sign in sign up
<<
Home , Brand awareness, Media buying, Media planning

A Guide to and Buying in 2021

www.mediatool.com 0 1

What's included?

The ‘buckle up’ mantra won’t take you far in the new normal. Whether you’re an in- house marketer or an agency media planner, adapting to the new climate is crucial. More than that, reinventing your digital planning to be able to mirror consumers’ ever-evolving needs will be on every marketing leader’s agenda in 2021. If you’re looking for better ways to drive traffic, generate leads and deliver more ROI, start by leaving the old tactics behind.

Table of contents

02 What is media planning?

03 Media planning vs. : what’s the difference?

06 The effects of COVID-19 on media planning 09 Your step by step guide to media planning

12 Media planning challenges 17 What's next? 0 2

What is media planning?

Let’s get the semantics out of the way.

Media planning refers to the process of identifying, assessing, and selecting media channels and platforms to reach a well-defined target audience. Media planners determine how, where, when, and why a business will share media content to boost awareness, reach, engagement, and drive ROI through paid advertising.

A media planner is responsible for developing a coordinated media plan for a given advertising budget. The more that budget is optimized – or stretched, as they like to say in the media world – to reach the largest audience for the lowest cost, the more ROI can be generated. The sole purpose of media planning is to get a in front of the right audience at the right time and persuade them to purchase a product or service.

But wait… What is a media channel?

A media channel is a broad media class or medium used to deliver advertising messages to prospective customers. Traditional media channels include television, print, radio, outdoor advertising, and events. However, these days, media planners could hardly expect to run an impactful marketing campaign without covering a vast array of digital channels.

Digital media channels include paid social media ads, , email, , audio streaming services, and more. Once the target audience is established, media planners move on to strategizing which channels would be most effective. Then, the next step is to determine which media vehicles and content types could garner the best results. 0 3

And what is a media vehicle?

A media vehicle refers to a specific channel advertisers employ to reach their intended audiences. It could be a page in a local newspaper, a TV talk show, or a LinkedIn remarketing ad. Within a broader, general category of media, planners will pick out a varied mix of media vehicles to reach a target consumer group on multiple occasions and influence their perception of and interest in a product or service.

So, when planners talk about ‘selecting the right mix of media vehicles’, they refer to the process of picking out the most effective combination of media – from a sponsored podcast or niche email campaign to an ad on a side of a city bus.

Media planning vs. Media buying: what’s the difference?

How is media planning different from media buying? Although the two processes often get lumped together, media planners and media buyers play distinctly different roles in the media advertising mechanism.

Let’s look at the main differences between media planning and media buying, and how both sides work in tandem to deliver the best results.

0 4

What do media planners do?

Media planners are tasked with figuring out what media will be the most effective at achieving marketing objectives. Like the name implies, media planners carry out research, identify the ripest opportunities for achieving what the client/brand wants, outline campaign goals and objectives, and allocate budgets for the chosen media mix. In short, media planners take care of all the behind-the-scenes intel required for a successful integrated marketing campaign.

The key responsibilities of a media planner include:

Internal : External market research:

Uncovering and understanding the client’s Assessing the advertising landscape, brand identity, , USPs and buyer competitor activities, past and current personas. campaign performance, target audience insights and the most effective media channels for the intended audience.

Setting campaign goals & objectives: Determining the budgets:

Ensuring campaign profitability by Based on the information uncovered allocating budgets and deciding what throughout their research, media planners percentage of the budget will be spent on bear the responsibility for setting ambitious each channel. but realistic and achievable goals for their advertising strategy. 0 5

What do media buyers do?

Media buying is the other side of the advertising coin. Media buying refers to the process of securing media space – be it a time slot, ad space or an endorsement – to meet campaign objectives in the most cost-effective way. Media buyers have a very intimate understanding of the marketplace and a long list of contacts/relationships with media vendors they’ve built over the years.

