Media companies trying to develop good ad campaigns for a large target audience and at lower prices have the benefit of the web as a useful marketing tool. However, creating a compelling media plan is a hard nut to crack. Marketers and advertisers often make a common mistake while creating campaigns and media planning: They tend to focus heavily on the budget and neglect the media plan. For the campaigns to become successful and the messages to make the right impact, media companies must give much thought to the markets that they serve in and the channels that they choose for delivery. If you are facing trouble in determining media planning effectiveness, worry no more. We unravel five steps that media companies can follow to create the perfect media plan:
Know Your Target Audience
Media planning and media buying efforts go down the drain if it does not successfully reach the target audience. Media companies must firstly have a clear idea of the target market’s demographics such as age, gender, income level, and media habits. There is a common trend among media planners to create a composite avatar of a person who has all the characteristic traits of their target customers. This avatar is used by media companies to identify where their target audience consumes media – TV, online, radio, etc. – before deciding on the media planning strategies.
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Define the Goals
The success or failure of media planning efforts cannot be measured unless clear goals are set from the very beginning. Defining the goals sets predetermined standards of performance for the ad campaigns. The media planners can compare the performance of the campaign against these standards to understand if it is performing as expected or not. This practice helps to identify the flaws and take the necessary corrective action.
Smart Tools for Media Planning
Several online services offer tools to plan, organize, and analyze media spending all in one place. They also provide the opportunity to connect with other businesses and keep all the media planning files and tasks in one place. Therefore, small, medium, and large media companies must make use of such tools for creating and managing their media planning strategies easily and measure the performance – all in one place.
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Determine the Perfect Media Mix
As mentioned earlier, by gaining a deeper understanding of the target audience, companies can make media planning more efficient. Having a clear-cut idea of what is the primary source of media consumption for a desired set of the audience helps firms to direct their media planning efforts into this channel and also plan their ad spend carefully. Media companies can also opt for a mix of various media channels for their campaigns, depending on the preferences of the target customers.
Evaluate the Cost and Execute the Media Plan
The final step in media planning is for companies to evaluate the cost of various viable channels for ad campaigns and measure them against the ad budget. Media companies have to opt for the channels that are well within the budget but must not compromise with the effectiveness in terms of reaching the right audience and conveying the message. Once the optimum channel and their cost are evaluated, and a final decision is arrived upon, media companies can successfully execute the media plan.