it forces you to give proper consideration to every single step, including:

• Learning about your target audience so you can understand how to reach it more effectively.
• Selecting the right platforms and media channels for your content.
• Establishing a reasonable timetable for content creation and publication.
• Analyzing the latest trends.
• Getting the most out of your budget.
• Interpreting data to measure the efficacy of your media planning process.

Steps to create a media plan for Advertising  

A careful media planning strategy involves several key stages.

TARGETING THE RIGHT PERSONAS

There is no such thing as universal advertising. Whether you are managing all your content manually or organizing it thanks to programmatic advertising platforms (or media planning software), you cannot target the right audience if you don’t understand its motivations.

This is where buyer personas come in. These fictional representations of your ideal customers are based on data obtained through thorough market research. A buyer persona is constructed around such major attributes as gender, age, location, income, career, lifestyle, preferred social media platforms, etc. This helps you ensure your target audience is exposed to the right message.

DEFINING SMART GOALS

The acronym SMART describes goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound.

Thanks to this framework, you know exactly where your media planning strategy is going and how it will get there.

USING THE RIGHT MEDIA PLANNING TOOLS

Depending on your objectives and constraints, you can select an appropriate media planning template, media planner, programmatic advertising platforms, Google media planning, or software solution to help you draft, plan, schedule, and analyze your campaigns.

SELECTING YOUR MEDIA MIX

Based on what you have determined thanks to the previous steps, you can then decide whether you should adopt an omni-channel media plan, or focus more specifically on:

• Websites or blogs
• Social media
• Video Marketing
• Email marketing

MAKING YOUR PLAN WORK FOR YOU

Media planning in advertising is all about constructing a road map that aligns with your SMART goals. Once everything matches, it can be tempting to stick with what’s on paper and refrain from making adjustments.

Yet the world of marketing is an ever-evolving one where it always pays to be on your toes. If your media planning strategy leaves room for constant reassessment, then you will be able to recognize any changes in the industry that should prompt you to rethink your approach.

Similarly, analyzing your results will help you understand where you may be able to improve.

Media Planning Strategies

When building a media plan, there are 3 main types of media to consider:

• Owned media, which is content that originated from your brand and that you can use freely.
• Paid media, which is advertising achieved through paid placements (display ads, pay per click, branded content, etc.).
• Earned media, which is content generated by outside, unpaid participants who are happy to offer feedback, media coverage, or to talk about you to others.

Based on what type of content is available, it’s up to the media planning strategist to decide how to integrate these resources all while following the plan for the campaign:

• Selecting the relevant media channels
• Setting a relevant timeline
• Monitoring and coordinating the channel mix
• Leveraging audience targeting
• Setting frequency and reach goals
• Choosing a tone of voice to send the right message to your target audience

How to select media channels?  

In addition to the type of media, a sound media planning strategy involves selecting the right channel(s):

• Offline media, including magazines, newspapers, TV, the radio, and out of home channels. These channels allow you to be as broad or as specific as you wish in terms targeting, but often require a more significant budget.
• Online media, including PPC, digital publications, social media, programmatic advertising (programmatic bidding or real-time bidding). These digital media are convenient and cost-effective, all while putting more data at your disposal to help you fine-tune your strategy. However, because it is more approachable, competition can be fierce.

Tips for Your Media Planning Strategy

• Choose the most relevant media channel(s) for your project and brand.
• Determine your SMART goals
• Follow a well thought out publishing calendar
• Use programmatic advertising platforms
• Select and coordinate your channel mix
• Target your audience
• Choose the right voice to address your audience

Are you ready to add CTV to your media mix? Register for free today!

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Media Planning and Buying Guide [2024 Update]

• November 23, 2023

In this guide, we dive into media planning and buying. We’ll cover the basics, include a step-by-step guide to modern media planning, and touch on media planning trends for 2024 and beyond.

Whether you’re an in-house marketer or an agency media planner, adopting a data-driven digital marketing approach is crucial. Intuition will only get you so far.

But you can’t do away with the human touch entirely.

In an era of personalization at scale, non-linear customer journeys, and heightened online activity, your digital marketing must adapt to mirror consumers’ ever-evolving needs.

That means understanding your audience and meeting them on their home turf.

If you’re looking for better ways to drive traffic, generate leads, and deliver more ROI, start by leaving the old tactics behind.

Let’s get started.

What is Media Planning?

Media planning involves the strategic selection and evaluation of media channels and platforms to effectively reach a specific target audience. Its main goal is to ensure a brand’s message reaches the right people at the opportune moment, delivering impactful communication.

Media Channels Explained

A media channel is a broad media class or medium used to deliver advertising messages to prospective customers.

Traditional Media Channels

• OOH (out of home, e.g., billboards)
• Direct Mail

Digital Media Channels

• Social Media
• Display Advertising
• Search Advertising
• Streaming Service
• Affiliate Marketing

These days, media planners need to cover an array of traditional and digital channels to reach their audience.

What is a Media Vehicle?

A media vehicle refers to a specific channel advertisers employ to get their message out. It could be a page in a local newspaper, a website with a similar audience, or a LinkedIn remarketing ad.

Media planners will pick a mix of different media platforms and vehicles to reach a target consumer group on multiple occasions. The right mix will hopefully influence their perception of – and interest in – a product or service.

Media Planning Strategy – Getting the Mix Right

Media planners need to establish a clear target audience to get the most bang from limited marketing bucks. Then they can strategize which channels would be most effective. The next step is determining the media vehicles, content types, and engagement frequency to garner the best results for marketing objectives.

When planners talk about ‘selecting the right media mix’, they refer to picking the most effective combination of media based on their audience’s behavior and preferences, and the likelihood they’ll convert.

As you might expect, these decisions involve a lot of data. There’s also some trial and error – and we can’t ignore the value of a media planner’s experience.

Media Planning vs. Media Buying: What’s the Difference?

How is media planning different from media buying ? Although the two processes often get lumped together, media planners and media buyers play distinctly different roles in launching campaigns.

Let’s look at the main differences between media planning and buying, and how both sides work together to deliver the best results.

What do Media Planners do?

Media planners determine how, where, when, and why a business will distribute content to drive ROI through paid advertising.

A media planner is responsible for developing a coordinated media plan based on the goals outlined in an organization’s marketing strategy.

The Media Planner:

• Carry out research
• Contribute to campaign strategy
• Outline media goals and objectives
• Allocate budgets
• Set the media cadence
• Create the channel plan
• Track and tweak campaigns*

In short, media planners take care of all the behind-the-scenes intel required for a successful integrated marketing campaign .

What do Media Buyers Do?

Media buying is the other side of the advertising coin. Media buying refers to the process of securing media space, be it a timeslot, ad space or endorsement.

Media buyers have an intimate understanding of the marketplace and a long list of contacts/relationships with media vendors built over their careers.

