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01 Nov 2024 15:11
Media Planning in St Albans
Get in touchMedia Planners in St Albans
Media planning is the process of creating the most effective advertising campaigns for a company so that it can achieve its marketing aims. These aims typically include increasing sales and brand awareness and ultimately increasing profits.
The role of a media planner is to select the most appropriate advertising channels to achieve the desired advertising results, which normally hits a requested target audience. Different media will be more suitable depending on your industry, sector and budget. At PromoMedia, we match you with an experienced planner to make sure that all your advertising is placed at the Right Time, Right Place, and Right Price. We believe getting these three factors right is the key to any campaign's success.
Our media planning teams work with a wide range of companies, from retail to sports clubs, small start-ups to NHS contracts, international brands, and more. If you would like us to create a creative and cost-effective marketing campaign for your business and target audience, contact us today. We look forward to hearing from you regarding your target market and budget.
What is Media Planning?
In a nutshell, effective media planning is the brains behind any successful advertising campaign and media plan. This process is the first step to make sure that the advertising that you choose to do has the desired effect; this usually is to drive awareness and/or increase sales. Once the most suitable media platforms have been identified and the campaign has been put together and approved, a media buyer will take over. We can deal with the whole process of planning and buying. Planners are therefore responsible for the first stage of the process; suggesting effective options, these are based on individual aims and ambitions.
With years of experience and key relationships already in place, our teams create bespoke campaigns and then secure the best sites, prices and locations. When we get your enquiry, one of our media planning team members will give you a call to chat about what you are looking for and then put together this plan. You may know what you want to do but sometimes our planner may suggest something new, which you hadn't thought of, which could work well. The media planning team will identify the two most important factors:
Which form of advertising is best suited to your target market - this could be anything from billboard ads to newspaper, social media, or TV advertising.
Timing - where and when this promotional activity should be carried out to have maximum impact and return on investment.
Your Media Planner
Depending on the information we get from you, we will match you and your business with an appropriate media planning handler to help you reach your target audience. Our planners are hand-picked. Sometimes they may be local to you; other times, they may be a specialist in your niche, business area or in the type of media channels that will be most suitable for your media plan and advertising campaign; either way, they will have a chat with you and then put together a creative, bespoke and cost-effective campaign, designed to get you the results you want.
On approaching us, a large majority of people are undecided on the ideal ways to promote their business or product - this is entirely normal. Most clients approach us knowing they “need to do something” to improve sales, raise brand awareness and get noticed but are uncertain of the way forward. If you are in this position, this is something our media planning teams take care of; it’s what we do all day, every day. It all starts with a chat and a few ideas, and then we will formulate an effective media plan, which we will send over for you to consider.
How We Plan Your Advertising - A Bespoke Media Plan
These are the steps we will follow after we receive your media planning enquiry:
We pass it to the media planner we think suits you best – based on what you are looking for, where in the country you are, and what product or service you are looking to advertise, we will match you with the person we think can get you the results you want.
We talk to you - our friendly planner will call and find out more about you, your company, your aims and your ambitions. You can share what you have done before, any ideas you have likes and dislikes and also an outline of your target audience.
Create your costed campaign - if you know what you want, our media planning teams will come back with costs on those media options specifically. Otherwise, we will put together a list of suggestions based on your needs, budgets, target audience and what we think will work.
You look at the options - you review our media plan and the media options we have recommended; you review, make suggestions, and ask us questions until we arrive at a place where you are happy. We can go and backwards and forwards until we have created something you are 100% happy with.
We book the media plan - once we have agreed on the plan, our media planning team will pass it to one of our media buyers, who will book the ads for you at the best prices.
See your ad in action - whether your advert is in a newspaper, on a billboard, online, on TV, social media or on the radio - you can sit back and see marketing in actions!
Enjoy the results!
What Makes Us Different From Other Media Planning Agencies?
