components of a strategic media plan

Media Planning Basics: The 10 Parts of a Media Plan

Most successful advertising campaigns include a good Media Plan. But what is a Media Plan? What’s it made of? This article explains the 10 parts of Media Plan.

• What is a Media Plan?

In advertising, your Media Plan specifies the audience, location, timing, reach, frequency, cost, and goals of your media placements for your ad campaign.

• Who Creates Media Plans?

The Media Plan is the key deliverable of the Media Planning process, and is traditionally created by a Media Planner . However, Media Plans are sometimes created by Media Buyers, particularly in digital advertising.

As workflows evolve, others in the marketing organization may create media plans.

• The 10 Questions Your Media Plan Should Answer

Your Media Plan should answer all of these questions:

• What are the advertising goals?
• What is the media budget?
• Where exactly are we advertising?
• Who will we reach?
• When will the ads run?
• What is the frequency of advertising?
• How much does it cost exactly ?
• What are the ad specs?
• Which creative is running?
• What are the performance goals as KPIs?

Before getting into details of how a Media Plan answers all these questions, I feel obligated to alert you to some imposters claiming to be Media Plans, which are not.

• What is NOT a Media Plan

If you are looking at a document that claims to be a Media Plan, but doesn’t answer ALL of the questions above, it’s not a Media Plan. Period.

Media Plan Imposters Abound

I bring this up because too many people claim to provide a Media Plan but are actually providing something else. I don’t think their intent is to deceive. It’s probably because their definition of Media Plan is “loose.”

If you work for an agency, you already know what I mean, and can jump past this section.

Here are some examples of documents that sometimes pose as Media Plans that are not really Media Plans

A Marketing Mix is not a Media Plan.

The output from your marketing mix model is not a Media Plan. Your marketing mix – also known as media mix – is super-useful, but not directly actionable. Your next step is to create an actual Media Plan using your marketing mix model as a guide.

You can use your marketing mix model to break down your media budget into buckets. This will help you to track Media Plan progress against your marketing mix as placements are laid down on your plan.

Each segment of your marketing mix model will have to be activated in your Media Plan as one or more media placements that each specify the specific media vehicle, ad slot, timing, pricing, quantities, costing, and all the other elements described in more detail below.

A Media Strategy is not a Media Plan.

The output from a media research tool like Nielsen is not a Media Plan. While very useful in the Media Planning process, a media strategy is just a starting point. Your next step is to activate this media strategy in the form of a concrete Media Plan that answers ALL of the questions above.

An Advertising Flowchart is not a Media Plan.

While it’s one of my absolute favorite tools for visualizing a Media Plan, an advertising flowchart is not a Media Plan.

There are a couple of standalone flowcharting tools that claim to produce a Media Plan. In reality, what they provide is a visual representation of a media strategy in a flowchart format. For example, a layout of budgets by month by market, channel, or platform. Sometimes they’ll also include GRPs or impressions.

Because it lacks most of the media placement details, an advertising flowchart is not a Media Plan.

A Site List or Station List is not a Media Plan.

There are research tools that will spit out ranker lists of stations, websites, apps, influencers, or similar. Lists like these are useful to the Media Planning process. However, the list needs to be fleshed out into a real Media Plan. You need to pick specific ad products, set pricing, set quantities, calculate costs, etc.

A Media Budget is not a Media Plan.

I see a lot of digital “Media Plans” in Excel that are really just a media budget broken down by month. This is useful, but you have more work to do before it’s a true Media Plan.

That one line for “Google” or “Facebook” needs to be broken down into all the specific placements. You also need to account for the costs for all the ad tech like data overlays, ad serving, creative optimization, brand safety, etc.

You need to net out these costs to get to the working media that you can plug into the platform. For example, your budget for Google might be $100,000. If you simply plug $100,000 into Google, you’re going to go over budget when the other bills arrive for all the ad tech supporting your placements. A good Media Plan will help you avoid this with Top Down Costing .

The other big flaw with this type of Media Plan is it lacks accountability. A true Media Plan will include business KPIs against which your digital advertising will be held accountable.

• Umm Okay, so… What is a Media Plan?

For those of you who did not jump right past my rant above about all the imposters, thank you for listening.

Now, it’s time to get down to specifics of the elements of a Media Plan. In the sections below, you’ll find a summary of each element along with links to drill down into more detail.

• Media Plan Goals

Your Media Plan should capture the goals of your advertising campaign and any specific direction for your media placements.

This direction is best captured in a Media Brief . If you’ve not been given a media brief, interview the budget holder to understand the purpose of the advertising campaign, who they hope to reach, and how they want to measure success.

Other useful inputs to the Media Plan are media strategy, marketing mix, and any specific placements requested.

All of these documents should be referenced in the overview of your Media Plan because they will help to support the rationale of your placement decisions.

• Media Plan Budget

The next section of your Media Plan is your media budget.

The budget holder should have given you a specific budgeting goal. If not, stop right here.

Beware of No Budget

You can’t lay out a Media Plan without a budget. Sure, budgets can change. But every change in budget creates a lot of re-work. This extra work that can be avoided with a little more diligence up front.

Beware of Multiple Budgets

The other red flag is when the budget holder asks for plans at various budget levels. This will double or triple the amount of effort to create the Media Plan. And it multiplies the risk of errors when change requests inevitably arrive.

You Need One Budget!

So, it’s best to nail down a specific budget number, even if it is “soft.”

Once you have your budget, you should break down your budget into “buckets” – one for each segment of your budget. These buckets should correspond to the Media Plan Goals. For example, you might set up a separate bucket for each market, each platform, or each segment of your marketing mix.

Additional Resources:

• How to Establish a Media Budget
• Media Plan Placements

Placements are elemental building blocks of your Media Plan. Your Media Plan is comprised of one or more placements.

Each of your placements specifies the media program and product (a.k.a. “ad slot”). These terms “program” and “product” are specifically vague because we don’t want to get boxed into a specific media channel by saying station, website, platform, or other channel-specific term.

Here are a few examples:

• “New York Times” is the program, and “Home Page Leaderboard” is the product.
• “WKRP” is the program, and “Morning Drive :30” is the product.
• “Facebook” is the program, and “Sponsored Post” is the product.
• “Google” is the program, and “Auto Intenders” is the product.

It’s important to note that a program can be an audience program, as shown in the fourth example above.

Finding media programs and products is core challenge of Media Planning.

• How to Find Advertising Inventory.

In digital advertising, direct mail, and other targetable media channels, you can add further targeting to your placements. This will increase the efficiency and effectiveness of your media placements by excluding those who don’t match your target audience.

Your audience targeting criteria should be included in your Media Plan. For programmatic advertising, this is where you would enter your Deal ID on programmatic direct deals. If on the open market, then simply document your targeting criteria.

Many ad sellers like to bundle media placements into packages. This adds complexity to your Media Plan because while each placement is tracked separately, the costs are tracked at the package level. As a guiding principle in Media Planning, “it’s the job of the ad salesperson to bundle crappy inventory with good inventory and it’s the job of the media buyer to unbundle the package to eliminate the crappy inventory.”

In any case, you should expect to handle packages in your Media Plan.

I can promise you will hate dealing with packages, especially if you’re trying to create a Media Plan in Excel. Packages complicate costing, performance tracking, reconciliations, and seemingly everything else. We have a running joke on our product team “what about packages?” because they multiply the effort, complexity, and risk of almost every feature of the Media Planning tool.

Don’t say I did not warn you about packages!

• Media Plan Timing

The timing of a media placement is often as simple as a start date and an end date. But some Media Plan placements are more complicated than that.

Weekparting

If you only want to run on certain days of the week, this is known as “weekparting” your placement. For example, if you sell to businesses that work Monday through Friday, you might want to exclude weekends. For more information, see What Is Weekparting?

If you only want to run during certain times of the day, this is known as “dayparting” your placement. A good example is radio where you advertise during peak parts of the day like “morning drive.” For more information, see What Is Dayparting?

If you want breaks in your advertising – known as a “hiatus” – during your placement (without creating separate placements), you can accomplish this by “flighting” your placement. Flighting adds technical complexity to your Media Plan, but it’s important to handle it because of its prevalent use. For more, see What Is Flighting?

• Media Plan Reach

Your Media Plan should tell you how many people you can expect it to reach. In fact, every placement in your Media Plan should indicate reach.

Reach is typically included in Media Plans for TV, radio, and traditional channels. However, I’ve noticed that reach is often omitted in digital Media Plans. You’ll almost always see an estimate for impressions, but obviously the same person can see the same ad more than once.

Your media plan should always specify how many people you expect to reach. This is core to advertising. Don’t settle for less.

• How To Estimate Advertising Reach While Media Planning
• How to Calculate Effective Reach
• How to Estimate Cumulative Reach
• Media Plan Frequency

Your Media Plan should tell you how often each of the people reached by your advertisements see your advertisements. This is known as “frequency.”

Effective Frequency

Typically, a person will need to see your ad a bunch of times before it has an effect on them. This magic number is known as “effective frequency.”

You’ll want to optimize your Media Plan to maximize the number of people with effective frequency.

Frequency Capping

You’ll also want to avoid bombarding the same person with too many ads. You know how annoying it can be to see the same ad over and over. And it wastes media budget that could have been directed to achieve effective frequency with others. In digital advertising, this can be controlled by “frequency capping.”

Your Media Plan should indicate frequency, effective frequency, and frequency capping policy.

• Media Plan Cost Breakdown

In the old days, media costing was presented simply as a lump sum total of all the costs. Nowadays, it’s becoming common to see the costs itemized into all of its parts.

Beware of Shenanigans

Digital advertising is notorious for hidden costs related to ad tech. In May 2020, ISBA & PwC published a Programmatic Supply Chain Transparency Study , which revealed “that 51% of advertiser spend reaches the end publisher, 15% of the spend is unaccounted for (labeled the ‘unknown delta’)”.

You Need Cost Transparency

So, where does the other 49% go?

Your Media Plan should tell you where every penny is being spent. It should account for data overlay, platform fees, ad serving, ad verification, creative optimization, brand safety, agency compensation, net media cost, and all other fees.

Your Media Plan should give you perfect transparency into all costs.

• ANA Calls for More Transparency, Accountability, and Control of Advertising Investments
• Track Advertising Fees Like Never Before
• Media Plan Ad Specifications

One of the leading causes of missing start dates on placements is late creative. And one of the leading causes of late creative is missing ad specs.

Gathering creative is often a separate step in the Media Planning process. And it’s often neglected.

A good way to improve the efficiency of creative development is to gather and document ad specifications directly within the Media Plan. This should include the basic ad unit plus any restrictions. For example, “300×250” ad unit with “70kb maximum file size. No animation. PNG or JPEG format.”

Your Media Plan should carefully document these ad specifications.

• IAB New Ad Portfolio: Advertising Creative Guidelines
• Media Plan Creative

Shockingly, many Media Plans don’t indicate which ads – a.k.a. creative – are running with each of the placements. This makes no sense. The whole reason for buying media is to run ads, right?

Don’t settle for a Media Plan that does not reference the creative.

Each of the placements in your Media Plan should indicate which ad is running in that spot. If you’re rotating ads, you should include the name of the rotation.

Know What’s Running

The obvious reason for referencing creative in your Media Plan is to know which ads are running.

Gain Insights

Another reason for referencing creative in your Media Plan is because it sets you up to gain insights into your spending and performance over time. By including your ads in your Media Plan, you can understand how much money you’re putting behind each piece of create. It also sets you up to measure the performance of your creative.

• Media Plan KPI Goals

The reason for advertising is to achieve business objectives, such as achieving a sales goal. It’s frustrating to see so Media Plans that don’t include business goals. This is wrong.

Don’t settle for Media Plans that only lay out your ad placements and spending. That may have been acceptable for TV and radio advertising where it’s hard to measure performance. But it’s not acceptable for digital advertising.

Be Specific

Your Media Plan should include specific objectives such as impressions, clicks, conversions, sales, and Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) . Your goals should include specific counts and amounts, not simply CPMs and conversion rates.

Call Your Shots

It’s important to “call your shots” by setting up all your KPIs and goals before you run your ads. These goals should be presented with the media authorization and agreed upon during the budget sign-off process.

Demand Accountability

And when your ads start running, you should compare your performance against the baseline you set with your Media Plan.

It’s not enough to know “this placement drove 77 conversions at a cost per conversion of $43.84.” You should also know you expected 93 conversions at a cost per conversion of $33.87 and are pacing 17.2% behind goal.

• 12 Media KPIs You Should Be Tracking for 2022
• Estimate ROAS While Media Planning
• How to Track “Pacing” of Advertising KPIs
• How to Create a Media Plan

Creating a comprehensive media plan can be overwhelming. As you have learned, there’s a lot in a media plan. I hope you agree all this detail is necessary and useful.

Start Small

If this is your first time creating a media plan, it’s best to start with the basics.