The key responsibilities of a media buyer include:

Developing & leveraging relationships Negotiating:

It’s all about who you know when it comes Media placement is not set in to traditional media buying. Leveraging stone. Keep in mind that you can discuss trusted relationships within the industry and the pricing and your budget with the knowing the right people in the right places, vendors to bring the price down. Media can help media buyers drive impressive buyers are in charge of negotiating better ROIs. rates and optimising their budget to run more cost-effective campaigns.

Tracking and tweaking campaigns in motion: Although media planners build out the strategy, media buyers are the ones calling the shots. Tracking campaign performance in real-time allows media buyers to make quick adjustments or instantaneous shifts While for some media planning vs media to keep the plans on track and achieve their buying is a debate, the truth is that a objectives. robust media strategy relies on both to achieve high-impact business results. In fact, with the advancement of technology, greater reach and personalization, it’s vital for media planners and buyers to work collaboratively and sync their processes in real-time. 0 6

The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on media planning

The complexity of the media planning Of course, data-driven audience insights and buying process is staggering. There is nothing new in media planning. Yet the are so many moving parts involved that focus on mining real-time data is a newly managing integrated marketing rediscovered superpower. campaigns is becoming a challenge in itself. Throw a global pandemic into the Uncovering emerging trends early allows mix and you have a code red situation at marketing teams to act in time and be hand. part of the conversation. And more importantly, it provides them with dearly And while there’s no playbook for these needed context for better tailored ad unprecedented times, it seems crisis can creatives and copy. be a perception-shifting exercise, providing us with renewed clarity and direction. Without a predefined plan for how to communicate with our intended Unsurprisingly, some great examples of audiences, we’re forced to be more data- trend-led consumer campaigns came driven, collaborative and opportunistic to from Google’s own media team. Having tap into real-time consumer intent. analysed Google and YouTube search trends during the first few weeks of the Consumer trends are driving global lockdown, they identified a media plans more than ever significant uptick in “bread baking” queries and jumped on the opportunity before to promote the Google Nest Hub screens in that context. Have they ever thought The outbreak of Covid-19 put many about using bread baking references to marketing teams in a pickle. As plans advertise their smart home display went out the window, marketers needed device? Probably not. Has it worked? You to find a new framework to ground them bet. in the unprecedented moment – that’s when they turned to trends and data. 0 7 Case study

Soft Surroundings, a women’s clothing brand, offers another excellent example of jumping on a rising trend. At the start of the pandemic, the brand was forced to drop the original spring catalog creative featuring travel scenes and look for new ideas to showcase their products in a more relevant context. That’s when they observed a surge in loungewear- related search queries and tapped into the traffic with a new home-appropriate campaign. The initiative led to an 18% increase in Soft Surroundings’ loungewear revenue and achieved a 6.5X return on ad spend.

Rediscovering the power of real-time insights will most certainly serve savvy media teams in the post- pandemic world.

Teams are acting on campaign As teams tightened the feedback loop performance data faster than with more collaborative analysis and they ever thought they could focused on hitting their media goals, media planning became more grounded A newly found sense of discipline has and less concerned with gloss and been another unexpected side effect of polish. Covid-19 on media planning teams. While has always been With strained marketing budgets and touted to enable more speed, agility and increased pressure to deliver immediate transparency, its potential had hardly results, tracking campaign performance been tapped. The pandemic left no room became a number one priority for for gut-driven strategies and over- marketing teams. While, in pre-Covid complicated decision-making processes. times, marketers might have enjoyed more wiggle room to iterate, test and In fact, decisions that used to take days experiment with optimization tactics, or even weeks to make are now being zero tolerance is now shown for made in hours. underperforming campaigns. 0 8

The importance of having the right tools Does that mean brand campaigns will for campaign tracking and monitoring become a thing of the past? Not has jumped a level. Advertisers are necessarily. The close scrutiny of looking for easy-to-implement, plug- marketing budgets is driving media and-play solutions that allow them to teams to reconsider their approach – orchestrate their media campaigns and being more thoughtful about where, spend in real time. One of the biggest when and why they deploy brand drivers at Mediatool has always been to campaigns will help marketers to simplify the digital marketing journey maximize their impact moving forward. from idea to attribution. And over the past year, we’ve witnessed a tremendous increase in demand for a more agile, end-to-end approach to managing advertising campaigns. If the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that lack of reporting transparency and sense of urgency can have huge opportunity costs.

