In today's market, decisions about how to spend media dollars may be keeping you awake at night. Should your budget go toward outdoor advertising? Print? Radio? Television? Cable? Internet? In every city, all these media channels are available, and all are clamoring for clients.

Even when you've narrowed your decision to one medium, there are still numerous choices. Take electronic for example: Which radio or television stations? Which cable affiliates? How many should you use? When should the advertisement air? How often? Who is the target audience, and how do you reach it?

Providing the right answers to these questions may determine whether a media campaign succeeds or fails. But you don't need to lose sleep over the problem. What you need is a solid media plan and an experienced media planner.

Bill White, a partner in MillerWhite Integrated Marketing, advises his clients that media decisions should be fact-driven. Some clients maintain that they know their potential customers. They boast that they've always followed their gut feeling where marketing is concerned. But without market research, White said, their best efforts could be missing the mark.


What a media planner can do for you
Armed with the facts from good market research, business owners or managers in charge of marketing have the option of working directly with media representatives or securing the help of a media planner. Many find that a good media planner has the knowledge, objectivity and time it takes to review and evaluate possible media opportunities.

A media planner, often employed by an integrated marketing firm, is trained to understand that media advertising is just a part of a company's marketing mix. The American Marketing Association says media advertising should "work in concert with other marketing initiatives such as sales, distribution channel strategies and customer service to deliver a unified, focused message to the consumer."

One of the biggest benefits is that a media planner can be objective, allowing all media options to be reviewed and built into a comprehensive and personalized plan for each client. Also, media planners have access to statistical data from services such as Arbitron and Nielsen, providing validation for his or her choices.

To construct a truly objective and comprehensive plan, all potential media opportunities should be considered. A media planner has the time to spend with media representatives to review their opportunities, time that business owners or managers in charge of marketing rarely have.


Constructing a media plan
Media planning begins with a marketing objective. This objective could be the company's goal in terms of sales, brand image and/or market share. Media strategy is developed from this marketing objective.

Media strategy looks at the target audience's makeup and location. Who is the audience and where can it be reached? It considers the creative elements. Do the available creative pieces stand out from the crowd or is new creative needed? And it takes into account the company's budget. How much does the company have to spend on media?

Based on the media strategy, tactics are listed and a media plan is developed. The plan should answer the questions: "What mix of media channels will reach the largest segment of the targeted audience?" and "What is the cost per thousand?"


Frequency and reach
Two equally important concepts should be examined and balanced when developing this media plan: frequency and reach. Frequency refers to the number of times an audience member receives an advertising message. Reach refers to the geographic region in which the message is received. A careful balance of the two must be maintained for a media campaign to be successful.

Frequency is required to create a need or a desire for the consumer to buy. The Media Buying Academy states that exposure to a message one to three times a week begins to build familiarity. Every exposure after the third and up to the tenth causes audience members to ask themselves if there is a need or desire to buy the product or service. The tenth through fourteenth exposures during a week result in no conscious action being taken by the audience member, and any exposure after the fifteenth results in irritation.

But reach is equally as important. If a message isn't getting to enough members of the target audience, the campaign can't succeed. Therefore, the media planner must include in the plan appropriate media channels to provide the desired reach.


Putting it all together
Balancing frequency and reach, along with a client's budget and the marketing objectives, requires experience and expertise. As the American Marketing Association points out, media advertising is a sophisticated tool. Advertising dollars must be carefully targeted to reach the right audience at the right time.

White noted that the key to achieving a cost-efficient mix of reach and frequency is to review media for the diminishing point of return. "That's the point where it costs more to reach the next customer in line than it did the one before it," he said.

He added, "You have to have the confidence to stick to a plan, because your success depends on the cumulative effect of your marketing. Whatever the size of your budget, consistency is very important."

An experienced media planner has an edge on giving clients the most for their media dollars. So if you want to go back to sleeping at night, consider working with an integrated marketing company that has a media department or media planner with the knowledge and experience to help you make the best media decisions.

<< back to "mwfusion"