A basic way to create a Media Plan is with spreadsheet software, like Excel. To help you get started, here is a free Media Plan template .

Then Level Up

As you outgrow Excel, you’ll want to level up to a real media planning tool, like Bionic Media Planning Software . Please let us know if you’re curious to learn more about Bionic.

• Read What Is Media Planning?
• Download Media Plan Template
• Learn about Bionic Media Planning Software
• Watch a demo of Bionic Media Planning Software
• Start a trial of Bionic Media Planning Software
• Use website chat to ask questions
• To Learn More...

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What is a Media Planner?

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About the Author

The Ultimate Guide to Creating a Media Planning Strategy

Today's digital landscape is highly competitive. As a result, businesses nowadays can achieve success by generating and distributing media content to their target audiences

By publishing new media, you boost brand visibility, engagement, conversions, and revenue. Media content also helps you stand out from the crowd. Monitoring, planning, organizing, disseminating, and evaluating that vast amount of media content, on the other hand, might get perplexing over time.

With an exhaustively examined media arranging system set up, groups can thoroughly assess campaign success and settle on instructed choices about further developing execution later. This comprehensive guide explains the whole concept of media planning, sheds light on its benefits, and describes all steps required to build a successful media plan.

What is Media Planning?

Media planning is how marketers select where, when, and how frequently they will promote to maximize engagement and ROI. The media strategy may allocate advertising dollars and resources to multiple online and offline channels such as broadcast, print, paid commercials, video ads, and native content.

In today's competitive marketing world, marketers must deliver customers the relevant message at the right time and through the right channel to see engagement. Marketers determine these "rights" through media planning. Regardless of who is in charge of the development, complete awareness of the components of a media plan, marketing channels, and the aspects that contribute to an effective strategy is required.

Get a 360-degree view of your social media marketing performance

Media planning components:.

Before establishing a plan, the media planner must fill in the blanks on specific components. Without first comprehending its components, making a media plan is akin to blindfolded cycling.

The component checklist serves as the plan's foundation and the following factors should be considered:

• Audience: Who is the message aimed at? What makes the message necessary to them? What is the message’s purpose?
• Marketing budget: How much money do you have to spread the word?
• Conversion objectives: What actions do your messages encourage the audience to take? What effect will this have on the strategy?
• Success is defined as: What are the important performance indicators to monitor? How do they contribute to the strategy? How will you assess and report on these indicators? What is the expected ROI?
• Message frequency: How frequently should the message be communicated? While you want your message to reach your audience as much as possible your resource constraints may force a limit on your frequency. 
• Message reach: How many people should the message reach? Is the communication platform scalable? The platform you use to distribute the message determines how the reach is measured. It is critical for media planners to grasp the nature, applications, and uses of every possible form of media.

Forms of Media

Marketing and advertising materials adopt the shape that best conveys the message and motivates the consumer to perform the desired action. Digital media encompasses everything.

Efforts to spread the word via conventional and digital media can be classified as follows:

• Owned media comprises original materials, such as blog posts and explainer videos , that are released directly on platforms owned and maintained by the organization spreading the message. When an owned media asset goes viral, it brings unprecedented brand awareness especially when the brand needs it. However, it is a desirable but unpredictable state that should never be considered the cornerstone of any media strategy.
• Earned media assets, such as news pieces or profiles in a newspaper or online news site, convey the organization's message but are developed by other parties. Typically, this is a function of public relations or media relations.
• Paid media assets are assets related to advertising spending, such as social media advertisements, paid search ads, and paid commercials on television.

No form of media can be considered insignificant. The sort of media employed can make or break a campaign, and it is only one of several criteria that influence the potential effectiveness of a media plan.

Benefits of Media Planning

Parts of content development and distribution that benefit from media planning include: 

• Knowing your target audience on a deeper level helps you effectively reach them through your media content.
• You are free to choose any social media channels and platforms to distribute your work on.
• You control the timing and frequency of publishing and sharing media or other materials. The strategy also assists in creating a well-defined editorial calendar for publishing branded content across different media platforms.
• Keeping up with the newest media and technological trends.
• It is critical to stick to your budget while you work to create, publish, and share high-quality and engaging media content. Media planning helps you do this and you can execute your campaigns without worrying that you may run out of resources.

Now that we've covered the advantages of media planning, let's go over the processes in the media planning process so you can start designing your company's strategy.

Right Mindset to Create a Media Plan

Once you know that you need a media plan, you should get your team in the right mindset. A well thought out media strategy requires that your team knows why you need it and has a good idea of what entails from this point onwards.

Here are a few points you can discuss with your team to get them in the right mindset before they set out on their journey to create a well thought out media strategy. These are the activities they should expect to perform as part of the overall process of creating a media strategy that will serve its purpose.

Conduct market research

The first step in building your media strategy is to do market research. Market research allows you to personalize your content and media plan for your target demographic and clients.

Begin by strengthening knowledge of your target audience and present consumers, and researching buyer personas (if you haven't previously).

You may use this information to assess which channel will reach, resonate with, and convert your target audience. It will also help you decide the platform and channels to distribute your content.

State your media planning objective

While creating your media plan, have a goal (or a few) to help you navigate the process efficiently. Furthermore, goals can help you determine which types of content and platforms you can say "no" to.

Here are some examples of media planning goals you could have:

• When developing and sharing media, improve cross-team collaboration (for example, content, graphic design, animated video , blog, social media).
• Improve and streamline all media publication and dissemination procedures.
• Improve the schedule for media distribution to guarantee that our material is circulated efficiently and that it is relevant to our target audience.
• Increase the success of our media content by enabling enough time to examine its impact and reach our target audience.
• Increase brand awareness to recruit new talent and retain existing ones.

Assume you want to establish a media plan for your Facebook and Instagram social content. Your goal could be to expedite the content generation process in a timely manner and then schedule postings on both channels ahead of time. 

In this manner, you can ensure that your postings are relevant to your audience, increasing interaction and keeping you at the top of their minds.

Using a template, create your media plan

It is not enough to merely plan and then assume that everyone else is on the same page. In a media plan paper, you must outline your strategy. Then, you'll be able to establish team alignment and hold everyone accountable.

Templates for media planning help you be efficient and productive while working on all the elements. They manage your media content while publishing and sharing it with your audience members.

For example, if your company wants to build a media plan for its Facebook and Instagram accounts, you could use a social media calendar. 

Implement your media plan

Ensure that all parties who should be aware of the strategy have the essential information to assist you in carrying it out. In addition, provide the contact information for your company's media-planning point person if anyone has any questions or complaints.

To better grasp what I mean, consider our previous step's example of your social media strategy for Facebook and Instagram. For example, if you use a social media calendar template as part of your media strategy, make sure everyone working on it or providing content for both platforms has access to it.

Evaluate your success

Whether your media strategy relies on individual Instagram posts or a month-long company-wide campaign, make sure to track the success of your efforts.

Did this media strategy help us achieve our specific objectives? As well as "Did the media planning templates and tools we use provide value to our media development and publication processes?" Inquire about yourself and your team.

How you evaluate the effectiveness of your media plan should be closely related to your company's specific goals for media and content, the teams that develop the media, and the value you want to extract from the media (e.g., boosting conversions, engagements, revenue, etc.).

6 Steps to building a comprehensive media planning strategy

Investigating media planning tactics can assist marketers in properly selecting the appropriate media outlets for distributing messages to a relevant audience. The following summarizes some of the major aspects that must be addressed while developing a media plan.

Selecting Relevant Media Channels

When it comes to sharing material, media strategists have alternatives regarding the channel or channels. First, users receive content via channels, digital or traditional outlets. Television, radio, and print advertisements are examples of traditional media outlets.

Digital channels include social media, websites, email, and other online platforms. Your chosen channel should be what your target audience is likely to use. For example, channels appeal to users depending on their age, gender, socioeconomic status, and other demographic factors.

Determining the relevant timeline

What factors influence the timeline of a media campaign? It is determined by the product or service, message goals, target audience, and event calendar. A project plan is required to determine what assets are required to support the campaign to develop the media campaign timetable.

It can be beneficial to begin at the end when determining resource requirements. For example, when is the best time to publish (or when should you publish)? With that in mind, the planner can begin mapping out the work that needs to be done. Every part of the strategy must be given adequate time to mature.

Coordinating the Channel Mix

A media plan will rarely comprise just one station. Instead, most campaigns will include at least two—and possibly several more—to guarantee that the material is served to as many people as possible.

However, businesses must ensure that the message is consistent across all mediums. Then, when used appropriately, they can be complementary.

This is especially true for social media channels. Therefore, it would be best to have the right content strategy to target the right audience on social media platforms.

Leveraging Audience Targeting

Identifying who to share a message with and how to locate them is known as audience targeting. Most marketers start the audience targeting process by creating buyer personas, which are fictionalized versions of the individuals they want to attract. Once a company has developed its target personas, marketers can more effectively select the appropriate marketing channel to reach the specified demographic.

Audience insights such as age, gender, job, purchasing patterns, interests, financial status, geographic area, and personal or professional aspirations create personas. This data can be acquired using a template containing original research into a current client base or gathered using Google Analytics.

Determining which media channels the persona's real individuals use is a key part of persona building. Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter provide audience segmentation tools that divide their users' demographic information into targetable segments.

Setting Reach and Frequency Goals

Another important aspect of a media strategy is reach, which is strongly related to frequency. As previously stated, reach is a measurement of the number of people who see, read, or listen to the material. The frequency, also known as the number of impressions, is the number of times the audience is expected to see or hear the item. Therefore, marketers must determine what they hope to achieve in terms of reach and frequency when evaluating media plan possibilities.

The amount of money invested in magnifying the message frequently determines reach and frequency. However, because such situations are rare, a media strategy must account for the amount of money required to get the content in front of the right number of people.

Choosing a Voice

The tone employed to convey the message is the "voice" of a piece of information. In written literature, word choice and sentence length influence it. The use of color and shapes in visual media produces "voice." People respond to real messaging, so the voice of a piece of content is vital. Consumers are astute. They recognize attempts to sell them something. Messages that appear or sound inauthentic or irrelevant elicit a visceral response.

Boost your media planning strategy with 9 best practices

Steps to Develop a successful Media Plan

A solid media strategy guarantees that the material has the highest chance of performing its design function. The marketing team is adrift without a well-thought media strategy. Success, if it happens, is a result of chance rather than careful planning.

After examining the best media planning tactics, marketers must build the finest plan for their organization. The processes for building a media plan are outlined below, beginning with market research.

Conduct Market Research

Before establishing a goal, developing an editorial calendar, or creating a piece of content, the marketing team must first learn a few things about the people who will consume or purchase their product or service. This needs market research, the first step in designing a media plan.

Buyer persona characteristics such as age and other demographics are revealed via market research. It provides information on purchasing behavior as well as personal preferences. In addition, it tells content creators what voice to use, which platforms their potential customers visit, and what type of material will be popular with people.

In a word, market research is the strategy's cornerstone. It should be completed completely and updated on a regular basis based on test results.

Clarify the objective

It is nearly impossible to build an effective marketing asset (ad, blog article, video, static picture, etc.) without first determining why the item is required. The goal must shape every component of the content. What objectives a piece of content assist the marketing team in achieving?

• Brand awareness and loyalty. Inform or demonstrate what the company and its people are all about to a user.
• Thought leadership. Demonstrate or explain why the organization and its employees are experts in their subject to a user.
• Data accessibility. Allow users to access data or history that they can utilize in their professional or personal lives.
• Lead generation. Generate a pool of potential customers by demonstrating how a product or service might be beneficial.
• Lead conversion. Allow a potential consumer to actively seek more information or establish an ongoing relationship with the organization.

Content creators can structure their work with purpose and direction if they have a goal or goals in mind ahead of time. As a result, it expedites the creative process and reduces the amount of time required for revisions. In addition, time spent deciding the ending early on saves time later.

Identify the Target Audience

Audience targeting is the process of segmenting consumers based on their interests and demographic data. 

The primary goal of segmentation is to ensure that the right people receive the message. Of course, the "right people" are individuals who are most likely to use the offered goods or services. Here are some suggestions for effective audience targeting:

• Analytics. Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and other platforms analyze consumer data such as geographic location, websites visited, and personal and professional interests. Use these resources to learn more about clients already working with the organization.
• Organize focus groups and surveys. Invite current users and consumers to fact-finding meetings, or use surveys to ask why people use products when and how they do.
• A/B testing. Test how the public reacts to various information to understand what works and what does not. An A/B test examines two versions of the same content, such as an advertisement with the same words but different images. The version that outperforms the others can be used.

Set the budget

When developing a media strategy, every potential cost must be considered. For example, a campaign may necessitate display advertising, social media ad placement, sponsored social media posts, paid search engine ad placement, influencer marketing fees, and other expenses.

