What you’ll learn about managing ad spend: 

• Managing ad spend today requires media buyers to cover a variety of channels
• There are four key steps to managing ad spend effectively
  1. Build a strategy
  2. Select priority channels
  3. Buy the media
  4. Track and optimize the campaign

Managing ad spend looks very different today than it did a decade ago. While many organizations still invest in traditional advertising such as television, radio, print, and out of home (OOH), today’s marketers often start by focusing on the social media platforms where their target audience spends the most time online. Especially when you’re just starting out, or don’t have a massive advertising budget to play with, these digital marketing channels are some of the most cost-effective and measurable ways to reach your ideal customer.

To help media buyers as they review their advertising strategy, we’ve developed a four-step guide for effectively managing ad spend. 

Step 1: Build a Strategy

Like any marketing effort, media buying is most effective when the strategy and objectives are clearly defined upfront, dictating what success looks like and how to measure it.

At this stage, the media buyer connects with media planners and the rest of the broader marketing team to establish the ultimate goals of the campaign. Whether it’s product awareness, social engagement, website traffic, or market penetration, the overarching campaign goals will dictate which channels are most effective. It’s worth mentioning that for a lot of larger companies these strategic tasks will be assigned to the media planners, who will hand off the tasks to the media buyers. However, it’s become more common to see a hybrid role or team managing strategy through to execution and optimization, especially for small businesses.

Once the goals are determined, the media buyer will also outline key performance indicators (KPIs). These are the specific targets that will reflect the success of each goal. Once the campaign is underway, these projected metrics will help the media buyer measure and optimize campaign results.

Step 2: Select Priority Channels

The final step of the planning phase is to identify the target market and the most effective channels to reach them. Crafting user personas that showcase your users’ behaviors will be a key step here. They will dictate how to best serve your target audience, and thus what channels they are likely to be more receptive to.

For example, let’s consider a media buyer targeting marketing professionals. If the objective is to drive product awareness for an email marketing product, the media buyer might apply to be a sponsor for an online marketing conference. With this in mind, they might also choose to place an ad on LinkedIn because it has better targeting opportunities thank Instagram. Regardless of the situation, the media buyer will weigh the pros and cons of each channel and manage the allotted budget.  

One of the media buyers’ most important tasks in managing ad spend is finding the best marketing mix to suit their budgetary restrictions while simultaneously delivering the best results.

Step 3: Buy the Media

At this stage, the campaign is close to launching. Alongside the marketing team, the media buyer has identified the budget, channels, and KPIs. The copy and creative assets are approved and organized. It’s time to launch the campaign.

There are two leading approaches for buying media: 

Direct buy: This is done through traditional media channels. It often involves relationship building to negotiate the timing, location, and frequency of the ad. For example, the media buyer reaches out to the organizer of the marketing conference to get an understanding of the pricing, exposure, and options for event sponsorship.

Programmatic buy: The buying process is done using automated technology, as typically seen on platforms such as Google or Facebook, with the ability to hyper-target specific segments. For example, a search campaign on Google, which is sold at an AI-powered auction and only shown to an audience whose Google search queries closely match the keywords of your ad campaign. 

Once a campaign is live, the results will start coming in, and the media buyer’s role shifts from planning and launching to analysis and optimization. 

Step 4: Track and Optimize the Campaign

Once live, the media buyer will begin to track and record results, most often via a platform such as Google Analytics. With a close eye on the KPIs established in the planning phase, tweaks and adjustments will be made to optimize campaigns and meet marketing objectives.  

Most programmatic campaign adjustments fall into two buckets; creative and technical. When a campaign is high in impressions but generating a low click-through rate, this generally signifies a creative problem: the messaging isn’t resonating with the target audience and not converting effectively. If a programmatic ad campaign is generating low impression volume, the problem is on the technical side. It could be that the keyword bidding strategy needs adjusting, or that the search volume for the keywords is low. The later signals that more keyword research is required to run an effective campaign and achieve their marketing goals. 

One of the most common ways to optimize campaigns is to run an A/B test in which two ads are nearly identical but include one or more variants, aiding in identifying what the audience is most receptive to. This might look like two ads with different visuals and ad copy, but with the same keyword strategy, or, it may be an experiment to see if an intended target market is more receptive to display ads or search ads.  

The platforms that media buyers work on are constantly changing, and it’s an important aspect of their job to identify the regulatory changes that will affect their marketing efforts and to ensure their knowledge is up to date to effectively manage campaigns without violating privacy or regulatory laws. 

Getting Started with Managing Ad Spend

Media buying isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. Each company’s needs and requirements can vary wildly from another’s, often a direct reflection of their target markets preferences and behaviours. It’s important to note that no ad placement is accidental — paid marketing campaigns are costing businesses both time and money, and while they do require trial and error, careful media planning is critical for achieving fantastic results with minimal adjustments. 

We hope this quick guide has been a helpful introduction to the world of media buying and the key questions and methods the media buyer needs to consider before launching a campaign and applying a marketing budget.  

If you’re looking to outsource the job to experts, you’re in the right place!  Let’s get in touch and see how we can align to help your team achieve your marketing goals today!

Photo by Robert Bye on Unsplash