The Media Buyer:

• Develop relationships with vendors
• Negotiate placement rates
• Track and tweak campaigns

Buyers are planners’ operational counterparts. There is some overlap when it comes to optimizing campaigns; planners and buyers work together to adjust the tactics so they make the best use of the budget.

Media Planning: How to Create a Media Plan  

Your Step-by-Step Guide to Modern Media Planning

Digital marketers are under increasing pressure to deliver results. But when everything changes so fast, how can you hope to keep up with the competition, let alone get ahead?

Remember that old maxim, “the more things change, the more they stay the same”?

Marketing is always changing. Media planners who balance tried-and-true expertise with data-driven insight will be ideally positioned to navigate whatever challenges come along. Follow these 6 steps to create a strong, agile, and effective media campaign and strategy .

Define Your Target Audience

A target audience is a group of people you identify as potential customers based on age, occupation, location, interests, gender, or other factors.

Use what you know about your audience to build an ideal customer profile (ICP) or audience personas.

Let’s say you have a business that sells eco-friendly baby products. Right away, you can define three broad audiences: new parents, grandparents, and friends of new parents.

(There’s not much point targeting high school students or their middle-aged parents with ads for expensive prams).

Now use demographic, economic, psychographic, and geographic data to get closer to your intended audience. The tighter you can make your audience segments, the more targeted your marketing will be. But don’t focus too tightly, or you might end up with segments that are too small to reach your goals.

The audience segments for our eco-friendly baby products might look like this:

Audiences 1 and 3: New Parents and Their Friends

• Professionals
• Living in mid-size and large cities
• Commute by public transport
• Above average income
• Interested in sustainability
• Active on social media platforms
• In the market for baby products or gifts

Audience 2: New Grandparents

• Late-career professionals or retired
• Interested in high-end products
• Frequent travelers
• In the market for baby gifts

Determine Campaign Goals

You can’t measure campaign performance if you don’t know what success looks like.

Are you aiming for brand awareness or trying to generate sales? What are your daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly revenue targets? How is this media plan linked to company growth?

Starting with clear goals and ambitious KPIs helps media planners select the right mix of media channels and messages.

Let’s stay with our eco-friendly baby product company and assume we are launching a new clothing line for Christmas. Brand awareness is good, but the main aim is to sell products. Right away, we define success in terms of revenue – but let’s go further.

Last Christmas, we sold $30,000 worth of products from a $6,000 campaign. This year we’re aiming for a 25% increase. But times are tight, and our budget has been cut by 10%. We’ll need to improve ROAS to reach our goals. Calculate your ROAS with our ROAS Calculator.

As an eco-friendly company, loyalty is important. So we want at least 20% of sales to come from returning customers.

Using these goals, we can put some KPIs in place:

• $37,500 sales from a $5,400 marketing budget
• 20% of sales from returning customers
• 10-week campaign (October to mid-December)

Now we have campaign goals that connect with our target audiences and link to the company’s growth aspirations. It’s clear we will need an aggressive marketing strategy with some clever tactics to re-engage past customers.

How are we going to pull it off?

A quick note before we continue: Media planners don’t act alone. Steps 1 and 2, as well as the broader marketing strategy that came before, are collaborative exercises involving many stakeholders.

Research the Market

Market research will always turn up insights that will inform our advertising strategy and guide tactical decisions.

Media planners undertake two types of market research; internal and external.

Working closely with a brand’s key stakeholders to understand the growth objectives and marketing goals. Most internal research will, realistically, occur in steps 1 and 2.

In this stage, a media planner will gather and analyze insights about the competitive landscape and marketplace:

• Research industry trends
• Assess the competition
• Build audience segments and ICPs
• Understand where audiences are most engaged with ad content
• Unearth insight about past buyer behavior

For example, we might learn that TikTok advertising is our biggest opportunity to find new customers, email marketing is effective for past customers, and our biggest competitors are selling eco-friendly baby toys instead of clothing.

Select the Right Media Mix

The plethora of channels available to media planners is dizzying, so it’s essential to choose the most effective mix for your audience.

Armed with market research and goal-setting insights, marketers must determine which channels media strategies can bring them the most success.

Media planners typically use a targeted mix of offline and other online media channels.

The mix for our eco-friendly baby clothing company will look a little different for each audience segment.

Audiences 1 and 3 (new parents and their friends)

Audience 2 (new grandparents)

(Note that this mix excludes below-the-line channels like email, PR, SEO, and word-of-mouth marketing. The media planning is a significant part of the comprehensive channel plan, but not the entire thing).

Mediatool’s collaborative planning features make it easy for large teams and advertising agencies to create, share, approve and amend media plans. You never need to worry about working on the wrong version, losing documents, or missing a memo with Mediatool’s media planning templates and tools.

Consider Frequency and Reach

Reach refers to how many people will see your ads, while frequency determines how often.

The goal here is to find the balance between maximizing ad visibility and optimizing spend. We want our ads to be noticed but not to the point where they become annoying. We also don’t want to overspend on ineffective channels.

There are three main approaches to consider when deciding on ad frequency:

• Continuity:  A consistent schedule of ads throughout the campaign in the chosen medium. It’s often used for goods that aren’t seasonal and require reinforcement to stay top of mind.
• Flighting:  Alternating periods of advertisements, when marketers run the campaign for a defined time, pause for a while, and then resume later. This strategy is suited to seasonal products or campaigns with limited budgets.
• Pulsing: This approach combines Continuity and Flighting. Pulsed campaigns have periods of continuous low-intensity advertising, augmented by flights of higher-intensity campaigns when additional spend can generate the greatest ROI.

Which approach would we use to boost sales of our new baby clothes for Christmas?

A handy rule of thumb is that ad creative needs to be seen three times to be memorable. However, each media channel has its own considerations.

In our case, we can use what we know about our audience segments, combined with the channel plan, to decide on a “Flighting” approach for the Christmas campaign. We want to make a big impression quickly, so we can sell a lot of clothes in 10 weeks.

By now, you should see how all these considerations are cumulative. Each step influences the next, and success depends on a cohesive and collaborative media planning process.

Media Buying

Media buying is all about negotiations and getting bang for buck.

Media buying is primarily the realm of the media buyer (no surprises there). But, as with anything in the world of media planning and digital marketing, there’s room for collaboration.

Effective media buying means using the least budget to achieve the most impact and support the marketing strategy in the best way.

Building Relationships

Automation tools haven’t completely done away with the need to directly manage media vendor relationships. Media buyers should still invest in building relationships with ad vendors.

Negotiating Media Rates

If the media buyer has done their homework and built solid relationships, they should be able to negotiate preferential rates for large platforms.

Budgeting for Paid Media

A large chunk of any digital marketing budget will go to online media platforms, like social media and search. Media planners and buyers should collaborate to optimize spend according to the media mix and frequency.