The media buyer's job is to estimate the costs of all of these items. The media planner then uses the information to determine the most cost-effective development and distribution of content.

Hidden or unplanned costs can undermine a marketing strategy. Include an "emergency" fund to cover additional fees, commissions, testing, and unforeseen expenses.

Final Thoughts

Organizations can make better data-driven decisions about enhancing marketing ROI and boosting conversions with a thorough media planning strategy. 

It may look like a daunting task at the beginning, but the journey itself is nothing but rewarding. You will identify aspects of your business that you did not consider earlier.

Many brands find that a well-thought media strategy formalizes a lot of things they wanted to do but did not have a framework to get started on those.

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Media Strategy Essentials: Building a Winning Game Plan

• November 29, 2023

Today, those that create an effective media strategy are those that are standing out in the crowded marketplace.

This guide dives into the details of developing a robust media strategy for anyone involved in media planning and buying.

Discover how to target audiences and consumers effectively through a well-thought-out advertising strategy, leveraging the power of visual media and various media platforms. Whether you’re a seasoned professional or new to the field, this guide offers valuable knowledge on creating media plans that resonate with your target audience.

Let’s get into it!

What Is A Media Strategy?

A media strategy is a comprehensive approach to achieving marketing objectives, blending strategic thinking, detailed planning, and a profound understanding of your target audience’s preferences and requirements. It’s far more than just an impromptu concept; it’s a well-crafted plan focusing on three key aspects: identifying your target audience, crafting the core message you wish to convey, and selecting the most effective media channels for message dissemination.

This strategy encompasses various elements such as social media platforms, paid and owned media, as well as advertising campaigns.

It involves careful media planning to utilize different media platforms effectively, including social media networks, online media, and even traditional channels like print ads.

The goal is to increase brand awareness, reach potential customers, and drive them towards a desired action.

In implementing a media strategy, marketers begin by conducting a competitive analysis and leveraging demographic information to fine-tune their target audience.

The media plan may include a mix of paid ads, owned media strategy, and earned media strategy, ensuring the right mix of media types to effectively reach consumers.

Content creation, optimizing for search engines, and focusing on the right message are crucial elements of this strategy.

An effective media plan also considers the marketing budget, media buying, and pay-per-click advertising. By making informed decisions, the marketing team aims to enhance conversion rates and achieve conversion goals.

A media strategy is an essential aspect of a business’s overall marketing plan, requiring a deep understanding of various media categories and the ability to craft an advertising message that resonates with the intended audience.

Media Strategy Components

Diving into the core elements of a media strategy, we find it’s not as daunting as deciphering a complex puzzle. This strategy revolves around five fundamental components: objectives, target audience, message, media mix, and budget.

Starting with objectives, these are your north stars, guiding your path towards achieving your business and marketing goals.

These objectives should be aligned with the overall vision of the company. They often encompass not only marketing and sales goals but also aspects like brand positioning, market expansion, and customer engagement metrics. Regular review and adjustment of these objectives are necessary to ensure they stay relevant in a rapidly changing market environment.

Target Audience

Following this is the target audience, where you delve into their preferences, dislikes, habits, and tendencies, aiming for a deep understanding of their psyche to effectively reach potential customers.

In addition to demographic and psychographic analysis, understanding the target audience also involves tracking their online behavior and engagement patterns. This includes analyzing data from social media interactions, website visits, and even customer feedback. Tailoring content and media strategies to suit the evolving preferences of the audience is crucial for maintaining relevance and engagement.

The message is your golden ticket – the crucial information you wish to convey. It should be concise, compelling, and crafted to increase brand awareness.

The message should also encapsulate the core values and unique selling propositions of the brand. It needs to resonate with the target audience on an emotional level, fostering a connection that goes beyond mere transactional interactions. The messaging strategy should be versatile enough to be adapted across different media platforms while maintaining a consistent brand voice.

Next is the media mix , encompassing various channels and platforms, including social media platforms, print ads, online media, and other types of media, to broadcast your message.

The media mix should also consider the integration of emerging digital channels, such as influencer collaborations, podcast advertising, and interactive content on new social media channels. Analyzing the return on investment for each channel is crucial to optimize the media mix continually. It’s about finding the right balance between traditional and digital media to maximize reach and impact.

Then comes the financial aspect – your budget. It’s vital to determine how much you’re ready to invest in your media strategy, balancing between paid media, owned media, and earned media strategies. This budget consideration extends to media buying, pay-per-click advertising, and allocating resources for different media platforms.

Implementation and Planning

In implementing this strategy, the marketing team engages in media planning, considering various media planning strategies, including media concentration strategy and media dispersion strategy. It involves leveraging social media posts, advertising campaigns, and content creation tailored to the intended audience. The strategy also incorporates competitive analysis, media types selection, and the right mix of advertising message and media channels to effectively reach and engage your target audience.

Achieving Goals

A well-planned media strategy helps marketers make informed decisions, focusing on the right message and using tools like search engines to enhance visibility. It’s all about crafting a media plan that aligns with your marketing budget and marketing objectives, aiming to drive desired actions, improve conversion rates, and achieve conversion goals.

How To Plan A Media Strategy And What To Consider

Embarking on the journey of media strategy planning? It might appear daunting, but let’s simplify it.

Initial Analysis and Evaluation

Begin by evaluating your business’s current standing. Assess what strategies have been effective and where improvements are needed. This self-analysis lays the foundation for a solid media strategy.

Additionally, this analysis should include a thorough market analysis, examining trends, customer behaviors, and the competitive landscape. Understanding where your business stands in relation to the market and competitors is crucial for identifying opportunities and threats. This step often involves gathering and analyzing both quantitative data and qualitative insights.

Establishing Objectives

Now, establish your objectives. These should be SMART : Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Clearly defined goals guide your strategy and align with your business and marketing goals.

These objectives should also be flexible enough to adapt to changing market conditions. Regularly revisiting and revising the objectives ensures that your strategy remains relevant and effective in achieving long-term business success. This dynamic approach to goal setting allows for agility in response to unforeseen market shifts or new opportunities.

Understanding Your Target Audience

Next, delve deeply into understanding your target audience . Uncover their preferences, needs, and aspirations. This knowledge is crucial for crafting a message that resonates and selecting the appropriate media mix.

Consider creating detailed buyer personas to better visualize and understand your target audience. These personas should include demographic details, interests, pain points, and media consumption habits. This deeper understanding aids in creating more targeted and personalized marketing efforts, which are more likely to resonate with your audience.

Developing the Key Message

Developing your key message is next. It should be compelling and align with your brand, designed to increase brand awareness and reach your intended audience effectively.

This key message should be tested and refined based on feedback and audience engagement. Experiment with different variations of your message across various platforms to see what works best. Continual refinement based on real-world data and audience feedback ensures that your messaging stays effective and relevant.

Competitive Analysis and Industry Trends

But wait, there’s more! Keep an eye on your competitors. Perform a competitive analysis to see how you can stand out. What are they doing, and how can you do it better? Also, stay attuned to industry trends . Embrace the latest developments and consider how they can enhance your strategy.

Utilize tools and resources for monitoring industry news and competitor activities. Staying informed about your competitors’ strategies and industry shifts can provide valuable insights for adjusting your approach. Incorporating these insights into your strategy can give you a competitive edge and help identify emerging opportunities.

Selecting the Media Mix: Leverage Social Media Platforms

In terms of media, consider a blend of owned, earned, and paid media. This mix might include social media platforms, online media, print ads, and various other media types. Leverage social media posts and advertising campaigns to engage with your audience.

When selecting your media mix, also consider the integration of new and emerging platforms. Stay abreast of evolving digital trends and platforms, as they may offer unique opportunities to connect with your audience in innovative ways. Diversifying your media mix can help reach a wider audience and enhance engagement.

Comprehensive Media Planning

For a comprehensive approach, involve media planning, considering both media concentration and dispersion strategies. Your marketing team should also focus on content creation, utilizing search engines for greater visibility.

In media planning, also account for the tracking and analysis of media performance. Use analytics tools to monitor engagement, reach, conversions, and ROI across different platforms. This data-driven approach allows for more informed decision-making and helps in fine-tuning the media strategy for optimal results.

Flexibility and Budget Alignment

Remember, your media strategy should be flexible to adapt to the changing landscape of social media networks, paid ads, and other evolving platforms. Monitor conversion rates and adjust your strategy as necessary.

Lastly, ensure your media plan aligns with your marketing budget, including considerations for media buying, pay-per-click advertising, and choosing the right advertising message and media channels to effectively reach potential customers.

An effective media plan is key to making informed decisions and achieving your marketing and conversion goals.

Types of Media Strategies

Source: Search Engine Journal

Exploring the realm of media strategies reveals a diverse landscape.

There are three primary types: paid media, owned media, and earned media .

Paid media is exactly what it implies – investing funds to broadcast your message. This includes paid ads and can extend to pay-per-click advertising on various social media platforms and other online media. A good paid media strategy can make all the difference.

Owned Media

Owned media encompasses all the channels you directly control.

This category features your website, social media profiles, blogs, and any content you create and disseminate on your social media channels. It’s where your social media strategy takes center stage. Focus on creating engaging social media campaigns.

Earned Media

Earned media is the recognition you gain when others voluntarily promote your content or speak positively about your brand.

It’s a testament to your brand’s reach and influence, extending beyond just your target audience to potential customers.

This type of media can significantly bolster your public relations efforts.

Integrating Media Strategies

Each of these media types plays a crucial role in a comprehensive media strategy. They work together to reach consumers, increase brand awareness, and drive the desired action.

For instance, an effective media strategy might combine an advertising campaign on paid media platforms with engaging social media posts on owned channels, all while aiming to generate positive buzz as earned media.

Planning and Implementation

Incorporating these strategies requires careful media planning. Marketers begin by identifying their target customers and understanding demographic information. They then create a media plan that considers the right mix of media types, aiming to deliver the right message to the intended audience.

Achieving Success with a Balanced Approach

A successful media strategy is not just about choosing the right media categories. It’s about aligning with marketing and business goals, using original research to inform decisions, and focusing on achieving high advertising impact and conversion rates.

Each component—paid, owned, and earned—must be harmonized to form an effective, holistic approach to reaching and engaging your audience.

Measuring and Optimizing Media Strategy Performance

Key performance indicators (kpis), importance of kpis:.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) serve as the vital signs of your media strategy’s health. By identifying and tracking the right KPIs, businesses can gauge the effectiveness of their media efforts. KPIs act as quantifiable measures that directly reflect the success or failure of your strategy.

For instance, engagement rates on social media provide insights into how well your content resonates with your audience, while website traffic metrics can indicate the effectiveness of your digital advertising campaigns.

Conversion rates reveal the success of turning interested prospects into customers, and return on investment (ROI) measures the financial effectiveness of your media spending.

Tailoring KPIs to Objectives:

It’s crucial to select KPIs that align with your specific media strategy objectives. If your goal is brand awareness, focus on metrics like reach, impressions, and brand mentions.

If the aim is lead generation, track leads generated, lead quality, and conversion rates. By tailoring KPIs to specific objectives, you can get a clearer picture of your strategy’s performance in each area.

Setting Benchmarks

Realistic benchmark setting:.

Setting realistic benchmarks for each KPI is a critical step. Benchmarks should be grounded in reality, reflecting industry standards, historical data of your own campaigns, or a competitive analysis of similar companies in your sector.

For instance, if the average engagement rate in your industry is 3%, expecting a 10% rate might be unrealistic without significant strategy changes.

Using Benchmarks to Gauge Performance:

Benchmarks serve as a yardstick to measure your strategy’s performance. By comparing your KPIs against these benchmarks, you can identify areas where your strategy is excelling or underperforming.

This comparison is invaluable for understanding the landscape you’re operating in and for setting achievable and ambitious goals.

Adjusting Benchmarks Over Time:

It’s important to remember that benchmarks are not static. As your business grows, as industry dynamics shift, and as you gain more insights from ongoing campaigns, your benchmarks should evolve.

Regularly revisiting and adjusting these benchmarks ensure that they remain relevant and challenging, pushing your strategy towards continuous improvement.

KPIs are essential tools for measuring the success of your media strategy. They provide objective data that can inform decision-making and strategy adjustments. Setting realistic benchmarks based on industry standards and historical data allows businesses to accurately assess their strategy’s performance and make necessary improvements.

By continuously monitoring these indicators and adjusting your benchmarks, you can keep your media strategy aligned with your business goals and the ever-changing market landscape.

Actionable Next Steps

First off, take action.

Begin plotting your media strategy right away. Remember, this strategy isn’t a static, one-time document. It’s a dynamic, living entity that requires constant tweaks and updates.

And hey, remember to pat yourself on the back and celebrate your victories, no matter how small they seem. When your media strategy hits the bullseye, take a moment to bask in the glory!

And if it falls short?

Well, don’t see it as a setback. Instead, view it as a stepping stone to success. Learn from it, tweak your strategy, and keep pushing forward. After all, every master was once a beginner.