Advertisers are prioritising attributable media

In times of unprecedented uncertainty, business leaders adopt a zero-risk mentality. Every dollar spent has to drive immediate results, and that presents great challenges for marketing teams. With investment in traditional media falling sharply in 2020, it’s obvious that advertisers are pulling back from brand campaigns and redeploying their resources into channels and tactics that are easier to track, measure and report on in real time. 0 9

How to create a media plan in the post-Covid world: your step by step guide to media planning

Under pressure to deliver results in the post-Covid reality? Pandemic or no pandemic, digital marketers must follow the good old principles of the agile .

Define your target Determine 01 audience 02 campaign goals

Defining your target audience is the first You can’t measure campaign and most crucial step in any marketing performance if you don’t know what good plan. A target audience is essentially a performance looks like. Starting with the group of people that you identify as end result in mind helps media planners potential customers based on their age, select the right mix of media channels and occupation, location, interests, gender or messages. other factors.There’s no point in trying to reach and speak to everyone – not Are you running a brand awareness everyone will need your product or campaign or trying to generate sales of a service. If you have a business that sells particular product? baby products, your target audience will be new parents or grandparents. You For instance, if you’re planning a don’t want to target teenage girls with ads Christmas advertising campaign for a for baby cribs, right? selected range of children’s toys like bicycles or scooters, you’ll have to be able Say, you establish that your target to connect campaign metrics to the customers are young professional couples revenue generated from that line of in mid-size and large cities who commute products. And without clearly defined by public transport, have a passion for goals, you won’t be able to optimize sustainability and a combined monthly campaigns on the fly or evaluate their income of $8,000. This gives you plenty of performance later on. information to get the neurons firing and inform your next steps. 1 0

Research the Consider frequency 03 market 04 and reach

Once clear goals and objectives are Determining both the reach and the established, the next step is to conduct frequency of your ad placements is an research into market trends and the important part of the media planning competitive landscape. These insights will process. Reach refers to how many offer you more visibility into competitor people will see your ad, while frequency strategy and potential opportunities. determines how often. The goal here is to find the balance between maximizing your How are competitors positioning their ad visibility and becoming too pervasive. products? How can you differentiate You want your ads to be noticed but not to yourself? What channels are trending the point where they become annoying. among your target customers and why? Market research will likely turn up insights Certain mediums, such as print media, that will inform your advertising strategy need careful fine-tuning. For instance, a and tactical decisions, so it’s not a step print ad needs to feature at least three you can skip. times to be seen by the intended audience and generate brand recognition. Digital advertising will require its own considerations to engage consumers and drive ROI.

There are three main approaches to consider when deciding on ad frequency:

Continuity Flighting

This approach describes a continuous, Media placement pricing is not set in consistent schedule of ads over the stone. Keep in mind that you can discuss course of the campaign in the chosen the pricing and your budget with the medium. It’s often used for goods that vendors to bring the price down. Media aren’t seasonal and require constant buyers are in charge of negotiating better nurturing and reinforcement to stay top of rates and optimising their budget to run mind. more cost-effective campaigns.