Tips for Building a Media Budget:

• Always leave a margin for contingencies
• You won’t get it 100% right the first time
• Pay attention to minimum spends
• Consider timing ad delivery (e.g. turning the ad off overnight)
• Watch for double-spending on platforms where audiences overlap

Monitor, Measure and Continuously Improve Your Campaigns

Create an attribution framework and continuously monitor campaign performance in each channel.

As soon as your media plan is live, you can start to look for optimization opportunities . Despite exhaustive research, extensive planning, and years of experience, you can’t predict your audience’s behavior with 100% accuracy.

The key to tracking and optimizing media plans in real time is a centralized dashboard that provides a comprehensive overview of all marketing activity.

Target indicators, visual reports and user-friendly dashboards make tracking campaign performance easier for marketers and media planners. A single dashboard with multi-source data ensures media buyers have all the information they need to optimize campaigns , rearrange budgets, and make more informed decisions for future plans.

With Mediatool’s customizable dashboards  and reporting capabilities, advertisers and agencies get a holistic view of all their campaigns in one central location. Real-time data integrations ensure you get an up-to-date feed of campaign performance and can quickly make well-informed decisions to adjust, pause and optimize campaigns from a single account.

Media Planning Trends for 2024 and Beyond

The complexity of media planning and buying continues to escalate into 2024, further amplified by ongoing global challenges such as data privacy concerns, economic shifts, and the evolving digital landscape.

Consumer behavior continues to drive media strategies more than ever

The post-COVID-19 era has seen a permanent shift in consumer habits, with an increased preference for online interactions and e-commerce, even for traditionally in-store purchases. This change spans across sectors, with significant impacts in areas like home furnishings, appliances, and healthcare products, including over-the-counter medicine.

For B2B marketers, the shift towards digital interaction remains a steadfast trend, now solidified as a standard practice. The emphasis on leveraging real-time data for actionable insights has become even more crucial. Marketers are increasingly relying on attention-based metrics to gauge the effectiveness of their campaigns. As reported by Insider Intelligence , nearly 96% of advertisers worldwide are now incorporating these metrics into their media strategies, focusing not just on ad viewability but on how much consumer attention the ads capture​​.

Shift Towards Product Placement: In response to advertisement fatigue, particularly among high-income consumers, Gartner predicts that by 2024, 70% of brands will reallocate at least 10% of their media budget to product placement within entertainment content. This move towards product placement and sponsored content is seen as a more effective way to engage audiences who are increasingly tuning out traditional digital ads.

As we move further into 2024, media planners are tasked with adapting to these evolving trends, requiring agile strategies that respond to the dynamic digital marketplace. The integration of advanced data analytics and a nuanced understanding of consumer behavior continue to be at the forefront of effective media planning.

Data Privacy: The Great Disruptor, or a Great Opportunity?

If you work in marketing or media, you have undoubtedly heard about the data privacy changes affecting advertising. With Google phasing out support for third-party cookies, GDPR/CCPA legislation putting a halt to shady practices, and Apple limiting third-party tracking on their devices, the power of data is in consumers’ hands.

A lot of marketers worry that the changes will erode their ability to target prospective customers. But that’s not the case at all.

Data tracking isn’t disappearing. It’s evolving.

By adopting a first-party data strategy , media planners can get closer to their ideal audiences and garner deeper insights for a 360° customer profile.

Most media planners have more than enough first-party data in their warehouse. The challenge isn’t collecting more data but being strategic about where, how, and why the data is collected.

Media Planning Teams are Acting on Campaign Performance Data Faster than Ever

While digital marketing has always been touted to enable more speed, agility and transparency, its potential has hardly been tapped to date. Gartner’s research indicates a significant decline in the productivity of technology investments in marketing. The data reveals that the utilization rates of these investments have decreased from 58% in 2020 to a record low of 42% in 2022.

The last few years have left no room for gut-driven strategies and over-complicated decision-making processes. In fact, decisions that used to take days or even weeks are now being made in hours.

Your marketing team can tighten the feedback loop with:

• More collaborative analysis
• Closer focus on KPIs
• Real-time target tracking
• Mid-campaign reporting
• Democratized data policies

As a result, media planning is more grounded and less concerned with gloss and polish.

Real-Time Tracking Becomes Priority #1

With strained marketing budgets and increased pressure to deliver results, tracking campaign performance became a top concern of marketing teams. While in years past, marketers might have enjoyed wiggle room to iterate, test and experiment based on hunches, there is no longer any tolerance for misdirected marketing.

Advertisers are looking for tactics that have a high probability of succeeding. It’s more important than ever for media planners to have the right tools to track and evaluate campaigns in real-time, so they can unearth insights and adjust as needed.

One of the biggest drivers at Mediatool has always been to simplify the digital marketing journey from idea to attribution . And over the past years, we’ve witnessed a tremendous increase in demand for a more agile, end-to-end approach to managing digital media planning and marketing campaigns.

Lack of reporting transparency and a sense of urgency can have substantial opportunity costs. Mediatool is an investment in high-quality data collected from all your marketing channels and delivered with real-time target tracking.

Advertisers are Prioritizing Attributable Media

In the past, there was a perception that stretching the marketing budget as wide as possible would generate ROI.

In times of unprecedented uncertainty, business leaders look to decrease risk. Every dollar spent has to drive immediate results, which presents significant challenges for marketing teams.

Ad spending is rising after a dip in 2020, but the landscape isn’t like it was. Advertisers are pulling back from brand awareness campaigns and redeploying their resources into channels and tactics that are easier to track, measure and report on in real-time.

Does that mean brand campaigns will become a thing of the past? Not necessarily. The close scrutiny of marketing budgets is driving media teams to reconsider their revenue-generating approach. It’s part of a broader perception shift, with marketing going from a cost centre to a revenue generator.

Media planners are being more thoughtful about where, when and why they deploy brand campaigns will help marketers to maximize their impact moving forward.

When it comes to optimizing a multi-channel customer experience, it’s essential to have the most accurate and up-to-date information about your target audience, preferably in one neat dashboard . Then, you can use data to drive your tactics instead of relying on personal hunches.

What the Changes Mean for Marketers (With Innovative Media Planning Examples)

While some trends have arrived sooner than expected, don’t throw out your media planning playbook just yet. Instead, update your approach to be more data-driven, collaborative, and agile.

Uncovering emerging trends early allows you to act in time and be part of the conversation. More importantly, it provides much-needed context for tailored ad creative and more engaging copy.

With the right tools, good marketing data, and a clear media strategy now, any experienced media planner can tap into real-time consumer intent. The fundamentals of media planning haven’t changed. They’ve simply evolved.

Media planners who can identify trends within their audience segments, create tailored content, and deliver relevant customer experiences will gain a competitive edge.

Struggling with Workflow and Collaboration Madness

Digital advertising campaigns require a great deal of communication, fine-tuning and cross-functional collaboration. According to a McKinsey study , knowledge workers spend around 28% of the work week managing their email. Another 19% is spent searching for internal information or tracking down colleagues who can help with specific tasks

The study suggests that businesses can raise productivity by 20 to 25% by adopting the right social technologies.