Looking for more ways to gain an edge when it comes to creating impactful media plans ? Look no further! Take a tour of Mediatool today .

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The Ultimate Guide to the Media Planning Process [With Templates]

Table of Contents

What is media planning, the media planning process.

• How to Create a Media Plan?

5 Media Marketing Plan Templates

5 media channels , top media planning software.

Media content dominates brands’ marketing strategies. Sharing media content improves brands’ visibility and engagement with clients and promotes the audience’s conversion to customers. However, it has become a little complicated to plan and publish media content across all media channels in today’s digital era, with so many social media platforms. 

This is where media planning comes in. A brand will analyze the market performance of its social media activities and accordingly plan its content and distribute it. Media planning makes the process of marketing campaigns more organized and less stressful for marketing teams. This article shares the ultimate media planning guide. Before that, let us understand what media planning is. 

A media plan is a guide that entails determining the target audience, outlining the timeline of when to publish media content, and which content to distribute across which media channels. 

The media planning process is a multi-layered project. It includes studying social media platforms, analyzing which media performs the best on which media channel, comparing with other competitive brands, designing the content to cater to the appropriate audience, meeting the marketing objectives, etc. Media planning aims to boost engagement and get a better ROI. 

Every successful media marketing strategy has an efficient and well-developed media planning process behind it. Media planning also helps marketers stick to the clients’ goals and budget while ensuring the optimum results from media marketing campaigns.

The media planning process is not a “one size fits all” formula. Although the basic steps are common, how you implement them must be tailored to your marketing goals and brand vision. So, let us take you through the media planning process step by step.

• Study the market

Market research is an essential step in the media planning process. Thorough research conducted by marketers always backs a sound media plan. Before you design your media content, analyze what your competitors are doing and if it is fetching the results. 

Marketers do thorough research on your niche brands and their marketing campaigns. This will help you save time because you will know exactly which marketing strategies are working and on which media. 

• Determine your objective

A successful media planning process needs clear communication between the brand and the marketing department. It is crucial to outline your objectives to the marketers at the onset to tailor the media content to suit your brand’s goals. Some of your goals could be:

• To specify which form of media to focus on: blogs, videos, photographs, infographics, etc. 
• To streamline your media content across all channels to stay on top of your audience’s mind.
• To determine your target demographics for your campaign. 
• To generate more website traffic, make more sales, or even get more engagement. 

Stating your media marketing budget is a fundamental approach to navigating this media planning process. This will allow the marketing team to allocate funds to each component of the media plan without going above the overall budget. 

• Create a media plan

Creating a media plan is the backbone of the media planning process. It outlines which content is to be created, the deadlines and priority of tasks, and where each content will be published. It also strategizes how to use media marketing to get more engagement or more customers. 

Using templates for a media planning guide makes the process easier and more organized, and then you can share the document with your team members so that you are equally invested in each aspect of the process. 

• Put your plan in motion.

It would help if you shared the media plan with all the concerned members after you have approved your strategy, goals, and timeline from the stakeholders. Each concerned party has to deliver their tasks within the stipulated time so that the entire media marketing campaign goes smoothly. A successful campaign results from an efficient working out of the media plan.

• Evaluate the results 

The success of a media plan is subjective. It solely depends on your objectives from the media campaign and whether you could derive your desired results from the same. The success or failure of a media plan is rooted in your business goals. For instance, if you run a campaign on Facebook and Instagram to get high engagement and more conversion, analyze your before and after metrics and see if the goals have been achieved.

Use the results from this campaign as lessons for appropriate improvements for the following media plan.  

How to Create a Media Plan

Let us take you through the steps on how to create a media plan in advertising. 

• Set your goals

The goals of media marketing are the determiners of media marketing. Therefore, it is crucial to learn and understand the client’s goals before beginning the media planning process. Once the goals are laid down, marketers can put their heads together to strategize a media plan that will achieve all the objectives. 

As a brand, you must very objectively outline your SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound) goals to give unambiguous instructions to the marketers. 

• Specific: Outline the particular goal you have in mind, like boosting website traffic.
• Measurable: Set a goal that can be gauged, for example, the number of website visits driven by Instagram. 
• Attainable: If you have 10,000 followers, you can set a goal of adding 3000 followers through the media marketing campaign.
• Relevant: You might aim to get better brand visibility to get more customers.
• Time-bound: Give your goals a set deadline so that the media plan can be molded accordingly to attain those. For instance, mention that you want a hike of 5000 followers in two months. 

• Target audience

Media marketing is not meant for every netizen but for a specific demographic that will add value to the brand in terms of engagement, sales, or growth. Tools like Google Analytics can help brands learn about their target audience. Certain factors can help you determine your target audience : demographics (age, location, income, etc.), interests (shopping, education, food, travel, etc.), and background (job, social media used, lifestyle, etc.). 

• Determine the timing

A media plan is incomplete without having a set deadline for achieving goals. Therefore, dividing the tasks into smaller, more attainable tasks is significant. It is crucial to set a timeline for each job and communicate it to the team members as a marketer. 

Timing also entails the period during which the media will be exposed to the audience. For instance, a two-month-long media marketing campaign for a new product launch is an excellent time to build anticipation and reveal the product. 

• Select media channels

Your choice of media channels depends on which mediums your target audience uses. Therefore, you need to research your target audience before launching your campaigns. You can advertise your content on several media outlets: newspapers, magazines, social media, search engines, billboards, radio, etc. The media planning guide will only work if the media reaches your target audience.

1. Product marketing launch plan

2. marketing campaign plan, 3. event marketing plan, 4. social media calendar, 5. marketing project plan, 1. newspapers.

The media planning process through newspapers targets a niche audience. It is pretty simple for newspapers because only a particular demographic reads newspapers. 

Newspapers are organized into sections based on the people’s interests like science, entertainment, global news, sports, etc. Brands can place their ads in the sections that interest their target audience. A media plan through newspapers is especially effective for local brands as newspapers in local languages have a very local presence. 

2. Television

Media content can be used as advertisements in specific programs or certain time slots to attract the target audience. Media marketing through TV shows the products and services very vividly and can grab the audiences’ attention. This helps get the attention of audiences who do not have an online presence but can turn into potential customers. 

3. Social media

Social media channels offer platforms for brands to build a space to engage with clients and build brand awareness. It is also a place where you can publish tailor-made content to cater to the target audience. 

Social media advertisements can be studied and analyzed to understand if the media planning process was a success or not. You can also check the results of a media plan while the campaign is running and can make changes accordingly. 

4. PPC advertisements

PPC or pay-per-click advertisements are most popular on Google Ads. PPC ads are of two types—search and display ads. 

Search ads refer to the advertisements that appear on search engines when a person looks for keywords you are targeting through your campaign. 

Display ads are mainly targeted toward a specific target audience. These ads also give a lot of information on media campaigns, as they collect data on every click. 

5. Magazines

Magazines can be used as a potential place to implement ads. This is because magazines are generally very niche-specific, and hence you can seamlessly blend your advertisements along with the magazine’s content. 

Furthermore, reaching the target audience through magazines is very efficient as only a specific demographic will read a particular niche of magazines. Additionally, people tend to keep magazines for a long time, and hence the number of views of the ads increases over time.  

There is certain software that can help with the media planning process. Some of them include, 

• Google Sheets

This is a very simplified software to plan your media marketing. In addition, since you can create Excel sheets through this software, it becomes easier to share the documents with others. 

Canva is a designing platform where you will find hundreds of templates and tools to create professional media plans. You can not only make the designs on Canva but also share them with your colleagues so that they can tackle their responsibilities on time. 

Asana is a project management channel. On Asana, you can invite people across your organization to join the media planning process; this keeps everyone in the loop of what’s happening and makes their efforts streamlined.

Wrapping Up

The media planning process plays an essential role in planning, creating, publishing, and sharing media content. It is done to gain engagement and get more sales or website traffic. Media planning is not a single-step process but one that has many steps.

So, get started with your media planning process with the help of this guide and the templates provided. 

Key Takeaways

• A media plan is a guide that puts in place the nitty-gritty of a media campaign, beginning from the objectives to the deadline of each task.
• Determining a clear set of goals and objectives that you plan to achieve through media marketing is very crucial.
• A media plan is a very subjective matter, which has to be designed to cater to specific business needs and demands.  
• Using templates for the media planning process can make the entire business very organized and straightforward to handle.
• The media planning process does not end with implementing the plan, but it analyzes the project results to gauge whether the strategies and tools worked. 

A media plan is a guide that covers an advertisement campaign by which marketers determine which media content for brands will run on which media channels and for how long etc.   

1. Market research 2. Setting goals 3. Creating a media plan 4. Implementing the plan and analyzing campaign results

Media planning streamlines the entire process of content creation and sharing across channels. Through media marketing plans, it also seamlessly navigates clients’ goals and ultimate achievements. 

Media planning templates are charts, documents, and excel sheets that already have all the data for a media plan. They also have specific pre-filled fields, against which you only need to fill the data suited to your business. As a result, these templates make your tasks more efficient. 

Some essential steps of building a healthy media plan are setting objectives, analyzing the target audience, determining the deadline and the timings of the ad, and choosing the media channels. 

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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

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

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.

Don't forget to share this post!

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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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What is media planning the ultimate guide to success.

Media planning involves finding the best channels for reaching your target audience while maximizing ROI. Learn more about how to develop a successful media plan here.

Streaming. Digital. Print. Radio. Social media. The list goes on. There are so many channels for brands to reach target audiences that media planning can become quite a task for marketers, advertisers, media planners, and buyers alike. But don’t worry. Team TEGNA has you covered. This guide is designed to help answer some of your most pressing questions regarding today’s fragmented, competitive, and challenging media landscape.

What is a Media Plan? What is Media Planning?

Advertising is about reaching the right audience at the right time and place. To do so effectively, you can’t just take shots in the dark and hope it works. That’s why creating a media plan is one of the most critical components of your marketing campaign.

In creating a media plan, you’ll outline the who, what, when, where, why, and how your brand intends to reach its target audience. By researching and mapping out these variables, your cohesive plan can help campaigns reach the right audience at the right time, improve the frequency and reach, and maximize your ROI. 

The Importance of Media Planning

Creating a media plan can help solve everyday challenges and problems that brands face when running marketing and advertising campaigns. A well-thought-out media plan can help set goals and benchmarks against those goals, which help calculate ROI , eliminate wasted budget, now which marketing tactics lead to sales or conversions ( attribution) , and select the proper channels for your campaign.

The Goals of Media Planning

Media planning aims to distribute advertising spending to maximize ROI.  Once you define your key objectives, media planning sets your campaign up for success in terms of timeline and distribution of spend. 

An Overview of the Steps for Developing a Media Strategy

Now that you know what a great media strategy entails, how do you get started developing it? Below are some items that should be included in your advertising plan.

1. Set Campaign Goals & Objectives

What is your brand trying to achieve? What action do you want viewers to take, and what is the definition of a successful campaign? You’ll want to set SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely). Examples include increasing website traffic, improving conversion rates, and generating a specific number of leads. 

• Pro Tip: Determine Metrics for Success. When you define your campaign goals, determine what metrics you will use to measure success. If your goal is to improve conversion rates, you’ll want to measure conversion rates by channel so you know which platform delivers the best results and can continually optimize your campaign. 

2. Create a Budget & Timeline

How much does your brand have to spend on its campaign, and how long will it run? Detail a proposed budget and keep the campaign within these parameters. 

• Pro Tip: Spending more money does not equal better results.

3. Establish Frequency & Reach

Reach is how many people will see your campaign over time, and frequency refers to how many times one person will see the campaign during its run. In determining how many people you want to see your campaign and how many times they see it, there are three main tactics to consider:

• Continuity: Ads run consistently — for example, five times per week or twice per day.
• Flighting: Your ads are run over a set period of time, and look at your budget to ensure ads are at maximum exposure during key periods. For example, a flight for a seasonal product for spring cleaning may run in April, pause during the summer, and then pick back up in the fall before the holiday season.
• Pulsing: A combination of Continuity and Flighting. These are usually low-frequency but consistent during certain flights, while high-intensity during flights may have a higher impact.

4. Research Your Target Demographic 

Who is buying your product or using your service? How will your product or service benefit a particular demographic? Who is most likely to become a loyal customer? Is the person you’re targeting the person that is buying? 

You can use several tactics to determine your target audience and their preferences, needs, wants, and likes. Consider reading the publications your target audience reads to assess better how competitors may be advertising and what messaging works. For example, many advertisements may focus on standing out in a crowd or an experience if you are advertising luxury products. Alternatively, campaigns focused on homeowners may advertise home remodeling services such as plumbing and DIY projects.

