What you’ll learn about media buying:

• Media buying is a key component of marketing strategies
• Today’s media buyers have a wealth of platforms to choose from to meet prospects where they are
• Effective media buyers will build a strategy, focus on ROI, measure success, and more

As a marketer, you know that the marketing cycle never stops. Every year, brands come up with marketing campaigns that feature their products and services in ways designed to attract their target audiences and have them progress through the funnel. The strategies behind these campaigns are robust, ranging from inbound efforts like content marketing plans and product marketing initiatives, to outbound activities such as media buying. 

Media buying professionals identify and purchase ad space on the channels that make the most sense for their potential customers. They also make sure that these ads are deployed at the right time, so that they’re as cost-effective as possible. From TV and print media to ecommerce sites and social media platforms, media buying takes place across a variety of channels, depending on the type of product or brand being promoted and the audience being targeted. 

Media buying can support a variety of marketing objectives across the funnel. This can include brand awareness on the one hand, and nurturing existing prospects that might already be familiar with your brand on the other. 

In this post we’ll take a deeper look at the role media buying plays in a broader marketing strategy and share some advice on how to get media buying right.

The Evolution of Media Buying

Before we do that, here’s a quick overview of how media buying has evolved. Believe it or not, media buying was actually first in invented in the 1400s with business owners paying the local printing press for one-page flyers. In the 700 years since then, media buying operates on the same premise, but across a huge variety of platforms. 

For much of its history, media buyers relied on direct media buying: building relationships with publishers, negotiating with them for placement, and purchasing ad inventory. Media buyers would then ask their marketing team to produce the ad creative and share it with the publisher. This approach is still very much in practice, particularly across traditional media like TV, radio, and print. 

With the advent of digital media in the 1990s, we saw the emergence of programmatic media buying. This meant that on most digital ad platforms, such as Google and social media platforms, brands could purchase their ad spots, set up their campaigns, and target audiences themselves. This process automates all of the manual tasks outlined above, cutting down the time and costs associated with advertising. While the benefits of these digital services may be appealing, they may not always be the best approach for targeting your customer audience.

Regardless of the publisher or platform you’re using, guaranteeing conversions and a profitable return on investment (ROI) for your media buying comes down to purchasing the right placements for your target audience at the right time—while using your budget as efficiently as possible.

The Role of Media Buying in Your Marketing Strategy

Like any other marketing function, media buyers will work with the rest of the team to ensure that they are aligned on the quarterly, seasonal, or annual brand objectives. This means that they will input into the broader marketing strategy, providing recommendations around target personas for each campaign, the channels that make the most sense to reach them, and the budget required to make that happen. 

Collaboration will be key here. While outbound media buying fits naturally with product marketing initiatives—it’s a key step in putting your offering in front of people that might not know about it yet—there are other marketing functions that can benefit from that promotion. For instance, content marketing efforts like an informational report based on original data or a webinar that features your leadership could benefit from targeted advertising that puts the content in front of the right eyes. This way, your media buying acts as the ultimate top-of-funnel hook that gets prospects familiar with your brand.

What Effective Media Buying Looks Like

With all the different facets and potential channels for media buying, getting it right can feel daunting. Here are some tips for setting your team up for success and ensuring that your media buying initiatives are working for you, not against you.

• Always start out with a strategy. Make sure you’re putting as much thought into your media buying as you are with any other part of your marketing campaigns. 
• Identify your personas. Understanding who it is you’re talking to is a critical decision factor for all media buying. 
• Keep ROI top of mind. Pick the channels that are proven to provide the most conversions for your spend. Note: these will change depending on the target audience you’re trying to reach at any given time.
• Be consistent in your messaging. Your ad copy should be true to your brand and should feel familiar to people who have engaged with your content before. 
• Understand what success looks like. Before you get started on a campaign—be it direct media buying or programmatic media buying—set clear and measurable KPIs that you can track throughout.
• Test, test, and test again. When launching a new campaign, consider splitting your spend across a handful of channels that make sense for your audience, and evaluate which performs best. Once you have some initial data, you can reprioritize spend as needed.

One of the biggest challenges that media buyers are facing today is the shift away from third-party cookies and the adoption of new policies such as Apple’s IDFA opt-out. These changes are making it much harder for marketers to get a clear picture of who is visiting their site and make informed decisions around the personas to target. While there’s no clear pathway yet, a first step would be to use any first-party data you have to build out your audience targeting or partner with a publisher/ad platform that has access to robust first-party data from customers who might also be interested in your products. 

Media buying is a crucial component to executing your marketing strategy. It’s one of the many moving parts of an effective marketing program and when executed properly, it can make a lasting impression on prospective customers and clients. 

Keep these tips in mind as you build your next marketing strategy—and if you have any questions, get in touch!

Photos by Micheile Henderson and Stephen Dawson.