Effective collaboration is trickier as remote working becomes normalized and teams are increasingly geographically diverse. Teams that had the right tech stack (or pivoted at the right time) do well during uncertainty, while others struggle to adapt and deploy campaigns in time. A survey by NewsCred  found that organizations using planning and project management tools faced fewer challenges as a result of COVID-19 compared to those that didn’t use any tools.

The first step towards streamlining your marketing team’s collaboration is understanding the productivity and communication tools  needed to keep projects moving forward.

The secret is finding one or two platforms that can do it all. Bringing in too many new tools might end up being more disruptive than having no communications infrastructure at all, so invest wisely.

Dealing with Budget Restrictions

With the economic uncertainty of 2023, marketers may encounter budget cuts as financial teams aim to conserve cash flow. Rather than indiscriminate reductions, it’s prudent to make strategic cuts in the media planning process, focusing on the most effective channels and content for your target audience.

In managing budget restrictions, consider these approaches:

• Thoroughly Review Marketing Expenditure : Analyze all marketing commitments and paid media campaigns to find opportunities for repurposing or renegotiation towards higher-return strategies.
• Balance Churn and Acquisition Costs : Avoid drastic cuts in critical areas like brand campaigns or paid search. Short-term savings could harm long-term marketing performance. Keep an eye on key performance indicators (KPIs) to gauge potential impacts.
• Swift Performance Evaluation : Utilize current KPIs reflecting market conditions and consumer needs for quick evaluation of marketing efficiency. Focus on A/B testing across various media platforms, including social media, to identify and cut inefficient strategies.
• Experimentation within Constraints : Despite a focus on cost-saving, explore new combinations in your media mix. Experiment with creative formats, novel media channels, and innovative consumer insights to find effective tactics that align with your marketing objectives and budget.

Incorporating these principles into your media planning strategy ensures a balanced, data-driven approach to adapting to budget limitations, maximizing the potential of available resources.

What’s Next for Media Planning?

One thing is clear – media planners need to get comfortable with discomfort. If you want to stay ahead of the curve, you need to:

• Reacquaint yourself with your audience
• Reorganize how you operate
• Reinvent your processes
• Embrace software that makes media planning easier
• Use data to guide decision-making

But don’t throw out the old playbook just yet. Things have certainly changed, but the fundamentals of media planning remain intact.

With media strategy, people, processes and systems working together, brands and agencies are bound to emerge on the other side unscathed, if not re-energized.

About Mediatool: Your Media Planning Platform

Meet Mediatool, the architect behind this guide. We offer a cloud-based platform tailored for managing and strategizing marketing campaigns.

Mediatool empowers brands and agencies in media buying, media planning, and digital advertising by providing tools for tracking, optimizing, and visualizing marketing efforts.

Our platform enhances efficiency with total budget control and seamless data integration, enabling you to craft and refine your media strategy effectively. With Mediatool, gain a holistic view of all marketing activities, including social media, digital platforms, and traditional channels, to elevate your media mix and achieve your marketing objectives with data-driven precision.

Harness the full potential of your marketing team with Mediatool. Our platform streamlines the media planning process, enabling media buyers and planners to conduct market research, develop comprehensive media plans, and monitor key performance indicators across various media platforms.

Whether it’s optimizing paid media campaigns, generating engaging content for social media posts, or aligning advertising strategies with broader marketing campaigns, Mediatool offers the tools necessary for success.

Our focus on digital media planning and analytics empowers teams to create targeted advertising messages and strategies, ensuring that every media buy is cost-effective and aligned with your brand’s campaign goals and target audiences.

Create your single source of truth and start making smarter media investment decisions

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The Ultimate Guide to Media Planning

Gerd Altmann / Pixabay.com

Main Media Planning Takeaways :

• Media planning is the process of identifying and selecting the media channels in which to place an advertisement.
• A media plan focuses on the strategy behind the content that a brand creates, publishes, and shares among customers.
• A media planner is responsible for developing a coordinated plan that fits a specific client’s advertising budget.
• Media planning is vital because it creates a way to centralize advertising metrics for quick decisions.
• A media planner determines the best combination of media to achieve a specific marketing objective.
• The process of creating an effective media plan is divided into five steps.
• Some challenges of media planning include access to information, budget restriction, and integrating results.

With so many ways to share content today, media planning has become an essential marketing strategy . Brands across the world now share more media content than ever before to stay relevant. From images and videos to infographics and podcasts, the sheer amount of content can be confusing to track.

That’s why media planning is necessary. It helps determine the best way to convey a brand’s message to its target audience . Here’s an ultimate guide to creating an effective media plan .

What is Media Planning?

Media planning is the process of identifying and selecting the media channels where advertisements will be placed. It also involves determining how, when, and why a brand should share specific media content with its target audience. In other words, a media plan focuses on the strategy behind the content that a brand creates, publishes, and shares among customers.

Content sharing is essential to the success of any brand today, regardless of the size or industry. According to SEMrush ,  78 percent of companies  have a team of one to three content specialists .

Along with boosting awareness, content sharing can also increase engagement, conversions, and revenue. Also, media content can help you stand out from other businesses in your industry.

However, media planning is required to leverage several advertisement channels available today effectively. That’s why advertising agencies typically hire media planners.

What is the Role of a Media Planner?

A media planner is responsible for developing a coordinated plan that fits a specific client’s advertising budget . Such individuals decide when, where, and how to feature a particular ad for maximum views. As a result, the most effective media planners can stretch a client’s advertising budget to reach a massive target audience.

In line with the definition above, a media planner determines:

• The budget that advertisers allocate to an ad medium
• How many people could be reached through each medium
• The media and ad channel to place a specific ad
• How frequent an ad should appear?

A media planner determines the best combination of media to achieve a specific marketing objective . But is media planning a worthwhile investment?

Why is Media Planning Important?

Media planning is essential because it creates a way to centralize advertising metrics for a quick decision. A good media plan describes the advertising result expected from a specific campaign. These include the ad cost, impressions, engagements, and the return-on-investment from a specific ad channel . It makes it easier for media planners to compare and select the most suitable advertising option.

In the end, you’ll have a uniform dataset as reference for building flowcharts, reconciliation reports, or allocation reports. Such uniform values are especially important when comparing campaigns.

What’s more, a detailed media plan provides a way to monitor a brand’s overall advertising health .

Media plans can be used as reference to determine how campaigns across various ad channels are performing. Then, the marketer can make the changes required to maximize the advertising budget.

How do you Create an Effective Media Plan?

The process of creating an effective media plan is divided into five steps. It begins with market analysis and establishing media objectives . After that, the media planner must develop the strategy, implement it, and evaluate the result. Let’s explain further.

1. Market Analysis

The market analysis stage begins with identifying your target audience. In other words, you’re looking to determine the number and type of people that the ad campaign targets.