You can leverage Google Analytics data to learn about the users already visiting your website. Or, you can complete customer interviews and conduct marketing research and check out industry trends and publications. As you gather this info, you can then create audience personas (as seen in TEGNA’s Mastering the Millennial Mindset of Today e-book), which is an exercise that defines your target audience. For example: 

• Demographics: Age, gender, occupation, household income, family life (single or married), education level, and location.
• Media Channels: Watches local news every morning frequents Facebook throughout the day, reads Forbes online, and is an avid sports fan.
• Purchasing Behaviors: Purchase intent, online versus in-store, free delivery or pickup.
• Goals & Challenges: Is working hard for a job promotion, looking for easier ways to communicate with family.  

Pro Tip: Additionally, Katie Yape, Product Manager at TEGNA, suggests researching your competitors, their customers, and how they purchase. Doing so can provide insights that can further define your target audience. 

5. Selecting the Right Advertising Channels

Where should your campaign be placed for the best results? This is where knowing your audience really pays off. When you know who your people are, you know where they will be and what type of messages resonate with them. For example, if you’re targeting Boomers, you’ll learn that most of them consume media on broadcast TV. Whereas if you’re targeting Gen Z, your brand may better benefit from advertising on a platform like TikTok. (More on the channels below.)

6. Test & Refine

Albert Einstein famously said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” Therefore it’s imperative to look at the numbers and optimize your campaign to the best of your ability. Did a streaming ad generate no new leads? Try moving that creative to TV and see if it moves the needle – or integrate it into a podcast. There are thousands of options, and you’ll probably try hundreds of different combinations throughout a campaign. 

Types of Media Channels & Placements

There are several different platforms and media channels for brands to reach an ideal target audience. Owned, earned, and paid media are also used in creating media plans. 

• Owned: Content your brand creates and controls, such as your brand website or social media accounts. 
• Earned: Content others create about your brand, for example, a Yelp review. 
• Paid: Content, such as an ad, your brand pays to put in front of an audience. 

Here are some of the top examples of paid media channels, along with their top benefits. 

As it has been for years, TV is one of the most effective and profitable ways for advertisers to reach audiences across the country. 

• Reach: Did you know that in 2021, there were 5.36 billion people watching TV worldwide? That number is expected to increase to 5.68 billion by 2026. 
• Visualization: TV ads and commercials are a visual medium, and because of this, recent studies have found that TV and streaming ads have the highest recall . Additionally, 5 in 10 find TV ads to be the most effective in getting viewers to buy their product or service. 
• Trust in Local: When comparing national and local television , it can be easy to focus solely on the number of viewers. However, local television allows businesses to advertise their products in specific locations. Additionally, consumer trust is exceptionally high when ads align with local news channels. Even small businesses can benefit from TV ads  since they can drive foot traffic and in-store visits.

Sports Games

Sports have been a staple of television advertising for decades. The Super Bowl is famous for its ads, but brands don’t need to invest exorbitant fees to reap the benefits of sports marketing . By sponsoring a commercial tied with the Olympics or March Madness , companies still benefit from live viewers, who are less likely to forward through their advertisements. Additionally, they benefit from a large, engaged, and loyal fanbase.

With the right partner, larger organizations can benefit from this local appeal while still placing local advertisements. TEGNA has a presence across numerous states, including major metropolitan areas such as Tampa, Seattle, and Atlanta. As a result, even national brands can cater their messaging to local audiences while reaching their target demographic.

E-commerce continues to grow in the wake of the pandemic. As companies embraced hybrid or remote offices, digital touchpoints became more critical.

• Reach: There are 2.14 billion online shoppers globally and 230.5 million in the US alone – that’s 70% of the population. 
• Targeting: On top of such a large audience, digital opens up doors for more effective ad targeting, such as audience targeting, location, behavioral and contextual targeting , and retargeting . Businesses can also use geofencing to target consumers in a specific location. These tactics boost brand awareness, drive traffic and qualified leads to your website, and even allow for competitive conquest – even as brands turn to first-party data to provide the best user experience possible. 

Native Advertising

Native advertising is featured alongside a website or magazine editorial, creating a more seamless experience for readers and users. Below are some of the benefits:

• Purchase Intent: Studies have shown purchase intent is 53% higher with native ads, and 7 out of 10 users have noted that they favor content over traditional forms of advertising when learning about a new product
• Contextually Relevant: Companies can better target users based on interests and intent using AI and contextual signals, such as page content.

Omnichannel Experience 

When digital ads are combined with TV and Streaming , the omnichannel experience can lead to strengthened ad recall and an extended reach. 

Podcasts: They say video killed the radio star, but podcasting is alive and well among adults in the US. 

• Growing Fast: In 2022, Statista found that 82 million people listened to a podcast in 2021, which is expected to grow to 100 million by 2024. 
• Effective: Audio ads in podcasts are proving to be effective. Among those that are considered “Super Listeners,” 49% of listeners believe that hosts use the products they mention in the show , 86% of people who frequently listen to podcasts say they recall ads on podcasts more than any other channel, even more than social media and 65% of avid podcast listeners say they have purchased a product or service from a brand they heard advertised on a podcast.  

Over-The-Top (OTT)/Streaming

Reach, scale, targeting, and measurement capabilities are critical considerations when selecting CTV/OTT providers.

• Reach: According to Nielsen , streaming usage increased more than 21% from 2021 to 2022, claiming 31.9% of total TV time. 
• Value: A 2022 study from our friends at PREMION found that Connected TV/OTT was the most valuable channel overall in achieving KPIs in 2021 among CTV/OTT advertisers. 
• Precision Targeting & Extended Reach: The same study found that precision audience targeting and extended reach for linear TV campaigns help brands achieve brand awareness and performance marketing goals. 
• Strengthen Ads: Radio can be a powerful tool to strengthen your television ads. Research shows that combining TV and radio ads strengthens the auditory stimulus in a process known as “imagery transfer.”

Local Media

Local media campaigns offer numerous benefits, whether you are a small shop or a national brand. They can help brands connect with local communities in a more personalized way. Local media strategies can include local news advertisements, subway ads, billboards, and local digital strategies .

Tips for Creating a Strategic Media Plan

Now that you have an understanding of media channels to choose from, here are a few tips for your campaign.

Work with the Creative Team 

Always remember to check in with the creative team. They may already have ideas for creative which can help inform placements.

Combine the Power of TV and Digital

A combination of TV and digital delivers optimized results for both channels. TV campaigns are media-rich and have been shown to be more memorable than other advertising formats. However, the impact of your television ads can be reinforced through digital tactics such as retargeting. 

Focus on Frequency and Reach

Two of the key things in media planning are determining the frequency and reach of campaigns. Frequency involves the when (and with which form of media) you want to hit your target audience and when is the optimal timing to re-engage. The right frequency depends on the campaign objectives, but keeping frequency top of mind is essential to maximizing your budget. Reach is your target audience’s estimated size, allowing you to optimize messaging accordingly.

Examples of Effective Paid Media Plans in Action

At TEGNA, we keep our advertising partners in good company with marketing solutions and media platforms that drive results. Here are just a few examples of great advertising :

1-800-GOT-JUNK Cuts Through the Clutter 

With a pivot from radio to TV, 1-800-GOT-JUNK was able to expand its footprint and help more homes than ever clean out their houses, especially during the early days of the pandemic. Watch to learn how 1-800-GOT-JUNK uses TV to generate leads and deliver incredibly positive results. 

Audi Wilsonville Drives Sales and Measurable Results 

Being in the automotive industry is all about having that edge – and Audi Wilsonville’s relationship with TV has helped drive sales and deliver accurate, measurable results. Watch to learn more.  

Lifetime Windows and Siding Uses TV to Reach Its Audience

There has been a considerable amount of information regarding why it’s essential to remain active, visible, and connected during a crisis, but it’s easier said than done. One home services company in Denver, Colorado, has found a way through a unique partnership with their local TV station. Watch to learn more.

About TEGNA

TEGNA’s proven and comprehensive marketing solutions keep our clients in good company. Armed with our award-winning portfolio of offerings, our team of marketing experts has driven results for thousands of businesses across the country. With cutting-edge attribution measurement, multiplatform amplification, original content, and the latest in data-driven technology, our mission is to help businesses grow and thrive. Let’s get in touch if you’re ready to place your media with TEGNA.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the differences between media planning and media buying.

Media planning is the research and selection of media channels, while media buying is the process of actually purchasing the media placements. 

What is the structure of a media plan?

A media plan should start with a market/competitor analysis, dive into overall campaign objectives, identify a target audience, and outline suggested media channels.

What is in a media plan?

A media plan should outline the campaign goals, establish a budget, determine the target audience, select media channels, and set frequency and KPIs. 

What is a media plan brief?

To select the best media channels, a media brief outlines the campaign’s key components, including audience, budget, timing, and content. 

What is the most important ingredient for a media plan?

Research! When crafting a media plan, understanding your audience, the market you are working in, and your competitors is key to maximizing ROI.

What is included in a media plan?

A media plan should include a market/competitor analysis, overall campaign objectives, target audience, and suggested media channels.

What’s the difference between a marketing plan and a media plan?

A marketing plan includes all marketing initiatives, both internally and externally. Specifically, a marketing plan can include SEO, content marketing, and PR in addition to the media plan. A media plan refers exclusively to paid media placement. 

What is the difference between paid and unpaid media?

The content you pay to show is paid media, while unpaid media is content on an owned or earned channel.

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Five Guiding Principles of Media Strategy

Looking to boost brand awareness, generate leads, drive sales, retain current customers, or all of the above? Whatever your goals may be, five guiding principles should be followed when developing an effective media strategy. These are the steps and considerations that make a difference between a media plan and a strategic media approach. Without these elements addressed, it's unlikely you'll reach your marketing goals or even know how to improve performance in the future.

Although there's a lot of talk about artwork, creative and design when planning and strategizing, media strategy is really a science, and there's a method that should be followed. At Bounteous, this method is referred to as the Five Guiding Principles of Media Strategy, because these are the 'laws' we work by, and the standards we hold every project to.

Use these key rules as a checklist to ensure you're on track to meet your goals.

Media Strategy Principle One

Effective media strategy is backed by research.

Similar to the scientific method, media strategy should start with research. What does historical performance illustrate? What’s worked well in the past, what hasn't, and why? Build upon those successes and insights, and use all tools and data at your disposal to learn more about your audience, where they spend their time, how they make decisions to develop a media strategy that reaches the right person, at the right time with the right message.

For example, with activity from people age 18-24 on Facebook diminishing in recent years, and exponential growth of Gen Z users on TikTok, now totaling 37.3 million , the media strategy team seized the opportunity to branch into a new channel and expand reach to potential customers for one of Bounteous' clients, making them one of the first U.S. advertisers on the platform. Bounteous and TikTok collaborated on several tests to identify efficiencies that informed a full-funnel campaign establishing a brand presence on the platform while also delivering bottom-funnel results (app installs and app purchases).

Additionally, the media team put paid support to boost reach on high-performing, on-trend branded content and influencer collaborations to build a follower base. Now the brand has a following of over 300K users (and counting) they can connect and engage with regularly.

Staying close to industry news, marketing technology updates, beta opportunities across platforms, and pulling demographic, psychographic, and media consumption data from third-party research sources like Global Web Index allows the Bounteous media strategy team to bring new, innovative ideas to every campaign, backed by research.  

Media Strategy Principle Two

Effective media strategy is rooted in client-approved objectives supported with measurable KPIs and attainable goals.

Ensure proper tracking is in place to not only monitor, but to optimize. Clearly define goals for each key performance indicator (KPI) at every stage of the marketing funnel to ensure each tactic is pulling its weight to reach the collective goal. 

Often in marketing, the goal is to drive sales and/or revenue, which (no surprise) is most efficiently generated by conversion-focused tactics and KPIs. However, when conversion campaigns fail to meet targets, it's often due to a lack of support from upper-funnel messaging or tactics. You wouldn't ask someone to get married on the first date—you get to know them first!

In a marketplace full of competition, building a strong loyal customer relationship is often no different in this regard, Conversion campaigns typically see the strongest results when a full-funnel strategy is in place, backed by awareness and consideration tactics to fuel intent. All media channels and tactics should work together to create several touchpoints with the audience, educating them about the brand and its benefits to the potential customer so they're primed for the 'buy now'/'book now' or other conversion calls to action.

Facebook has countless case studies proving this across several brands, reporting increases in acquisition and conversions when brand awareness campaigns are in the market before or alongside conversion objective campaigns.

Media Strategy Principle Three

Effective media strategy should always include some facet of experimentation, with clearly defined variables that can be tested, and evolves based on learnings over time.

The media landscape and media consumption behaviors are ever-evolving, so experimentation and optimization should be ongoing. Tests can either corroborate or debunk investing into new channels or tactics, indicate which creative and messaging works best at each stage of the customer journey, and uncover areas for improvement. This can be done through A/B testing, control vs. treatment experiments, and media mix modeling.