Pulsing

This approach combines the best of both Continuity and Flighting. Pulsed campaigns will balance between dripping and pouring – you’ll have periods of low-intensity consistent advertising, augmented by flights of higher-intensity campaigns when additional spend can generate the greatest ROI. 1 1

Select the right Monitor, measure 05 media mix 06 and improve

Armed with the market research and goal- Once media plans are established and setting insights, marketers must approved, media planners will hand them determine which channels can bring them over to media buyers. Working within the most success. The plethora of budget frameworks, media buyers will traditional and digital channels available to actively seek out proposals from media planners can be dizzying, so it’s traditional and digital media sales reps as important to have an attribution well as estimate online advertising costs. framework in place and continuously Maximising the return on investment is a monitor campaign performance in each key priority for media buyers, but the channel. overall campaign performance remains a responsibility of media planners. And Generally speaking, media planners that’s a lot of data to juggle if you don’t choose between offline and online have the right tools! channels: Visual reports and dashboards make Offline media: tracking campaign performance easier for marketers who want to keep their finger TV & Cable, Radio, Print publications, on the pulse at all times. A single real- Outdoor media time report with multi-source data helps Online media: to ensure media buyers have all the information they need to optimize PPC, Social media, Programmatic campaigns in-flight, shift budgets if advertising, Digital publications, required and make better informed Streaming media decisions for future plans.

With Mediatool’s customizable dashboards and reporting capabilities, advertisers can have a holistic view of all their campaigns in one central location. Real-time data feeds ensure you get the most up-to-date snapshot of your campaign performance and can quickly make well-informed decisions to adjust, pause and optimize campaigns from a single account. 1 2

Media Planning Challenges

Besides the standard headaches that marketers have – attribution, proving ROI and keeping up with trends – the ‘new normal’ in media planning promises to kick things up a notch.

Targeting the right audience effectively

The better you understand your target audience, the more relevant and effective your advertising will be. Audience research may be the most important step in your strategy as it will inform every element of your marketing plan. Is there a secret sauce to getting it right? Top marketers swear by these simple tactics for narrowing your focus while expanding your reach.

TOP TIP Compile the data you have on existing customers and social media followers.

You’re probably tracking every campaign down to the granular level, so collecting data points on the following factors shouldn’t be a problem: age or generation, location, timezone, language, spending power and patterns, personal interests and hobbies, challenges and pain points, and their stage of life (students, new parents, retirees, etc.). If you’re in B2B, it’s worth also considering the size of business and the roles of key stakeholders and decision makers. Mapping out these data points will help you construct a fairly accurate target consumer persona and messaging that would work with them. 1 3

Forgetting about taxonomy

Taxonomy in marketing is a system to organize and classify marketing data. It helps marketers to better analyze the impact of each channel and tactic, track changes in performance and make smarter, data-informed decisions about optimization in near real time. The challenge with implementing a data taxonomy lies with the fact that there is no one right way to do it. The most effective taxonomies align with a business’s specific structure and terminology, so they need to be tailored and often evolve over time. Standardizing how data around your campaigns is organized from the get-go will help you create attributable impact and increase ROI faster.

TOP TIP Here’s a simple example of a clearly defined taxonomy:

Step 1: Channel name, e.g. “Paid Search” Step 2: Vendor or platform name, e.g. “Google AdWords” Step 3: Campaign Name, e.g. “US_Search_MarketingCourses” Step 4: Dimension to be tracked, e.g. “Device Type” Step 5: Ad group name: e.g. “Digital Marketing Course” Step 6: Ad name e.g. “[digital marketing] +online course -free” 1 4

Integrating data from all channels

The transition from multi-channel to omni-channel marketing campaigns requires advertisers to connect and maximize the value of siloed data from various sources and platforms. Only with the 360-view of your customer journey can you spot the inefficiencies and opportunities in your paid media campaigns.