You can classify your audience based on demographics and characteristics such as age, religion, gender, and income level, among others.

Another option is to define your audience based on psychographic terms . These include interests, activities, personality traits, and brand preferences, to name a few.

Performing a market analysis will help you project the cost of your marketing campaign . What’s more, it could help you make an informed media buying decision.

The marketing analysis stage should lead to a specific media objective .

2. Establishing the Media Objective

The second stage of media planning involves establishing media objectives . Like the market analysis stage, this stage should also result in explicit media objectives.

Identifying the following could aid in creating an effective media plan :

• Reach : The number of people that see a message over a specific period.
• Frequency : The average number of times the audience see a message
• Circulation (for print media): The number of prints that are produced and distributed.
• Cost (CPM) and (CPP): It tells you the best media option for your business.
• Penetration : The number of audiences that a specific advertising channel reached.

Note that the objectives should only consist of goals that can be obtained through media strategies .

3. Setting the Strategy

At this point, you already know the people that you’re marketing to and how much it costs. The next step is to decide what type of media to use for your campaign.

For example, you could use traditional media such as television, radio, newspaper, consumer, and business publications. Alternately, you could invest in online marketing channels such as pay-per-click, social media , search engine optimization, and video marketing, among others.

Along with fitting it into your marketing budget , the ad channel should also provide the highest reach.

4. Implementation (Media Buying)

Now that you have a media plan , it’s time to set your plan in motion. The implementation stage involves media buying .

Media buying is the process of purchasing media placements for advertising on radio, television, digital signage, publication, or websites. It involves committing to the media provider , submitting the ad, and paying the bill.

Again, the purchased placement must meet the media objectives.

5. Evaluation and Follow-Up

The final stage of media planning is to evaluate its effectiveness. This is the stage where you ask the following questions:

• Did you achieve your media objectives?
• How successful are your strategies?

The evaluation stage lets you know which follow-ups are required. More importantly, it tells you whether a similar model will be useful for future campaigns.

Now that you understand the process let’s take a look at the challenges.

What are the Challenges of Media Planning?

1. Budget Restrictions

Media planning requires staying within a specific ad budget.

Since the planners must do more with less, they usually have to focus on the budget restrictions . Sometimes, this could be at the detriment of audience engagement and campaign performance.

It would be best if the media planner invests in the most affordable but impactful campaigns in such a situation.

2. Access to Information

Media planners usually have to create their strategies based on an in-depth knowledge of the target audience.

Along with studying what type of message best resonates with the consumers, you must also understand their routine. That way, you’ll know when they’re most likely to engage with your content.

As you may have guessed, such a level of analysis is not only expensive but also time-consuming.

3. Integrating Result Across Multiple Channels

After collecting data from media channels, planners must figure out how to measure each campaign’s success. They should also be able to compare the results and decide the way forward.

Unfortunately, that’s not as easy as it sounds. Since most consumers interact with multiple ad channels, advertisers may find it challenging to track the campaigns across these platforms.

Note that a well-defined media objective could help address this issue.

Final Words: Start Your Media Planning Process

There’s no denying that media planning is vital to a brand’s ability to create, publish, and share media content.

It ensures that you lay the foundation of the consumer’s journey to prevent missed opportunities. Also, it allows the media planner to devote more budget to high-performing advertisement channels.

So, work through the media planning process outlined above. Not only will you reach more audience, but you would also enjoy an improved conversion.

Read More: Why Integrated Marketing Communications Matters Today

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What Is Media Planning? Definition and Complete Guide

What is Media Planning?

One of the crucial steps in an advertising campaign is media planning, which is the process of brainstorming and deciding on the most effective way to convey an advertising message. It involves how, when, and where an advertising message is to be delivered to the target audience. Media planning involves various processes such as market research, demographic analysis, resource allocation, selecting media channels, media buying and monitoring of results.

Objectives of Media Planning

The objectives of media planning in advertising are multifaceted.  

• Effectively reach the target audience by selecting appropriate media channels 
• Maximize impact through ad optimisation
• Budget friendly and cost effective allocation of resources
• Create a strong brand presence through consistent messaging
• Constant monitoring and evaluation of ad results

Media Planning vs. Media Buying

Media Planning and Media Buying are two contrasting yet interconnected concepts that play a crucial role in advertising. The following table clearly distinguishes between media planning and buying.

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Steps to Write a Media Plan

The media planning process typically includes the following steps:

Step 1: Define your campaign objectives

Clearly defined campaign objectives serve as the foundation for the media planning process. By clearly stating the desired outcomes, such as increasing brand awareness or driving sales, advertisers can align their media strategy to achieve those specific goals effectively.

Step 2: Identify the target audience

This step involves analyzing demographic and psychographic characteristics, understanding their media consumption habits, and creating audience profiles to guide the selection of media channels that effectively reach and engage the desired audience.

Step 3: Conduct market research

Market research is a fundamental step in media planning, involving the analysis of consumer behavior, market trends, competitor activities, and media landscape.  It provides valuable insights that shape media channel selection, messaging strategies, and budget allocation, ensuring the most effective approach to reaching the intended audience.

Step 4: Decide on a media budget

Determining the media budget involves analyzing campaign objectives, market research, and available resources to allocate funds strategically across various media channels, ensuring an optimal balance between reach, frequency, and cost-effectiveness.

Step 5: Evaluate your media options

One of the critical steps in media planning is the thoughtful selection of media options. This involves evaluating various channels, platforms, and formats, such as television, radio, print, outdoor advertising, online platforms, and social media, based on their reach, relevance, cost, and suitability for the target audience.

Step 6: Develop a detailed media plan

The last step is to create a detailed plan that outlines the media channels, timing, frequency, and budget allocations for the campaign. This plan may include media buying negotiations, leveraging media discounts, and optimizing reach and frequency.

Challenges involved in Media Planning

Here are some common challenges faced in the media planning process:

Fragmented Media Landscape

The media landscape is constantly evolving and becoming increasingly fragmented with the rise of digital platforms. Identifying the most effective media channels to reach the target audience can be challenging due to the vast array of options available, making it difficult to allocate budgets effectively. Consumer behavior and media consumption habits are continually changing. Advertisers need to stay updated on emerging trends and adapt their media strategies accordingly.

Data Ineffectiveness

Media planning heavily relies on data, including market research, audience insights, and performance metrics. However, obtaining accurate and reliable data can be challenging. Advertisers need to ensure the data they use for planning is up-to-date, relevant, and trustworthy. Measuring the impact and effectiveness of media campaigns can be a challenge. It is important to define clear objectives and establish relevant metrics to evaluate campaign performance accurately.

Competitive Market

In a competitive advertising landscape, securing prime media placements can be challenging. High-demand periods, limited inventory, and fierce competition from other advertisers can make it difficult to secure the desired media positions and negotiate favorable rates. Media planners need to stay informed about technological advancements and assess their potential benefits and drawbacks to incorporate them effectively into their strategies.

