Media Planning Questions
Are you currently in the process of developing a media plan? If so, it’s important to ask yourself a few key questions about your budget, your ambitions, your target audience, and more.
Keep reading to learn more about the media planning questions you need to be asking yourself.
In today’s digital age, media planning has become a vital component of every marketing strategy. Media planning is the process of establishing how to reach a specific audience through multiple media channels such as television, radio, print, and online advertising.
What is Media Planning?
The process of selecting and scheduling media channels to serve a specified target demographic is commonly referred to as media planning. The goal of media planning is to make the best use of resources like time and money in order to successfully reach the target audience with the desired message. Media buying is an important component of media planning since it involves the purchase of advertising inventory across various media channels such as television, radio, and internet. In order to choose the appropriate media channels to utilize, media planning involves analyzing data and conducting research, devising a media strategy, and producing a media plan that specifies the exact media platforms to be used. It is critical to understand what is media plan before measuring the impact on the target audience and making any necessary adjustments.
What is a Media Plan?
A media plan is a detailed document that defines the strategic approach to buying and selecting advertising media in order to accomplish marketing and advertising goals. A thorough examination of the target audience, market trends, competitive landscape, and media possibilities is often included in a media plan. To create a successful media plan, media buyer and media planner collaborate closely. The target audience is determined by media planners, who then create a strategy to reach them through various media platforms.
Media Planning Examples
Here are some everyday examples of media planning.
Nike’s “Just Do It” advertising campaign is one of the most well-known in the world. The “Just Do It” campaign used a combination of traditional and digital media channels, including television, print, outdoor, and social media. Nike’s advertising was aimed at young adults, primarily guys, who were interested in sports and fitness.
Coca-Cola’s “Share a Coke” marketing campaign is a classic example of a successful media strategy. The campaign was aimed to increase sales while also promoting the Coca-Cola brand in a novel way, and it was a success in both areas.
Media Planner Interview Questions
The significance of media planner interview questions will be covered in the following article.
Is your budget the right amount for your business ambitions?
Think about how much you need to be spending, versus how much you simply wish you could spend. Are you willing to spend the amount you’ve budgeted, even if your media plan fails and you lose any return on investment? Be mindful of just how much you can feasibly spend on your media plan and if it’s worth the investment.
Do you know who your target audience is?
This is an absolutely vital part of creating a media plan, but far too many marketers and brand leaders don’t clarify it enough. The first step in media planning and placement is audience study. Your target audience is a group of people who could potentially be your ideal buyer. They are grouped into different categories, such as demographics, location, buying habits, industry, profession, gender, income level, ethnicity, etc. You should also have a very clear idea of where your target market consumes their media throughout the day. This will need to be determined before you spend any amount of money on advertising. Sometimes, it helps to create an actual buyer persona, or a “fake” person to represent your target audience.
Do you know how to reach your target audience?
As we mentioned above, you’ll need to know where your target audience is spending time and consuming media throughout the day. One way you can do this is through audience segmentation targeting. This involves breaking up your target audience into different segments, or groups of users. You can then target different media advertisements for each segment and then compare and contrast the results through analytics. Media buyers are now in charge of analyzing media spending trends, selecting the best media channels to reach the target demographic, and negotiating the best available terms for advertising space. Doing so makes it possible to find the right form of media advertisement or platform to target contextually for the most success. This can be done using cookies or device IDs.
Does your advertising creative resonate with the target audience?
This is very important when it comes to developing a media plan that aligns with your branding. Not everyone will enjoy your advertising creative. Just as well, certain audiences on certain platforms may prefer your advertising creative over others. The key here is to constantly track your performance and change your advertising creative, one change at a time. For example, let’s say you’ve been advertising a video of a chiropractor fixing a young man’s back. People on chiropractic blogs seem to enjoy it, while those on social media don’t. You decide to focus advertising the video on blogs only, and continue tweaking the video to include better CTAs and information.
When is the best time to reach your target audience?
While it’s incredibly important to know the “where” of your target audience, it’s also vital to know the “when” of your audience. The only way to really know the best time to reach your audience is to test and measure over and over again. Keep an eye on when your posts get the most engagement. Is it on the weekends? Is it between the hours of 3pm and 5pm? If so, focus on delivering all of your advertising creative during those times. Your target audience will only be able to engage with your brand if your media is presented to them when they are interested and receptive to such media.