Case study

Disney is a great example of a brand that gets omni- channel marketing right. From its beautiful mobile- responsive website that seamlessly adapts to any screen size to the trip-planning tool that allows customers to move across devices without any glitch. Once the trip is booked, the entertainment giant allows clients to plan every detail of their trip including dinner bookings and Fast Track passes. And with the recent launch of its all- in-one smart device MagicBand, Disney brings it all together: customers can check in at FastPass+ entrances, enter parks, unlock hotel room doors, store pictures and even order food from one watch-like bracelet. Not only does it provide incredible user experience, the brand gets a bird’s-eye view of its customers’ habits, interests, spending power and all the other crucial data points required for successful targeting and optimization. 1 5

Struggling with workflow and collaboration madness

Digital advertising campaigns require a great deal of communication, fine-tuning and cross-functional collaboration. According to a McKinsey study, knowledge workers spend around 28% of the work week managing their email and nearly 20% searching for internal information or tracking down colleagues who can help with specific tasks. The study suggests that by fully adopting the right social technologies businesses have the opportunity to raise the productivity of knowledge workers by 20 to 25%.

In the wake of a recent global pandemic, the challenge of achieving effective collaboration has become even more apparent. Teams that had the right tech stack gained momentum during the unprecedented times, while others struggled to adapt and deploy campaigns in time. A survey by NewsCred found that organizations using planning and project management tools faced fewer challenges as a result of Covid-19 compared to those that don’t use any tools.

TOP TIP The first step towards streamlining your marketing team’s collaboration is understanding what productivity and communication tools they need to keep the projects moving forward. The secret here is to find one or two platforms that can do it all. Bringing in too many new tools might end up being more disruptive than having no communications infrastructure at all, so do your research! 1 6

Dealing with budget restrictions

As finance teams put the breaks on spending in a bid to protect cash flow, most marketers will face significant budget cuts in 2021. Rather than going for blanket cuts across all paid media campaigns, teams should focus on making strategic selective cuts that could help mitigate the losses, shore up cash flow and, in some cases, even improve performance in the long run.

If you think you’ll be dealing with budget restrictions, follow these guiding principles when drawing up your marketing plan and budget:

Review all marketing spending in Consider churn and acquisition detail: costs:

Before pausing or shifting marketing Be careful when cutting spend on activities, spend time analyzing all locked-in activities that can cause damage in the commitments, contract terms and paid long run, such as brand campaigns or campaigns with the aim to repurpose, paid search altogether. What may seem renegotiate or shift to a higher-return like a quick win today, will have a activity. negative impact on the overall performance marketing costs and results. Even if you have to make cuts, consider these metrics to anticipate the impact.

Evaluate performance quickly: Run experiments to find new winning combinations: Use KPIs and benchmarks that reflect the Even when your focus is on cost current climate, consumer needs and reduction, you still have the opportunity business objectives to quickly evaluate to experiment with formats and data. marketing performance and identify Explore creative formats, new media inefficiencies. Cut with no regret and shift channels, possible partnerships and novel your focus to experimentation with other ways of using consumer insights to channels or tactics. discover a new mix of tactics that are most effective. 1 7

What’s next?

One thing is clear – need to get comfortable with the new discomfort. While no one has ready-made contingency plans for this new reality, some companies seem to be adapting better: rather than taking reactive measures until we go back to normal, they’re building for the new reality that’s already here, and here to stay.

If brands want to stay ahead of the curve, they need to reorganize the way they operate, reinvent their processes and embrace software that makes media planning easier and more effective, they’re bound to emerge on the other side unscathed, if not re-energized.

About Mediatool

So, who are we, the company behind the guide?

Mediatool is a Cloud-based marketing platform that helps brands and agencies to plan, track, collaborate and optimise media and marketing campaigns.

Hundreds of productivity tools for remote teams in a user-friendly interface including: total budget control, seamless data integration, and campaign optimization intelligence for high-performance marketing. Visualize your results to make the data- driven decisions you are not making today.Get a comprehensive overview of all your marketing activities. Everything your team needs to deliver better campaigns, and better results.

Interested in learning more? Book a demo with the Mediatool team to make your marketing more productive.

Book a free demo The all-in-one platform for better media and marketing campaigns.

www.mediatool.com