Limited Budgets

Budget constraints are a common challenge in media planning. Advertisers need to make strategic decisions on how to allocate limited resources across various media channels to maximize reach and impact. Balancing cost efficiency with campaign objectives can be a complex task.

Ad-blocking and Ad Avoidance

Consumers are increasingly using ad-blocking software or actively avoiding ads, making it harder for advertisers to reach their target audience. Media planners need to consider this challenge and find ways to create engaging and relevant content that can break through ad-blocking and capture audience attention.

Wrap up Tips:

In conclusion, media planning plays a vital role in the success of advertising campaigns. By understanding the target audience, conducting market research, and considering budget constraints, media planners can create comprehensive media plans that maximize the impact and efficiency of advertising efforts. To reach the desired campaign outcomes, advertisers and media planners must stay updated with the latest industry trends, leverage data and market research insights, and make informed decisions based on the objectives of the advertising campaign.

Consulting a premium advertising agency like Buymediaspace for media planning can be a beneficial choice for businesses looking to optimize their advertising strategies.

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Everything You Need to Know About Modern Media Planning

When any owner is looking to grow their business, it doesn’t take long for them to notice something: The marketplace is crowded and noisy.   

One of the hardest things to do no matter where you are in your business plan is to get the attention you deserve. However, there are a lot of ways to cut through that noise and put the spotlight on your product or service, and it all starts with one thing: Your Media Plan.  

Your media plan is going to be the backbone of your campaign that gets your brand in front of the ideal audience and turns that audience into customers.   

What is Media Planning?  

Media planning is, by definition, the process of strategizing and purchasing media ad placements and deciding what the best combination of media is that will help you achieve your marketing goals. It’s a method for making decisions about your marketing campaign that will get it to your target audience at the right time and place with the right medium.   

The plan that comes out of this process details where and how you’ll publish to best engage and convert your ideal customer. They provide structure for how your marketing campaign will use media such as writing, video, and audio to connect with customers.   

Types of Media Planning  

Several different forms of media may need to be considered and made part of your media planning process. These forms include:  

Owned Media  

Owned media is any kind of web property you can control that is unique to your brand. This can include blogs or videos that are shared on platforms that the marketer owns. Owned media can be very powerful as the more a brand has, the more chances it has to take up valuable space in the digital marketplace. As an extension of a brand, these owned media spaces give customers and lovers of your brand more ways to interact with it.   

Paid Media  

Paid media is exactly what it sounds like - marketing that you pay for. Part of your media planning process should be judging how much promotion of your brand will help you gain exposure in the places you want it most. Most social media platforms now offer paid media opportunities, and paid media can also help drive traffic to your owned media properties through simple searches.   

Earned Media  

Earned media is exposure that your brand has gained any other way than paid advertising. In broad terms, it’s “word of mouth.” However, in digital media terms, it can be mentions, shares, reposts, recommendations, or content you’ve created that is picked up by 3rd party sites.   

All three of these types of media are essential to the media plan you make to grow your business and to get your brand exposed to just the right audience.   

Benefits of Media Buying & Planning  

Media buying deals solely with paid media. Media buying can look like buying ad space on various channels, paying to share targeted ads, or negotiating advertising with various media vendors.   

While media buying and media planning are not synonymous with one another, media buying can’t exist successfully without media planning. The bottom line of all companies is usually the same: Stay on or below budget and invest in things that will bring you a solid ROI. When investing in paid media, proper media planning will ensure you have a strategy for getting the media in front of the right people to convert them into customers.   

The Media Planning Process  

There are four main steps in the media planning process. The results from each step will help you create a unique plan that serves the needs of your unique brand. The four steps of the process are:  

Set Your Goals  

If any plan is going to be successful, it needs to be rooted in clear goals and objectives. Taking time to define what your specific goals and objectives are will help you make strategic decisions. Whether your goal is to boost brand awareness for more conversions or to target certain buyer personas, you need to clearly define it to build your plan around.   

Do Your Research  

The first step is to conduct thorough market research so that you can create content and media that is perfectly suited to your target audience. This research includes studying buyer personas and refining a deep understanding of who your audience is. This information will make sure you are creating content that resonates with them and converts them into customers. This information will also let you know what platforms to share your media on as all platforms are used by different markets.   

Plan, Plan, Plan  

Now that you have a clear picture of who you are trying to reach, it’s time to sketch out the direction of your content. With them in mind, decide what kind of content will most resonate with them. Think carefully about tone in this step - what tone and messaging will your target audience most identify with? 

Execute Your Plan  

Once your plan is in place for what kind of content you will need, you need to begin executing the plan. This step goes from creating your content, reviewing content to ensure it fits your objectives and tone, and then deciding which media channels to distribute your content over depending on where your target audience can be found.    

Measure Your Results  

Once your campaign is live and reaching who you want it to reach, measuring how it’s performing is vital to making sure your plan is good and doesn’t need tweaking. Metrics that may help you make these decisions include using Google Analytics to see what traffic you’ve received, measuring how many impressions you’ve received on social media, and tracking any discount codes you offer to first-time customers.   

Your media plan plays an essential role when it comes to successfully creating, publishing, and sharing media content that will grow your audience. Working through these steps above will ensure that your media is always relevant and available to the people you want to reach most.

If you think you’re ready to take your brand to the next level, MBI is here to help you. We specialize in helping you strategize the perfect marketing campaign to help you reach the goals you’ve created for your brand.  Contact  one of our experts today to discuss how we can help you.   

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Media Planning

What is media planning.

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 a media plan

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.

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Creating a media plan

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.

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Media Plan Definition

What is a media plan?

A media plan is a document that outlines the strategy of how, when, where and why an organization will distribute its media content to their target audience.

Media plans typically include details such as:

• An analysis of the target audience
• The type of media that will be shared
• The  media channels  that will be used to distribute the messaging
• Current media and marketing trends
• How results will be tracked across multiple platforms

How to create your media plan?

Creating a media plan  is a valuable practice for organizations, as it helps them identify their target customers and make the right media buying decisions to reach those customers in an effective way.

Here are a few key factors to take into account when developing a media plan:

Reach – How many individuals do you want to view your message during a given timeframe?

Impact – What form of media will have the greatest impact on your target customers to help reach your desired outcome?

Frequency – How many times do you want your target customers to view the ads that you are putting out? More viewings tend to lead to better results, but the cost of distributing more ads must be taken into account.

Budget – How much do you plan to spend on media? What is the approximate cost per view for the various media channels on which you will be advertising?

Selectivity – Which media outlets are effective for your specific product? It is important to ensure that you are broadcasting your messaging in a space that reaches your target audience. For example, a fast food company would likely not want to place their ads in a fitness magazine.

Pacing digital advertising

Have you ever watched a show on TV and seen the same advertisement on nearly every commercial break? Advertisers have the choice to set a pace for their ad campaigns. Do they want their target audience to see this ad A LOT in a short period of time? Or do they want to spread it out for more of a slow burn? This same premise can be applied to digital advertising. 