Bounteous worked with Leading Hotels of the World to answer the question of which touchpoints lead to hotel bookings. Bounteous was able to pinpoint the content onsite that contributed to the most valuable customer journeys through statistical modeling. The findings allowed Leading Hotels of the World to optimize their site for higher conversion rates and laid the groundwork for more specific A/B tests for further improvements. 

Media Strategy Principle Four

Effective media strategy positions paid and owned media channels to work together to turn prospects into loyal customers.

Landing pages, email, SEO, organic social, and all owned media channels play a part in the customer journey. What messages are being served across paid media and owned media channels, and how can they work together to achieve business goals? Does the landing page require alterations to ensure a seamless experience? What incentives can be made on-site to encourage new users to share their contact information for future promotions? What is the email strategy for users that do sign up? How do current customers fit into paid media targeting—Included? Excluded?

These are questions, and more, that should be considered when crafting a media strategy that offers both short-term and long-term wins. For instance, if you're looking to raise awareness of an upcoming promotion, paid advertising can get the word out, but leveraging owned media channels will maximize impact—incorporating messaging in organic social posts, emails and real estate on the website is key.

Bounteous has been working with Dominos Canada for over a decade to do just that, cultivating an omnichannel media strategy that uses several mediums to communicate offers and make it quite literally easy as pie to order pizza, securing Dominos as the #2 pizza company in Canada.

Moreover, explore earned media opportunities. Are there content creators that would help amplify the message because they believe in the brand? How can you generate buzz on social media to spread the word?

When Spotify launched Spotify Wraps in 2017, allowing free and premium users to look back at their listening habits from the past year and share their recap to social media, Spotify earned exposure across millions of users' social feeds at no cost, building brand affinity with their current users and enticing new users to sign up to be a part of the trend. 

Media Strategy Principle Five

Effective media strategy not only reaches the right audience but captures their attention through impactful ad experiences and tailored messaging.

People are inundated with ads all day long. To see results from advertising, ads need to break through the clutter and serve impactful impressions. Research can help you understand what the target audience cares about and what messaging might resonate best, but colors, imagery, and ad format are equally important. Creative can make or break performance and is an important component of a complete media strategy.

A few tips :

Message variation and creative liquidity can improve performance by allowing machine learning and algorithms to serve different messages to different users based on what they're most likely to engage with.

Incorporating high-impact, full-screen, animated, or interactive digital placements can help brands stand out from other ads, boosting ad recall and brand recognition.

Delivering ads within contextually relevant environments can elevate impact.

Riffing off of viral social trends or pop culture references can be powerful attention grabbers, especially in email marketing or social media.  

There's No Silver Bullet for Media Strategy

There is no silver bullet. Effective media strategy is built upon research, measured by trackable signals, accounts for all touchpoints with the audience, breaks through the clutter with innovative executions, and evolves over time.

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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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Home / Blog

6 Media Planning Strategies to Grow your Marketing Efforts

August 18, 2020 

Tables of Contents

What Is Media Planning?

Media planning strategies, steps to developing a media plan, media planning vs. media buying, media planning and marketing.

You’ve probably heard it before: “The medium is the message.” But who said it? Why does it matter in the world of media planning? The declaration comes from Chapter 1 of Canadian communications scientist Marshall McLuhan’s 1964 book, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man . McLuhan helped illuminate the power of language, images, and the mode of message delivery to influence human thought and behavior.

Marketers and professional communicators must know how to harness that power to deliver messages to the right people. No matter the nature of the message, it must be conveyed via some form of media.

And to make sure the message reaches the right people at the right time, marketers and communicators must understand media planning, which determines what, when, and how often messages are delivered in traditional forms (print, broadcast, outdoor ads, etc.) or digital forms.

The financial stakes are high in the digital advertising industry. According to research from the Winterberry Group , online media spending reached $145.3 billion in 2019, with investments increasing 19.1% over 2018. The highest growth categories included digital video, digital audio (podcasts and music streaming), and paid social ads.

Another report from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) reflects that online media spending has surpassed TV, radio, magazine, and newspaper ad spending, all of which are experiencing flat or declining sales. Spending on mobile ads is expected to increase from 70% to 81% of online ad sales between 2019 and 2023.

Media planners are responsible for making sure those billions of advertising dollars are not wasted. They must understand every aspect of media planning to support a messaging strategy that delivers the desired results.

It begins with understanding the definition of media planning, as well as its components, the types and purposes of different media platforms, and the factors that make up a media plan.

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Media planning is the process of determining how, when, and to what audience a branding or advertising message will be delivered. A media planner analyzes how a message is intended to support a marketing or advertising strategy and then develops tactics to share that message in the right places with the right people.

At an advertising or marketing agency, the duties of a media planner might be assigned to a content director, marketing manager, account manager, or combination of people with knowledge of media, budgeting, content creation, and other areas of expertise related to marketing.

No matter who is responsible for development, the process requires a deep understanding of the components of a media plan, the platforms that can deliver the message, and the factors that go into an effective plan.

The Components of Media Planning

Before developing a plan, the media planner must fill in the blanks on specific components. Trying to make a media plan without first understanding its components would be like riding a bicycle blindfolded.

The component checklist serves as a foundation for the plan and should take into account:

• Audience: Whom is the message targeting? Why is the message relevant to them? How is the message serving them?
• Marketing budget: How much is available to spend on delivering the message?
• Conversion goals: What action should the message encourage the audience to take? How will that action support the strategy?
• Definition of success: What key performance indicators should be tracked? How do they support the strategy? How will they be measured and reported? What is the anticipated return on investment?
• Message frequency: How often should the message be shared? How much is too much?
• Message reach: How many people should receive the message? Where do they live? Is the message platform scalable? How reach is measured depends on the platform being used to deliver the message. It is important for media planners to understand the nature, uses, and usefulness of every available form of media.

The Forms of Media

Marketing and advertising content takes the form that best conveys the message and achieves the desired action on the part of the consumer. Digital media includes all the assets a consumer finds on the internet: paid ads on search engines (pay per click), banner ads associated with targeted remarketing, videos and static ads on social media, website development, and more.

In 2019, for the first time, digital advertising spending surpassed traditional advertising spending. According to digital marketing publication eMarketer, digital marketing spend was estimated to account for 54.2% of total U.S. advertising spending in 2019 .

In traditional and digital media, efforts to spread messaging can be categorized as:

• Owned media: Owned media consists of original assets, such as blog posts and videos, published directly on platforms owned and operated by the organization attempting to spread the message. The ultimate goal of owned media assets is to go viral — a nice-to-have but unpredictable state that should never be considered the linchpin of any media plan.
• Earned media: Earned media are assets that share the organization’s message but are created by separate parties, such as news stories or profiles in a newspaper or online news site. This typically is a function of public relations or media relations.
• Paid media: These are assets associated with ad spending, such as social media advertisements, paid search ads, paid commercials on TV or radio, or the paid placement of an asset such as a guest blog post on a news website.

No type of media can be dismissed as unimportant. The type of media used could make or break a campaign, which is just one of several factors that determine a media plan’s potential effectiveness.

The Factors of Effective Media Planning

The three pillars of an effective media plan — purpose, audience, and reach — are interconnected but must be considered separately during the early stages of plan formation. Here is an overview of the factors of effective media planning.

• Purpose: What is the goal or objective of the campaign? Is it to generate brand awareness? Encourage a user to share contact information or to fill out a form? How does the asset support the larger marketing strategy? All of these questions must be answered very early in the planning process.
• Audience: Who is the targeted consumer? Who will benefit from watching, listening, or reading the piece of content? Who is likely to buy the service or product or to develop a long-term relationship with the brand? The purpose and the audience go hand in hand.
• Reach: How many people are targeted by a particular media platform, and at what frequency? Reach and frequency — the number of times a potential customer is offered the chance to read, watch, or listen to the asset — are related. Not every potential audience member consumes media at the same rate. The more often a video or ad is shared, the more likely it is to be seen.

Once the three pillars have been identified, a media planner can flesh out the plan to develop a larger strategy and supporting tactics.

Exploring media planning strategies can help marketers effectively choose the right media platforms for spreading a message to a relevant audience.

What follows is an overview of some of the primary considerations that must be addressed when preparing to develop a media plan.

1. Selecting Relevant Media Channel(s)

Media planners have choices when it comes to the channel or channels they select for sharing a piece of content. Channels are platforms, digital or traditional, that serve content to users.

Traditional channels are TV, radio, and print ads. Digital channels are social media, websites, email, and other online platforms.

The channel chosen should be a platform the target audience is likely to frequent. Channels appeal to users based on age, gender, socioeconomic status, and other demographic factors.

For example, a business-to-business (B2B) audience would be more likely to be reached on LinkedIn, where businesses and employees interact on a professional level. On the other hand, a business-to-consumer (B2C) audience might be found on a channel such as YouTube or Instagram.

2. Determining the Relevant Timeline

What determines the timeline of a media campaign? It depends on the product/service, message goals, audience, and calendar of events.

To establish the media campaign timeline, a project plan is necessary to determine what assets are necessary to support the campaign. When determining resource requirements, it can be helpful to start at the end. When is the optimal publish date (or dates)? With that in mind, the planner is free to plot the work necessary to get it done.

Every aspect of the plan must be given the right amount of time for development. For example, if the planner knows a great deal of market research will be required, multiple days should be devoted to that part of the plan.

Every stakeholder’s role must be taken into account and factored into the deadlines associated with each stage. Communication is key. Every person involved in the execution of the plan should have a means to communicate setbacks or ask relevant questions along the way.

3. Coordinating the Channel Mix

Rarely will a media plan include only one channel. Most campaigns will incorporate at least two — and possibly several more — to ensure that as many people as possible are served the content. But companies need to make sure that the message is cohesive across all channels.

When used wisely, channels can be complementary. For example, a long-form profile of a subject can be coupled with a short-form video that features an interview with the subject. The video and long-form article might be packaged together on a blog post, or they could be served up separately on different social media platforms to increase reach.

The concept is particularly true for social media channels. If a message is relevant to multiple audiences, it is important to distribute that message on platforms those audiences frequent. For example, a smartphone app with wide appeal might be advertised on a platform such as TikTok to reach younger audiences and on LinkedIn to appeal to business-minded professionals. Marketing teams should consider the timing and tone of these ads to avoid conflicting messages across platforms.

How to Choose a Digital Channel: Additional Resources

• Digital Marketing Institute, “How to Choose the Best Social Media Channels for Your Business”
• Magazine , “Digital Marketing Channels Are Not All Equal”

4. Leveraging Audience Targeting

Audience targeting is the process of determining who to share a message with and how to find them. Most marketers begin the audience targeting process by developing buyer personas, or fictionalized versions of the people they hope to reach. Once a company develops its target personas, they can better choose the right marketing platform to reach the intended audience.

Personas are derived from data such as age, gender, profession, buying habits, hobbies, socioeconomic status, geographic location, and personal or professional goals. This data can be compiled using a template that incorporates original research into a current customer base or gathered using tools such as Google Analytics.

An important element of persona development is determining what media platforms are frequented by the real people the persona represents. Services such as Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter offer audience segmentation tools that break down the demographic information of their users to target users accurately.

Social Media Ad Audience Segmentation Resources

• Facebook’s Ad Targeting Tutorial
• Google’s Audience Targeting Q&A
• LinkedIn’s Ad Targeting Instructions
• Twitter’s Ad Targeting Instructions

5. Setting Reach and Frequency Goals

Another important consideration in a media plan is the reach, which is closely related to frequency. As mentioned above, reach is a measurement of the number of viewers, readers, or listeners who are served the content. Frequency, also known as impressions, is the number of times they are likely to see or hear the piece of content over a set period of time. Marketers must decide what they hope to accomplish with reach and frequency when considering media plan options.

Reach and frequency typically are a function of spending money to amplify the message. Occasionally, a piece of content might go “viral” organically, without an associated ad buy to support it. But those occasions are rare, so a media plan must take into account the amount of money required to put the content in front of the right number of people.

Advertising dollars are devoted to social media platforms, such as LinkedIn and Facebook, based on an estimated number of users who will be served the content. The benefit of that kind of advertising, as opposed to traditional media such as an outdoor billboard or a magazine ad, is that the social media platforms allow marketers to target specific users with their advertising.

6. Choosing a Voice

The “voice” of a piece of content is the tone used to convey the message. It is determined in written assets by factors such as word choice and sentence length. In visual media, the use of color and shapes conveys “voice.”

The voice of a piece of content is important because people respond to authentic messaging. Consumers are savvy — they know when someone is trying to sell them something. The visceral response is to reject messaging that looks or sounds inauthentic or irrelevant.

How is authentic voice derived? It begins with the development of personas, as mentioned above. An important element of persona creation is determining factors such as education level, profession, and personal interests. Different segments of the population have their own vernacular, and marketers who capture that in a pitch-perfect voice are more likely to achieve success with their media plans.

