What you’ll learn about media planning: 

• A marketing team without a plan is like a ship without a destination
• A media plan defines where, when, and how often an ad or campaign should run
• Before you build a media plan, you need to know your audience
• Your media plan should contribute to your broader marketing strategy

If there’s one thing marketers love, it’s a good plan. It’s why project planning tools like Asana, Basecamp, and Monday.com have become a go-to for marketers that need to keep track of multiple campaigns. With so much on their plate, marketing teams need to put time aside to map out their media plans and what they want to accomplish. Otherwise, they risk making their campaigns ineffective and inefficient, with little to no return on investment (ROI) — and no one wants that.

In this post, we’re sharing five things to keep top of mind during media planning. With this guide in hand, you’ll be on your way to organizing your team’s efforts and enhancing conversions. 

#1 Media Planning Is Layered

Today, people are constantly sifting through massive amounts of content and advertisements, and it’s hard to stand out. This is where media planning comes in. 

Media planning is the process marketers use to determine where (e.g. what channel), when (e.g. during what season or event), and how often (e.g. every hour or once a day) they run an ad in order to optimize engagement and conversions. This helps ensure that consumers are served the right message on the right channel at the right time, so that they’re better primed to engage with your brand. 

The process is often run by media planners at ad agencies, but some brands do take it on in-house. Working as the middle person between the broader marketing team and media buyers, planners use the client needs as inputs into a strategy (or media plan) that then sets the stage for buyers to do their magic.

A media plan for a new campaign should factor in the following questions: 

• Who’s the target audience for the campaign? And what channels do they use?
• What are the latest marketing and advertising trends in your industry?
• How much do you have to spend on paid advertising?
• How many people do you want to reach?
• What are your conversion goals?
• What does success look like at both the early and late stages of the campaign?
• How will you track performance and report on results?

With these guideposts in mind, media planners can help define the correct messaging and media mix to help your team be efficient and maximize ROI.

#2 Your Media Plan Should Be Backed by Specific Goals

You need to build engagement and conversion — that’s a given if you’re a marketer. But what else is driving your media plan? 

Before you design your media plan, make sure you and your team are sitting down to outline the goals and objectives for the campaign. Are you trying to build brand awareness? Are you launching a new product or partnership? Is this campaign promoting your content marketing efforts? As you outline the different channels and distribution strategies in your plan, as well as the messaging, they should all ladder up to those objectives. 

As a bonus, your goals will be a good starting point as you do market and competitive research to explore how best to deliver the campaign. It’s also a good idea to look back at old campaigns of your own to see where you’ve had to meet similar objectives in the past and what worked then (or not). 

#3 You Need to Understand Your Audience — and Their Preferences

As marketers, you can’t just focus on developing content and ads, you also have to deliver positive consumer experiences that keep our brand top of mind. To do that properly, you need to have a clear picture of who your audience is. Within that audience, there are likely multiple personas that have clear preferences around the channels they use, how you talk to them, and what you have to say to convince them to engage with your brand. 

Some of the key things to keep in mind as you build your personas are age, gender, income, interests, and motivations. Once you have a clear idea of who you’re trying to reach, you can look at attribution measurements and engagement analytics to understand what ads will be the most effective. 

#4 Cadence and Frequency Is Important

With a defined audience in mind, you need to determine how often you are going to get your ad in front of them. When it comes time to think about the frequency of your ad there are three approaches marketers tend to take.

• Continuity or always on: Ads run on a consistent schedule across the entire campaign (e.g. twice a week). This is used for products that aren’t seasonal or those that need regular exposure in order to stay relevant. 
• Flighting: Here, ads are run intermittently, with scheduled gaps in between each ad on a particular channel. This works well for seasonal or time-sensitive projects that run yearly (e.g. Black Friday sale ads). 
• Pulsing: A combination of the continuity and flighting methods. Pulsed campaigns incorporate low-intensity consistent advertising that’s occasionally supported by flights of higher-intensity ads when additional messaging can have a bigger impact. For instance, if you’re a clothing retailer and suddenly see a spike in interest in sneakers, then you would increase the frequency of your existing sneaker ads to capitalize on that interest.

Landing on the right approach comes down to the type of product or service you are trying to advertise — and how responsive your audience is.

#5 Media Planning Isn’t Without Its Challenges

With so many considerations to keep track of, media planning can be a challenging task. Part of this is because many marketers haven’t yet adapted to the changes we’ve seen in this space. Today, there are very few ad campaigns that are successful without a social media presence. And with ad blockers growing in popularity, the age of the banner ad is done. 

Other challenges with media planning include: 

• Targeting at the consumer level: Brands need to be able to personalize their ad efforts in order to improve engagement.
• Managing complex spends: If you’re not careful, an ad campaign can sink your marketing budget. Your media planning efforts need to account for your yearly budget and how many conversions you expect. 
• Lacking integrated reporting: Because an ad campaign will often rely on so many different channels (e.g. TV, social media, and print) it can be difficult to get a clear, full picture of the media plan’s success. With attribution now less effective than ever in digital spaces (thanks, Apple) this is a growing challenge for marketers.
• Required adaptability: Today’s media planners need to keep a close eye on performance and redirect efforts as needed if one channel isn’t doing well. This requires a lot of time and attention — and the ability to pivot seamlessly.

There are so many things to think about when you’re building a media plan, but it’s far from impossible. As long as you understand your audience and you make the effort to personalize your ad distribution — and stay within budget — your media plan will be key to driving return on ad spend. 

Keep these tips in mind as you embark on your media planning efforts—and if you have any questions, get in touch!

Photos by HalGatewood.com