There are 2 core types of ad pacing to consider, although advertisers can set whatever pace they want.

• Aggressive: Ad impressions are delivered at a fast pace.
• Governed: Ad impressions are delivered in a slow, but strategic pattern.

What does OTS stand for in media?

Opportunity-to-see (OTS) is used to measure, on average, how often a person will view a specific advertisement. OTS is calculated by dividing the total gross rating point (GRP) by percentage reach (OTS = Total GRP/% Reach) .

Create omni-channel media plans in minutes, assign or discover media partners, and receive personalized proposals from the media sales teams. Free for marketers and media teams.

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Media Planning – Definition, Forms, Importance, Process and Benefits

June 10, 2023 | By Hitesh Bhasin | Filed Under: Marketing

Media planning is the process of identifying and selecting media outlets like television, newspapers, radio, magazines, etc., on which paid advertisements can be done. The person who is in charge of evaluating these media options and strategizing the advertising campaign to promote the said products or services is known as the media planner. Media plans help in finding the most efficient way to deliver the advertiser’s message across its audience.

Delivering messages to your audience is an essential and also crucial step to advertising. Media planners help the right message reach the right audience.

Table of Contents

What is Media Planning?

Media Planning is the process that advertisers go through before launching advertising campaigns to increase effectiveness. It is a crucial first step to any ad campaign. It is the process by which marketers where, when, and how often they will advertise so that the engagement and ROI (Return on investment) are maximized.

The Forms of media planning

Every business differs concerning what form of media would be profitable to it. The requirement for well-executed media planning is the effective delivery of a message to the targeted audience and positive customer response. Digital media includes all the assets a customer finds on the internet. Some of these are PPC (pay-per-click) ads, banner ads, video ads, etc. Media planners rely on the various forms of digital and traditional media to choose which kind best serves the purpose for different advertisers.

Some forms of these media platforms include:

1. Owned Media

Owned media is any web property that one can control and is unique to one’s brand. These include blogs and videos on any website. These kinds of media advertisements are shared on the platform, which the marketer owns. The more owned media a brand has, the more chances it can increase its brand presence in the digital space. These are an extension of one’s brand and creates additional avenues for the people to interact with one’s brand.

2. Paid Media

In simple words, paid media is marketing one pays for. Paying to promote content helps in gaining more exposure. Several social media platforms offer paid media advertising that can help boost the content and the website. It increases the probability of driving the searches to one’s websites. It is a great way to promote content to generate more earned media. It also drives traffic directly to the owned media properties.

3. Earned Media

Earned media is publicity or exposure gained from methods other than paid advertising. Earned media essentially is online word of mouth. It usually consists of mentions, shares, reposts, recommendations, or content picked up by 3rd party sites.

All three elements, owned, earned, and paid, are essential to digital media strategy.

Factors in Media Planning

Each media platform has its pros and cons. For example, some advertising media is cost-effective, and some have a vast reach. The followings are the factors that a media planner should consider before selecting a media platform for advertising and promotion.

The reach of an ad is the most crucial factor that influences the decision of a media planner. The reach of media can be defined as the number of individuals who see an advertisement or post through different media platforms. Traditional media platforms like television and newspaper have greater reachability as compared to media platforms like radio.

However, in the era of the internet, the social media platform has maximum reachability. If a company is planning to target youngsters, then the social media platform is the best platform to reach them. Therefore, it is essential to consider the reachability of the media platform before you invest your money in it.

2. Cost per thousand

In advertising, the cost of advertising is divided per thousand people. How much the company needs to pay to a newspaper to reach one thousand people? The total cost of advertising is calculated by multiplying the cost per thousand with the total number of people.

For example, if a newspaper has 100,000 subscribers and it takes $100 for an advertisement to reach 1000 subscribers, then the advertising company is required to pay $10,000 to the newspaper to get its ad printed in the newspaper.

As a media planner, you would like to choose a media platform with lower cost and high reachability.

3. Frequency of advertisement

The frequency of advertising can be defined as the total number of times an ad would be shown to an individual. It is considered that an ad is required to show at least three or four times to make an individual familiar with the brand.

Therefore, the higher the frequency of advertisement better will be the outcome. However, the cost is also an essential factor that affects the frequency of advertisement. You are required to pay more if you want your ad to be shown frequently.

The impact of the media platform means how likely the chosen media can persuade your audience to take action. Different media have different effects on the audience. For example, an advertisement for perfume in a fashion magazine is more impactful than in a local newspaper.

Similarly, the ad of millennial products should be advertised on internet websites and social media platforms. An advertisement for food items will be more impactful on television. Therefore, a media platform should be selected based on the kind of product that you want to advertise.

If you choose the wrong media platform to promote your product, then the outcome will not be as good as you would expect it to be.

5. Selectivity

This factor focuses on the number of logical audiences in the advertisement of your product. The high reachability of your media platform will be ineffective if the percentage of the valid audience who can afford to purchase your product is low.

For example, a full front-page advertisement of Porsche car in a local newspaper will not get you enough return on investment because the percentage of the audience who could afford your car will be meager.

Therefore, the role of media planner becomes essential as an expert who can calculate the return on advertising investment and can choose the right platform to advertise your products.

Importance of media planning process

The success of your advertising campaign depends mainly on the media planning process. An effective media planning can result in a significant return on investment, whereas ineffective media planning might result in a poor return on investment and lowered brand image.

Have you ever realized that a particular tone or song can remind you of a brand without even mentioning its name? For example, you will be told of thumbs up beverages just by hearing the tune of the song “AjKuchtoofaniKartehai”. Similarly, the tagline “I’m loving it” will remind you of the McDonalds.

This is all possible because of the effective media planning of the brands. They were able to succeed in targeting the right audience, at the right time through the right media. The choice of right media is significant for the success of an advertising media campaign.

An effective media planning is essential if you want to get into the minds of people. The choice of right media will attract the right customers towards your brand. Companies with small advertising budgets get successful in making their brand’s name in the market because of the correct media planning.

In the next section, you will learn about the steps involved in the process of media planning.

Benefits of Media planning

1. organization.

The advertisement campaigns will become more organized from the beginning.

2. Tracking

Tracking and setting goals would become more accessible.

3. Determining the target audience

Planning leads to in-depth research of the audience, which will make targeting the audience more effectively.

4. Conducting analyses to keep up with the competition

In the competitive environment of digital media, planning an advertisement before the campaign would help stay ahead of the peers.

5. Keeping up with internet trends

Media planning agencies have several tricks to engage the audience. The internet keeps on upgrading and introducing trends. Media planning helps advertisers keep up with these trends, which increases trafficking.

6. Budgeting

Media planning also helps the marketers remain within the budget and avoids overspending the capital.