Understanding the Difference Between Reach and Frequency: Additional Resources

• Sprout Social, “Reach vs. Impressions: What’s the Difference in Terms?”
• HubSpot, “Integrated Media Planning: What It Is and How to Adopt It in Your Marketing Strategy”
• HubSpot: “Audience Targeting: What It Is and Why You Need It”

A sound media plan ensures that the content has the best chance to effectively perform the function for which it was created. Without a well-conceived media plan, the marketing team is operating without a rudder. Success, if it comes, is a matter of luck rather than precise execution.

After evaluating the best media planning strategies, marketers need to establish the right plan for their business. Below is an overview of the steps to developing a media plan , starting with researching the market.

1. Conduct Market Research

Before a goal can be set, an editorial calendar can be developed, or a piece of content can be created, the marketing team needs to know a few things about the people they hope will consume or purchase their product or service. That requires market research, which is the first step in making a media plan.

Market research reveals the characteristics of buyer personas, such as age and other demographics. It provides information about buying habits and personal preferences. It tells the content creators what voice to use, what platforms potential customers frequent, and what type of content will resonate with users.

In short, market research is the backbone of the plan. It should be conducted thoroughly and updated regularly based on testing data and customer feedback.

2. Clarify the Objective

It is virtually impossible to create a successful marketing asset — an ad, blog post, video, static image, etc. — without first establishing why the asset is necessary. The objective will by necessity shape every aspect of the content.

What goals can a piece of content help the marketing team achieve?

• Brand awareness and loyalty: Tell or show a user what the company and its people are all about.
• Thought leadership: Show or tell a user why the organization and its people are experts in the field.
• Information: Give users data or history they can use in their professional or personal lives.
• Lead generation: Build the pool of potential customers by demonstrating how a product or service could be of use.
• Lead conversion: Provide a means for a potential customer to actively seek more information or create an ongoing connection with the organization.

Establishing the goal or goals ahead of time enables content creators to fashion their work with purpose and direction. It streamlines the creative process and reduces the amount of time necessary for revisions. Time spent early on figuring out the endgame is time saved along the way.

3. Identify the Target Audience

According to HubSpot, audience targeting is “the method of separating consumers into segments based on interests and demographic data.” Characteristics of segments might be age, income, interests, gender, geographic location, and buying habits.

The main purpose of segmenting is to ensure that the right people are receiving the message. The “right people” are those who are likely to consume the product or service on offer.

Here are a few tips for effective audience targeting:

• Mine the analytics. Google, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms provide deep dives into consumer data such as geographic location, websites visited, and personal and professional interests. Mine these sources for information to learn more about consumers who already are engaged with the organization.
• Conduct focus groups and surveys. Invite current users and customers to participate in fact-finding sessions, or use surveys to ask questions that will shed light on why people use products when and how they do.
• A/B test. Testing the public responses to different types of content can reveal what works and what does not. An A/B test presents slightly different versions of content, such as an ad with the same words but different images. The version that performs better can be duplicated, while the other can be tweaked or used in further testing.

4. Set the Budget

Every potential cost must be taken into account when creating a media plan. A campaign might require payment for display advertising, social media ad placement, sponsored social media posts, paid search engine ad placement, influencer marketing expense, and more.

The media buyer’s role is to provide estimated costs for all of these items. The media planner then uses that information to determine cost-effective ways to create and distribute content.

Hidden or unanticipated costs can derail a marketing campaign. Be sure to build in an “emergency” fund to cover extra costs such as fees, commissions, testing, and unforeseen expenditures.

A media planner develops the plan. A media buyer executes the plan. They work together to ensure that the content is delivered to the right people in the right places at the right times.

A media buyer, as the title implies, oversees efforts related to paid media. Media buyers must possess a working knowledge of the platforms used to distribute content — and how much it costs to use those platforms.

This includes social media advertising and paid search advertising, as well as traditional advertising methods such as outdoor billboards, TV, radio and newspapers. In most cases, a media buyer is assigned a budget once the media plan is developed.

Below is an overview of the working relationship between media planners and media buyers.

How Media Planners and Buyers Work Together

A media planner and media buyer typically consult at the start of the planning process. The planner relies on the expertise of the buyer, while the buyer works to ensure the plan is executed as expected.

The buyer’s role is to stay informed about cost and availability of paid platforms such as search engine ads (pay-per-click or banner ads), website advertising, social media ads, and traditional forms of advertising. The buyer might also recommend what platform or platforms make the most sense for the planner to incorporate, based on the campaign goals.

The planner relies on the buyer to place the content and monitor the amount of money spent. A buyer might also monitor key performance indicators, such as reach, frequency, audience engagement, conversions, and other important data.

Executing the Media Plan

On the organic, or non-paid, side of the campaign, the media planner might rely on a content manager or social media manager to distribute the content. On the paid side, the media buyer’s job is to:

• Recommend paid advertising options
• Buy ad space for a specific campaign
• Negotiate rates for content distribution
• Work with the content team to ensure all visual and wording guidelines are met (especially true for social media ads)
• Set spending limits for paid search campaigns
• Conduct campaign analysis to ensure cost efficiency

A media planner and media buyer should maintain communication throughout a campaign to be sure that all elements of the campaign are in sync. For example, if a media buyer finds that a particular paid search keyword has proved ineffective, they might pull the spending from that keyword and assign it to another.

The bottom line for the media planner-media buyer relationship: Neither one can operate effectively without the other’s clearly communicated input.

Media Plan Resources

• Investopedia, “What Is Media Buying?”
• Google, “What Is Paid Search?”
• Business 2 Community, “Media Planning vs. Media Buying: What’s the Difference?”

The average U.S. consumer spends more than 12 hours per day consuming media in some form, according to consumer research conducted by eMarketer. It is incumbent on marketing teams to develop an effective media plan to reach consumers where they are.

Media planning requires a thorough grasp of the use of different forms of media (digital and traditional). A media planner needs to know about the platforms that can deliver the message, as well as the costs associated with them. A well-conceived media strategy saves time and money, ensures efficient delivery of content to the right people, and helps an organization channel its creative energy toward developing content that supports sales, marketing, and brand awareness goals.

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Five components of a successful strategic communications plan.

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Director of Marketing at  haseebtariq.com.  I help fix large revenue retention & growth issues.

Communication is a critical part of any organization's success. Once, I was working closely with the senior leadership to create an email that addressed late deliveries. I remember that when we first started, there were so many ideas swirling in our heads about how to approach this project and what tone of voice would be best for our company. I wished I had someone with a communications strategy plan who could tell me the "best" way to approach this project in order to be successful.

I started reading and researching, looking for what I felt was a good strategy to communicate with our target audience. Luckily, after some research and conversations with others who had more experience than myself on the topic at hand, what finally developed was a communications strategy plan that we used over and over again for all of our marketing and communication efforts.

What Is A Communications Strategy Plan?

A communications strategy is a plan for communicating with your target audience. It includes who you are talking to, why you are talking to them, how and when you will talk to them, what form of communication the content should take and what channels you should use to share it.

1. What Is The Purpose Of Your Communications Plan?

A clear purpose helps keep everyone on board. Make sure the right people hear your message when they are ready and in a way that you want them to hear it. Your communication objectives should be to answer these questions: Who do I need to reach? Why do I need to reach them? What will my communications say? How will I deliver this message at the time that will have the best impact on my audience (and for me)? And what channels am I using or can I use for delivery?

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2. Who Are You Communicating With (Or Who Is Your Target Audience) And What Message Do They Need To Hear?

Target audiences can vary from one time to another and may include your customers, employees or the media. Define who needs to hear what is happening in your organization. Every communications plan is different, but they should never be one-size-fits-all. It's a good idea to create an audience map that identifies key audiences and the messages they need to hear about your organization or cause in order for them to take action.

3. How Will This Message Be Communicated?

Your communications strategy provides the framework for the company's outreach activities, including what needs to get out there through communication channels like social media, email marketing, blog posts, video content on YouTube or Vimeo and so on. In my experience, the more specific you are with your messaging (and visuals) — even if it seems repetitive — the better your chances of getting people engaged and taking action are.

4. When Should This Communication Happen — Right Now Or Later On?

Organizations have to use their communications wisely and strategically in order to be successful with them. But the importance of timing is also important for communicating effectively. Your communications strategy should specify when the message should be communicated, including whether that's right now or later on. Your communications team should take these considerations into account as they develop your messaging and timing plan. In addition, I recommend developing two equally effective strategies: one for "now" and another that can be deployed in anticipation of events that might happen later down the road. A crisis communication plan helps cushion against unexpected turns of events, no matter what happens.

5. Who Will Be Responsible For The Communication?

Communications professionals should be the ones responsible for communicating with external audiences, and they should do so often during a crisis. However, human resources departments may also need to communicate internally about any changes that may affect employees. Define key messages, and then decide who will deliver them. Define the audience and focus on what they need to know about this change. Be sure to provide information in a timely way, but also keep the message concise so that employees can digest it easily.

Bottom Line

A strategic communications plan can help you communicate your message to the right people at the most opportune time. By considering these five components, you can put together a solid strategy that could drive more success for your business and bring about your desired results in less time. 

Forbes Communications Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?

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Media and Digital Management pp 423–459 Cite as

Strategy Planning in Media and Information Firms

• Eli M. Noam 2  
• First Online: 24 January 2019

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The chapter deals with strategy setting in the media and information sector. It begins with an introduction of major theories and tools of business strategy: business policy, game theory, competitive analysis, core competencies, and the adaptability approach. The second part of the chapter deals with the process of formulating strategy and how the various constituencies engage in strategic planning. The main elements are an assessment of the external setting of the company: markets, users, competitors, and barriers to entry. The internal assessment covers a firm’s core competency and competitive advantage, its leadership, and its human, financial, technological, and intellectual asset resources. These analyses are applied to identify the strategy options. The generic options for media and digital companies are then discussed. How does one select among strategies? The chapter lays out several selection methodologies. A final issue is the implementation of the strategy, with the challenges of internal communication, budgeting, monitoring, control, and feedback.

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The 8 Basic Components of a Strategic Plan

How to Create a Strategic Plan 

I was recently having dinner with a business colleague, and he asked me, “Have you ever heard of EOS® , the Entrepreneurial Operating System®?” I told him I had. He then said, “What’s your take on it?”

I get this question often, not just about EOS®, but also about strategic planning process in general. As systems like EOS and StratOp (my preferred strategic planning process) gain popularity, it seems more and more business leaders want to make sure they know how to create a strategic plan, and that they have the right components of a strategic plan.

At a high level, my response to questions like the one from my colleague is simple. A solid plan will:

• Define where you currently stand
• Create a picture for where you are going
• Lay out details on how to get there
• Identify the next short-term tactics
• Be reviewed once a quarter

How do you make a strategic plan that accomplishes the list above? In my experience, no matter what framework you choose, it takes about eight basic components to make a solid strategic plan.

Basic Components of a Strategic Plan

1. perspective.

Perhaps nothing helps to provide the needed insight for a strategic plan more than gaining the proper perspective. 

Perspective answers the question, “Where do we currently stand?” It’s important to know where you are before you start determining where you want to go.

Take this example. We all have smartphones with Google Maps . When you want to get directions to a particular location, what is the first question your phone “asks” you? If you said, “Where do you want to go?”, you’d be wrong. The first question the phone is asking (without really asking) is, “Where are you right now?” 

A GPS system can’t give directions until they first know where you are coming from. In much the same way, proper planning can’t happen unless an accurate, honest assessment of the current state occurs. Once that happens, the rest of strategic plan comes into focus.

There are several tools that can helps teams determine this perspective. The first is the traditional SWOT Analysis where we determine the company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. I offer a unique approach to a SWOT by asking teams where there is breakthrough, battle, frustration and failure.

Another tool to gain proper perspective is called the Four Helpful Lists . In this approach, we ask, “What’s right? What’s wrong? What’s confused? What’s missing?” After asking and answering those questions, we can begin to see what core issues are emerging—issues that we can now address in our strategic plan.

2. A Clear Vision

The best strategic planning processes make space for helping teams to paint a clear picture of the future. That’s exactly what a vision is. When people read or hear your vision or vision statement, they should be able to get a mental picture of what the future state looks like.

In the mid-1950s, when Walt Disney was asked during construction and beginning plans about how he would create his vision of a huge castle, near-real animals, and a paddleboat, among other attractions, he already knew what he was going to do. In fact, the park that opened years later was already mapped and planned out in his mind, and he was able to clearly communicate what it looked like. He could describe Main Street USA, Adventureland, Frontierland, and even Fantasyland. People could see it as he described it.

Being able to have a clear, compelling vision of the future state is a must-have in the strategic planning process.

3. A Defined Mission

Where vision defines the future, mission defines how we’re going to get there. A mission or mission statement should give reason to the existence of the company.

