Media planning

Media planning is an important stage in the formation of an advertising strategy, which involves a detailed plan for the promotion of products with quantitative characteristics. What does the media plan take into account? Promotion channels, the amount of advertising that will be placed in them, the cost per target action, the advertising budget for the individual channel and the total amount needed for a certain period: a month, six months, a year.

A detailed media plan makes it possible to effectively manage the goals of marketing activities, monitor the effectiveness of communications in general and each channel in particular, as well as determine the best time and place of advertising in the media based on specific marketing and statistical media research.

Functions of a media plan:

It is a reference point and a step-by-step guide. The peculiarity of the structure of the media plan, which contains information about which advertising channels and what results should be achieved by the company, allows you to clearly follow the outlined plan and avoid unnecessary spending.
Clearly demonstrates what channels of communication and promotion are the most effective. At the stage of preparation of the media plan experts always study the target audience of the brand and places where it "lives". A list of relevant sites and media channels is created based on these data. The results of promotion, recorded in the media plan, will clearly show which channel is the most effective.
Budgets for an advertising campaign. Even before the start of the advertising campaign, its budget is defined in the media plan. This approach will help to avoid unnecessary spending and stop the campaign in time if the results are unsatisfactory.
Defines a clear framework for promotion campaigns. The media plan provides a timeline for the campaign - a start date and an end date. This serves as a good tool for planning time, staff utilization and the equal allocation of resources.

Media planning stages

A media plan created by professionals is based on specific statistical and factual data. It is a bad and even somewhat dangerous idea to base your plan on unconfirmed assumptions, guesses, pseudo-expert data, or to focus on the actions of your competitors.

A truly effective media plan is created after you've gone through the basic stages of development:

Market analysis, determining the group of target consumers. In-depth analysis involves studying supply and demand in the market where you work. It is equally important to study the target audience and make a detailed portrait of the target character - your ideal customer.
Refer to the marketing plan. A promotional strategy will avoid blind activities - it's important to focus your media planning on the goals defined by your overall marketing strategy. If you don't have a strategy, you should start by developing one.
Determine a list of media channels. The information obtained in the first stage of development will help you to select a list of advertising channels, through which you will be able to deliver your message to the target audience in the most accessible way. And on the contrary - avoid unnecessary waste of resources and funds for promotion in obviously ineffective channels.
Set measurable and achievable goals for your advertising campaigns. It's important that the goals are reasonable and realistic. For example, the goal - to gather a base of 1 million subscribers on Facebook for 2 weeks and a budget of $100 ephemeral, but to attract through advertising in the social network of potential customers in the chatbot - a more realistic scenario.
Decide on the format of your advertising communication. There are actually many formats - a video presentation, a video with a "talking head," a video review or promotional article, a banner, a guest post, or a static picture.
Establish KPIs. Think about the key indicators that will indicate the success of the advertising campaign, the benchmark for evaluating the overall result of the promotion. Such key performance indicators include the reach of the ad and the percentage of interaction with the publication, clickability, price per click, the amount of traffic generated to the site and conversions performed there, etc.
Set deadlines. You can't let the advertising campaign run its course and rely on the automatic algorithms of advertising platforms. Each campaign should have a start and end date. Advertising can be run in parallel or alternately in different channels, at the same time analyzing the results. The promotion strategy you choose will help you decide on the timing.
Calculate the budget. As a rule, marketers calculate the approximate budget for promotion, based on the average price for the target action on the site and the result to be achieved.This determines the cost of promotion for different channels.

The total budget that a brand allocates for promotional activities can also serve as a guide. In this case, it is allocated to channels based on their hypothetical performance: for example, most of it can be allocated to social networks, and a smaller part to print advertising for placement on external media.