7. Media Planning Strategies

Forming media planning strategies can help marketers in extracting the full potential of an advertisement campaign. Some of these strategies can be:

8. Choosing Relevant Media channels

Choosing the right media channel to share content is an essential step. There are several traditional as well as digital channels that serve a range to users. Traditional channels include television, radio, magazines, etc.

Digital channels include social media, blogs, websites, videos, and other online platforms. The choice of channels should be in relevance to the targeted audience. Channels are selected based on the kind of content being promoted, demographics, geographical aspects, etc.

9. Formulating a marketing strategy

Forming a marketing strategy is an intricate step in a well-executed media planning method. It helps the marketer thrive in a competitive environment. It helps maintain the budget over an advertisement campaign.

Forming a marketing strategy involves

• Study the external and internal factors that may affect the media plan.
• Conduct segmentation regarding the target audience, so the message is reached across the maximum number of people.
• Take into consideration and acting according to the four marketing mixes, i.e., product, price, place, and promotion.

10. Prioritizing the targeted audience

If a media planner has succumbed to all the strategies and made a successful advertising campaign, the sales are still not what one expected. This can hugely be because even though they did everything right, the advertisement was not directed to the right people, i.e., the targeted audience.

Once a company chooses the right target audience for its brand, choosing the correct media channel becomes easier.

11. Setting goals

The main aspect of any successful advertisement, especially in the digital context, is the number of people it reaches. This is known as the reach of any content. This reach can be measured by the likes, comments, shares, views, etc. that content receives. Tracking such information and setting goals accordingly can be a vital element to increasing an advertisement’s engagement. Marketers can set a benchmark according to the reach that their content is receiving. This further helps them in improving the quality of their content.

12. Setting the tone

The “tone” that any advertisement uses can make or break the product’s reputation. This tone refers to the choice and length of the words and paragraphs used in the content in the written context. In visual media, this “tone” refers to the message spread across by the kind of pictures, colors, and shapes being portrayed. The tone of an advertisement builds trust between the marketer and their prospective customer. This tone needs to be promising to tell the customers that their needs will be fulfilled.

Steps in the media planning process

There are four important elements of a media plan

1. Proper Research and Analysis

There should be in-depth research about the stated brand and its components. These include the targeted audience, keynotes from previous ad campaigns, market segmentation, media channels, budget, etc.

2. Incorporating ways to increase engagement

Digital advertising is all about who saw your brand. Media planning includes implementing ways to resonate with the target audience based on demographics and viewership.

3. Media strategy

Forming a media strategy includes reaching out to the targeted audience, budgeting, setting goals, etc., to bring out the most effective in the campaign.

4. Implementation

Forming a perfect plan for an advertisement campaign would go to waste if the plan is not implemented correctly. Implementing simply means when and how and you will launch, monitor, and measure the ad campaign’s effectiveness.

What is Media Buying?

Media buying is the next step after successful media planning. Both processes take place side by side. Media buying involves the set of strategic wholesale multi-platform ad space purchases, negotiations, and arrangements that are aimed at finding the most effective ad places at the lowest rates. A specialized media buying requires a special set of skills and techniques, such as an intricate understanding of the market. Media buyers also indulge in networking and building relationships with people in the industry. This provides the companies with an advantage as they have a better chance of getting a fair deal.

The process of media buying includes prelaunch, launch, and post-launch. The first part of the process involves media buyers getting the right set of opportunities for a client to advertise. During the launch phase, buyers must be able to guarantee that advertisers deliver on their objectives. The final step, post-launch, involves assessing how effective the campaign was and reporting back to businesses to provide feedback.

Key differences between media buying and media planning

The main aim both for media planning as well as media buying, in the end, is to help establish a successful advertising campaign to help a brand flourish.

Media planning helps in identifying what mix of media platforms will best achieve the goals of a campaign based upon the constantly changing trends of the marketplace. The goal is to determine when, where and how often a message should be placed to optimize audience response.

Media buying, on the other hand, is the acquisition of media space and time slots that ensures that the message reaches the set target audience across different media channels. Media buyers mainly deal with concerns like ad impact, ROI (Return on investment), taking care of ad frauds, engagement, among others.

The process consists of various steps like researching about various platforms, the audience, and the pricing for these platforms.

An overall media strategy incorporates both these processes. Media planning as well as buying both are critical functions of the building and executing contemporary marketing strategies. An imbalance created between both of these strategies can hugely influence the quality of the ad campaign. The results may diminish in purchasing media without ensuring its potential for optimal results. It could also affect the development of a sound plan that lacks actual media placement.

Liked this post? Check out the complete series on Advertising

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About Hitesh Bhasin

Hitesh Bhasin is the CEO of Marketing91 and has over a decade of experience in the marketing field. He is an accomplished author of thousands of insightful articles, including in-depth analyses of brands and companies. Holding an MBA in Marketing, Hitesh manages several offline ventures, where he applies all the concepts of Marketing that he writes about.

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What is media planning? Why is it important?

Media planning is the process by which advertisers create a plan to guide an ad campaign. In fact, every successful advertising campaign begins with a media plan.

or

Medium-sized

< 250

≤ € 50 m

≤ € 43 m

Small

< 50

≤ € 10 m

≤ € 10 m

Micro

< 10

≤ € 2 m

≤ € 2 m

These ceilings apply to the figures for individual firms only. A firm that is part of a larger group may need to include staff headcount/turnover/balance sheet data from that group too.

Further details include

• The revised user guide to the SME definition (2020) (2 MB, available in all EU languages)
• Declaring your enterprise to be an SME (the form is available in all languages as an annex in the revised user guide)
• The SME self-assessment tool which you can use to determine whether your organisation qualifies as a small and medium-sized enterprise

What help can SMEs get?

There are 2 broad types of potential benefit for an enterprise if it meets the criteria

• eligibility for support under many EU business-support programmes targeted specifically at SMEs: research funding, competitiveness and innovation funding and similar national support programmes that could otherwise be banned as unfair government support ('state aid' – see block exemption regulation )
• fewer requirements or reduced fees for EU administrative compliance

Monitoring of the implementation of the SME definition

The Commission monitors the implementation of the SME definition and reviews it in irregular intervals. Pursuant to the latest evaluation, the Commission concluded that there is no need for a revision.

On 25 October 2021, we informed stakeholders by holding a webinar with presentations on the SME evaluation's results and next steps.

Supporting documents

• Study to map, measure and portray the EU mid-cap landscape (2022)
• Staff working document on the evaluation of the SME definition  (2021)
• Executive summary on the evaluation of the SME definition  (2021)
• Q&A on the evaluation of the SME definition  (2021)
• Final report on evaluation of the SME definition  (2018) (10 MB)
• Final report on evaluation of the SME definition (2012)  (1.8 MB)
• Executive summary on evaluation of the SME definition (2012)  (345 kB)
• Implementing the SME definition (2009)  (50 kB)
• Implementing the SME definition (2006)  (40 kB)

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