A great example of this is Starbucks. Their vision (future state) is simply be “the premier purveyor of the finest coffee in the world while maintaining our uncompromising principles while we grow.”

What they seek to do every day to get there is their mission: “To inspire and nurture the human spirit—one person, one cup, and one neighborhood at a time.”

If your plan doesn’t have direction defined by a mission, chances are your employees don’t, either.

4. Core Values

Core values are the guardrails that we use to manage behavior throughout the organization. They are the “rules” we use to govern how we interact with and treat each other, our clients, and our vendors.

For my money, no one has better articulated what core values are and how they should be developed than Patrick Lencioni of The Table Group . He says, “Values can set a company apart from the competition by clarifying its identity and serving as a rallying point for employees.” He’s right—I’ve seen this firsthand with many of my clients.

Defining core values is one of the imperative components of a strategic plan. Check out Lencioni’s guide on how to do so.

5. Goals & Objectives

This next component takes the “macro” and brings it down to micro. Whereas your vision is big and long term, goals and objectives are smaller and shorter term. Defining goals and objectives as part of your strategic planning process allows you measure the success of your plan.

Examples of goals and objectives would be things like revenue, run rate, number of contracts signed, gross or net profit, etc. Remember to keep these goals SMART: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based.  

6. Performance Drivers & Risks

Performance drivers are strategic and/or operational elements that are necessary to reach the goals and objectives. Peter Drucker said that every business has its own set of “productivities” that help them reach ultimate performance. Alfred Sloan, who turned GM around and made it the largest company in the world for many years, called them “success factors.” Examples of performance drivers are order cycle lead times, product development cycles, work-in-progress inventory, organizational stability, cost of quality, customer support, cost-value proposition, and total customer satisfaction.

Risks are exposures to loss or injury. They represent peril or jeopardy. They are often beyond the control of anyone at the organization. However, it’s important to identify them so plans can be made to reduce the potential impact a realized risk can have. The effects of the global pandemic, chip shortages, and shifting attitudes on staffing are all examples of risks to identify as part of the strategic planning process.

7. Action Plan

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: It doesn’t matter what you know. It only matters what you do with what you know. That’s where an action plan comes in. 

An effective strategic planning process has to have defined next steps. In StratOp, we call these Action Initiative Plans (AIPs). Each AIP has a name, a stated objective, a leader, a team, defined deliverables, and due dates. This level of detail sets us up for the last of the components of a strategic plan: the quarterly review.

8. Quarterly Review

Nothing ensures that things will get done like accountability. Bringing the team together regularly, asking AIP leaders to report on the status of their plan, and reviewing overall progress keeps a plan from being a binder on a shelf. Instead, it becomes a playbook that helps the team move the ball down the field. I can tell you from experience, the teams I’ve worked with that have seen tremendous results are the ones who don’t just develop a strategic plan but make regular review a part of their strategic planning process.

Let’s Start Planning

I’d be more than happy to help you get started on the strategic planning process. If you’d like to have a no-obligation conversation, feel free to contact me to set up a time to chat.

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Top 7 Media Plan Templates with Samples and Examples

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Nike, the American athletic footwear and clothing giant, has expanded its range of products beyond sportswear to become a lifestyle brand. Its position as one of the world’s most recognizable and influential businesses stems from the iconic swoosh logo and the ‘Just Do It’ motto. Their commercial ‘You Can't Stop Us’ earned an Emmy Award.

Media planning  is essential for differentiating your brand in an ever-changing industry. Click here  to access our customized PPT Templates to help you deal with media-related concerns.

Nike, however, came under pressure due to its rival Adidas’s push toward interactive media and mobile marketing. The German firm’s move proved to be a winner, and delivered on the target of reaching its audience online. Concerned about Adidas’ expanding market share, Nike devised a communication strategy (media plan) to outperform its German competitor. The media plan amplified its brand voice across platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, TikTok, and LinkedIn. Nike now handles over 300 social media profiles with engaging content that appeals to its followers’ interests.

Media Plan: The instrument for maximizing your marketing spend

A media plan details the complexities of providing content to a specific audience via media outlets. It outlines the target markets for a marketing message, the distribution channels, and the delivery schedule. These strategies can help you save time, enhance conversions, and raise engagement in the digital age. Nike’s fast growth and valued connections with consumers, both locally and worldwide, are prime examples of this.

Explore our well-crafted Digital Media Plan PPT templates  to help your company move closer to long-term success, tap into untapped prospects, and open doors to extraordinary growth in the digital arena.

This blog will help you evaluate the many media possibilities and develop campaigns to support your business or brand. It will assist you in creating and distributing media material to your target markets. Use SlideTeam’s ‘ Top 7 Media Plan Templates’ to plan, organize, disseminate, and analyze large volume of media information to stand out. These templates increase your brand's visibility, engagement, conversions, and revenue. The 100% customizable nature of the templates allows you to edit your presentations. The content-ready slides give you the much-needed structure.

Use SlideTeam’s high-quality PowerPoint Templates to assess the best messaging and media mix for reaching consumers positively and effectively.

Employ these templates to acquire a selection of budget-friendly advertising chances, target a specific group, and fit into your company's marketing strategy.

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The influence of social media engagement on businesses ranges from brand awareness to lead generation. Use this PPT Template to create a meaningful digital media plan to achieve your brand’s objectives. This media plan assists you in connecting with customers to strengthen your brand. This complete deck demonstrates media types, media mix categories, most effective promotion channels, media platforms, etc. Use this presentation template to evaluate the best combination of messaging and media mix to reach consumers positively and effectively. Grab it now!

Template 3: Digital Media Planning Briefing and Planning Process

An efficient digital media strategy fulfills your social media objectives while maximizing the Return on Investment (RoI). Use this PPT Template to construct a media plan to monitor, track, and analyze campaign performance. This media strategy gives your team a hands-on approach to identifying possibilities to optimize performance in real-time. It covers steps in the media planning process and the Dos and Don’ts of media planning. It aids you in visualizing your social media objectives, media KPIs, communication objectives, campaign performance, marketing plan, media budget, etc. Use this PowerPoint Presentation to increase traffic, create leads, and increase your media investment ROI. Save it now!

Template 4: Social Media Strategy Plan

Use this PPT Template to optimize your digital media plan to enhance brand awareness and social media engagement for your target audience/s across social media platforms. This will make integrating your social media objectives into your company’s marketing plan easy. This complete deck covers business implications of a good social media strategy plan, social media platforms, primary goals, objectives, metrics, etc. Use this presentation template to manage your community and promote your brand through social media. Download now!

Template 5: Media Planning with Objectives, Deliverables, and Target Funnel

Use this PowerPoint Template to assess your approach to social media planning. This slide displays the media strategy for pitching and positioning the product to the target audience. It has a funnel with critical features, including target audience, budget, campaign objectives, deliverables, and stages like awareness, consideration, conversion, and retention. This will aid in optimizing campaigns and messages, and streamlining the campaign evaluation process. With this download, you can demonstrate how your digital marketing strategy and objectives benefit your business goals. Get it now!

Template 6: Weekly Paid Social Media Marketing Plan

Use this PPT Template to create your company's comprehensive paid social media marketing strategy. This digital media plan is an excellent tool for promoting a company's brand or generating leads. The template includes information about social media networks such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube, as well as their costs and benefits. This helps you in creating sponsored posts, search or display advertisements, static, video, or interactive social media ads, all with a paid budget to maximize outcomes from social media advertising. Get it now!

Template 7: Multi-Step Social Media Marketing Action Plan

Use this PPT Template to construct a multi-step social media advertising plan to market or advertise your company, its goods, or services. This media strategy will allow marketers, managers, and business owners to elevate their digital and social media planning through data and best practices. This slide discusses crucial activities such as social media objectives, research, establishing buyer personas, creating a content calendar, and analyzing performance. Use this presentation template to grow your brand and promote it on social media in a more organized and focused manner. Get it now!

Maximize the reach of your marketing campaign and its effectiveness

A media plan promotes uniformity in a company’s messaging to guarantee that advertisements are set up correctly for the target audience. Use SlideTeam’s PPT Templates to bring your multi-media communication strategy to life.

PS Ready to rule the social media segment? Check out SlideTeam’s top Social Media Plans PPT Templates  to help you transform your digital marketing strategy.

FAQs ON MEDIA PLAN

What are the forms of media.

• Paid media encompasses media outlets that are paid to access. Examples include social media posts, radio and TV advertising, and print ads in local newspapers.
• Owned media comprises outlets that a corporation or media planner controls directly. Examples include a company website, personal blogs, newsletters, catalogs, and other media channels.
• Earned media is the form of word-of-mouth since customers are eager to recommend your brand, as they believe in your services and goods.

What is the primary purpose of a media plan?

A media plan encompasses communication operations a company intends to carry out over a specific period, employing any media. Its purpose is to identify the most cost-effective and efficient media channels for a specific marketing campaign to maximize the reach and effectiveness of the campaign.

What are the essential components of a media plan?

• Marketing budget
• Conversion objectives
• Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
• Message frequency
• Message reach

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Social Marketing Training chapter 3  lesson 1.2

Essential Components of a Social Media Strategy

The nitty-gritty on building a social media strategy.

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Video Transcript | Intro

A Social Media Strategy contains many key components, which together ensure all facets of your company’s social media presence have been considered, thereby setting your organization up for digital success.

Setting the Foundation

The first, foundational components of a social media strategy are: a Social Media Audit ,  Social Media Goals and Objectives , and the Budget, Tactics, and Tools required to achieve them. In this foundational stage, you’ll consider not only successes and opportunities on social media, but also create the strategic plan for supporting organizational goals, whether that involves social ads, a business blog, or the creation of an influencer strategy.

Key Social Guides

You’ll also need to incorporate a Content Strategy for the types and amount of posts you’ll share, a clearly defined Brand Persona and Voice , as well as a Calendar of Key Dates for your organization, such as upcoming campaigns, holidays, and reporting periods. These components provide a structure that will enable you to maintain a consistent and engaging social media presence.

Your Social Media Strategy should also prepare you for staff departures and arrivals, or a social media crisis. These components include your social team’s Roles and Responsibilities , a Social Media Governance  plan, as well as a Crisis Management Plan detailing the proper steps to take should a situation arise.

Finally, your Social Media Strategy should define a Measurement and Reporting plan   for determining social ROI. By outlining the ways in which you’ll measure success, your company will be able to view the full impact of your social media strategy, and  iterate based on these results, allowing continual improvement in the months and years to come.

Looking for more? Checkout our blog and learn how to create a social media strategy in 8 easy steps !

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Ford Media Center

Prospective employees can meet with Ford representatives at the new Ford Tennessee Discovery Center in Brownsville, Tenn., once it opens. The plant’s management team brings together strong leaders from around the world, including Ford veterans and talent from Tesla, Amazon, Meta, Toyota, FedEx and more. Community members also will be welcome to experience advanced manufacturing through virtual reality simulations at the Discovery Center.

Ohio Assembly Plant

Additionally, Ford continues its expansion of Ohio Assembly Plant in Avon Lake to produce an all-new electric commercial vehicle for Ford Pro customers beginning mid-decade.

Half of the structural steel is erected on the site, interior slabs are being poured, concrete walls are going up and masonry is beginning on interior walls. Ford expects to begin tool installation at Ohio Assembly Plant in spring 2025. 

Employees at the plant, like at other Ford manufacturing facilities, will use wearable technology to support high-quality and efficient manufacturing.

Design work continues on Ford’s future-generation EVs. A skunkworks team in California is developing a smaller, low-cost, profitable, flexible EV platform capable of underpinning multiple vehicles at high volumes. Alan Clarke leads the growing team, which includes personnel from Auto Motive Power (AMP) following Ford’s acquisition of the EV energy management startup in late 2023. 

In the meantime, construction is progressing at BlueOval Battery Park Michigan, in Marshall, Mich., and at the BlueOval SK joint venture battery plants in Tennessee and Kentucky. 

About Ford Motor Company

Ford Motor Company (NYSE: F) is a global company based in Dearborn, Michigan, committed to helping build a better world, where every person is free to move and pursue their dreams.  The company’s Ford+ plan for growth and value creation combines existing strengths, new capabilities and always-on relationships with customers to enrich experiences for customers and deepen their loyalty.  Ford develops and delivers innovative, must-have Ford trucks, sport utility vehicles, commercial vans and cars and Lincoln luxury vehicles, along with connected services.  The company does that through three customer-centered business segments:  Ford Blue, engineering iconic gas-powered and hybrid vehicles; Ford Model e, inventing breakthrough EVs along with embedded software that defines exceptional digital experiences for all customers; and Ford Pro, helping commercial customers transform and expand their businesses with vehicles and services tailored to their needs.  Additionally, Ford provides financial services through Ford Motor Credit Company.  Ford employs about 177,000 people worldwide.  More information about the company and its products and services is available at corporate.ford.com.

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