Media Planning For Dummies
TV advertising can seem complex and confusing for newcomers, so we've written this guide to help you gain a better understanding of the magic behind TV advertising.
Media planning is the process of organising and strategising your advertising activities before a media advertising campaign is launched.
It includes market research, ad budget forecasting, identifying and segmenting a target audience, and selecting the appropriate media channels to exhibit the media that you choose to include in your advertising.
How Important Is Media Planning?
The media planning process is crucial as it lays the fundamental groundwork for the advertising campaign to be a success.
The key factors you can expect from the media planning phase of a campaign are:
- Determining the advertising budget.
- Deciding on the duration that the campaign will run for.
- Agreeing what the key performance indicators (KPIs) will be for the campaign.
What Does a Media Plan Consist of?
A media plan is a strategy that consists of outlines of everything an ad campaign needs in place before launch, for the campaign to be effective.
The plan should include who you want to reach with your ads, where and when you will reach them, what message you want to convey with your advertising, and what conversions you want to achieve and track.
Having a well-crafted media plan ensures you are using your marketing budget wisely by choosing the right channels to target the right audience, at the right time of day and week, to gain the best return on your investment.
Creating a Successful Media Plan
To create an effective media plan, Global TV Experts encourage you to consider some key factors:
- Who are the ads intended for?
- What is the marketing budget for the campaign, month-on-month and daily?
- What are the goals for conversions?
- How often should the key messaging be shown to the audience?
- What audience interests, hobbies, and behaviours are you looking to target?
- What is the potential reach of the defined audience?
- How will success be measured throughout the campaign?
Different Types of Media Plans
The type of media plan you require will depend on what type of product or service you want to advertise.
Well-constructed media plans take into account any seasonality, time periods that are worth focusing on for the demographic you are targeting, and the frequency in which you wish to spend on advertising.
The most common styles of media plan include:
Continual
A continual media plan is best suited for products that do not have seasonal considerations.
This type of media plan focuses on having creatives run constantly over a set period. Products and services that need to constantly remind potential consumers of their existence best benefit from this type of approach.
Seasonality Sensitive
Seasonal media plans are rather self-explanatory. This type of plan prioritises focusing media spend and resources into certain times of the year, when particular products or services tend to perform best.
This can help to lower costs and maximise ROI by catering the exhibiting of adverts to periods in the year when what is being advertised is sought after.
A good example of this type of media plan is when retailers have advertising pushes on the lead up to the Christmas period, and during the school summer holidays.
Flighting
Flighting media plans best suit brands that do not only require a seasonal focus, but that have known peaks in sales and periods they deem critical year-on-year.
A flighting media plan organises fluctuations in ad spending and switches between agreed periods of high-intensity exposure and periods of very little to no advertising.
The idea is to optimise and maximise ROAS, similar to seasonal planning, but for companies that need to meet demand and pull back on spending at different, nonconventional stages throughout the year.
This type of media plan can be useful for a company that intends to plan out multiple product launches and service updates across a set period.
Roadblocking
Roadblock media plans involve placing ads across multiple media channels at the same time to maximise reach and cross-platform impact. For instance, you might run the same ad (or close variations of an ad) on TV, VOD, and streaming platforms, to quickly build up awareness and generate engagement.
This strategy demands thorough planning and coordination to ensure everything runs smoothly, as it involves syncing your ads across different mediums to deliver a cohesive message.
Media Planning With Global TV Experts
If you partner with Global TV Experts to assist with your media planning, our team of highly experienced media professionals will ensure your media plan is to the highest standard, setting you up for a strong ROI from your campaign.
After an introductory conversation, we will arrange a strategic alignment call with you. Having these discovery meetings allows us to listen to everything that you want to achieve from your advertising, to ensure we put forward the best-suited plan of action. Reach out to us today to get your media planning process underway.
Our Media Buying & Planning Services
We offer complete support and guidance from the planning phase, right through to post-campaign review and analysis.
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What Does Media Planning Look Like?
If you find yourself asking: what does a media plan look like? Our experts have broken down each stage of the media planning process that we take at Global TV Experts…
The Stages of Effective Media Planning
1. Outlining The Campaign
2. Determining a Target Audience
3. Defining The Budget & Timeline
4. Choosing Platforms & Delivery Methods
5. Content & Creatives Selection & Creation
Benefits of Media Planning
Our media planning and buying professionals at Global TV Experts strongly encourage media planning as it drives great results.
If you partner with us, you can guarantee your campaign will be extensively planned out and thought through to ensure no corners get cut.
The main benefits of having a strong media plan in place are:
Effective Budget Management
A solid media plan helps you to keep track of your ad spend and marketing budget, ensuring that all costs are accounted for. A media plan provides a clear view of the expected return on investment.
A Streamlined Process
Media buying can be complex and time-consuming. By establishing clear plans and processes from the start, you can boost efficiency and save valuable resources throughout the setup process of a campaign, and during the lifespan of a campaign.
Clear Audience Segmentation and Analysis
Understanding your target audience is crucial. A successful media plan helps identify who you want to target and why. It also helps everyone involved with the project understand which messages will resonate most effectively with different audiences, and what messages the campaign is going to focus on. Having these fundamentals in place makes data easier to understand, making for a more straightforward reporting process.
Maximised ROI
Media planning helps to optimise campaigns. Creating targeted strategies results in a healthy return on ad spend.
Overall, media planning ensures more efficient, impactful marketing efforts that drive real results from quality traffic. If you plan correctly you are more likely to connect with the type of consumers you wish to engage.
Discover how Global TV Experts maximise your ROI with unparalleled data measurement and reporting.
What Happens After Media Planning Is Complete?
Media Planning (+Content Creation) → Media Buying
Once you have a concrete plan in place for your campaign, the next phase is to (if you do not already have creatives ready to go) create creatives, and then we assist you in buying media opportunities.
What’s the Difference Between Media Planning & Media Buying?
Media planning and media buying are both key phases of the television or video-on-demand advertising process.
Media planning is the strategic part of the advertising process, where decisions are made on how to reach the target audience most effectively and how you can gain the best ROI from the ads. The media planning phase is carried out before anything is put into action or any buying takes place.
Media buying is the latter phase of the advertising process. Once your media plan has been finalised, media buying experts begin to act on the plan, and actual media purchases are made to place your brand in front of the right audiences.
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Global TV Experts have been trusted by marketing managers and brand managers across the globe. We have helped plan media advertising campaigns in 40+ countries.
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