Steps Involved in Media Planning

5 Steps to Effective Media Planning

In this ever-cluttered marketplace, many advertisers are making a critical mistake. They
focus too heavily on budget when developing their campaigns and completely neglect
something far more important: their media plan. For your campaigns to be successful and
your messages to make the right impact, much thought should be given to the markets you
serve and the channels you choose for delivery.

Here are five steps to effective media planning:

1. Know Your Target Audience

There’s no point in media buying if that media doesn’t reach your target audience. You
should have a clear idea of your target market’s age, gender, income level, and media habits
– where they consume media during the day – before you spend a single dollar on
advertising. Some ad planners even create an ‘avatar,’ a composite ‘person’ who has all the
traits of their target customer. They then use that avatar to find out where their target
audience consumes media – online, in print, on television or on radio – and is therefore
more likely to be exposed to your advertising.

2. Define Your Goals

You can’t measure the success or failure of your media planning efforts unless you set clear
goals from the start. Perhaps you want a 3% conversion rate from media exposure to actual
sales. Perhaps you want 7% of people who see your message to visit your site and sign up
for your newsletter. Only by knowing your goals can you measure whether your media plan
is performing as you wish.

3. Use Smart Tools for Media Planning

The days of flying blind while putting together a media plan are over. Online services like
mediatool.com allow you to plan, organize and analyze your media spending all in one
place. With the ability to collaborate with others in your business and keep all your media
planning files, tasks and communications in one place, mediatool.com is ideal for small,
medium and big businesses who want a comprehensive media plan their whole team can
view and understand, as well as the tools to see whether their media buying is achieving
their goals.

4. Determine the Perfect Media Mix

With the help of smart services like mediatool.com, you can complete your ad planning by
deciding on the best mix of online, print, radio and TV ad buying. Features coming soon to
mediatool.com include customized dashboards and reports that help you visualize your
media spend data in an understandable way, and the ability to compare your business data
with your media planning data to discover which media are giving you the best ROMI.
5. Execute Your Media Plan

With the media planning templates available on mediatool.com, you’ll know exactly when
to send out the right message at the right time in the right media channel. You control your
budget and your message, and all of your marketing plans, data and discussions will be
contained in one convenient place in your account.