Often other advertising agencies specialise in certain advertising sectors and media types but we can book any type of media you need, creating a perfectly balanced media plan incorporating a range of suitable options. We also believe that having one person overseeing the whole process is key as it allows them to make sure that all the strands of your advertising campaigns and the various elements are tied together. The options we will consider when planning your media campaign could include any of the below options:
Considering all the options our media planning teams will put together a plan based on what you are promoting, marketing is not a one-size-fits-all proposition, so this will always vary depending on you. If you are unsure of what your spending should be, our experts will provide you with more advice, even coming up with different valued packages to demonstrate what different level of spends could get you.
What Makes the Best Media Planning Teams?
A question often raised at marketing conferences, we believe that the following attributes make the best media planners in AL3 5 and media planning teams:
An ability to listen to a client’s ideas
Understand the business goals of the company
Identify the target audience
Suggesting proven methods that have worked before in that industry sector
Coming up with new ideas
Listening to what has, and hasn't worked before (if advertising has been carried out previously)
Secure the best rates
We aim to take the mystery out of marketing and make it simple. If a clear and cost-effective approach to advertising appeals to you, we are the agency for you. Read more in our blog about the benefits of hiring an advertising agency.
Cost-Effective Media Planning
Cost-effective media planning is key to any successful promotional campaign because no matter how big or small you are, every company wants to spend their money wisely. Our planners naturally work closely with our media buying teams, who look after the final stage - the Right Price side of things. Some agencies only “work up” your marketing campaign or media plan, suggesting to you "what you should do" but without having the facility and contacts to book the recommended activity. As a full-service virtual agency, we do both media planning and buying. We essentially look after the whole process for you, giving you peace of mind, so you can get on with your day job.
If you as an individual or as a marketing department were to call these media suppliers directly, you would be charged a “rate card”, but our combined media buying and planning teams can get you superb placements and costs for everything on your media plan, as they negotiate and work with these people all the time. This gives us greater buying power and influence in negotiations.
Independent Advertising Consultants
As independent advertising consultants, we are able to offer a new perspective and pair of eyes with regards to all our media buying - judging your enquiry on a case by case basis and looking at your bespoke target audience. For example, if you were to contact an agent who specialises in outdoor advertising, they are only going to suggest outdoor ads to you, regardless of that being the most appropriate form of advertising in St Albans for your company. Our independent media buying associates are therefore able to look at the bigger picture, often suggesting a combination of different fresh ideas and mediums that you may not have considered. We work with a range of industries including:
Frequently Asked Questions About Media Planning in St Albans
Here are the most popular questions we get asked about media strategy and about how to reach a target audience:
What does a media planner do?
They plan and strategise a marketing and media plan, considering a full range of options to make this a success and hit your target market. The options could include a range of options from social media adverts to outdoor, TV to radio ads. Their role is to ultimately identify which forms of media are likely to achieve the best results from your marketing campaign, based on who you are, your target market and your budget. They can incorporate previously successful advertising options, as well as highlight new and exciting options perhaps not considered before. Having identified the correct media outlets, they will plan dates to achieve maximum exposure and return on investment.
What is the media planning process?
Planning media is essentially choosing the right types of advertising media (be it out-of-home, TV, online, social media, radio), to create an effective and successful advertising campaign for a company, business or product to reach a target audience. The process normally starts with a conversation between a planner and a client, at this stage information on the target audience, budgets, aims and ambitions are shared. With this information a planner will then work up a creative and bespoke campaign, this will normally be with the aim of raising awareness or driving sales and a range of media platforms will be considered. This is then sent to the client to review, amend and tweak. Once both parties are happy with the media plan, it will be booked and the agreed dates for the agreed prices.
Why is media planning important?
It is vitally important for a new of reasons, mainly to make sure that the company, business or product who is advertising is selecting the correct media channels and executing this marketing at the right time. Advertising campaigns are only successful when carried out at the Right Time and Right Place. Without having this planning and foresight, the results won't be effective, meaning that return on investment will be below what they should be.
What is media buying and planning?
Put simply, planning is the selection of the media that is most appropriate for a campaign. The next stage, media buying is the purchase of these. Sometimes the same person can handle both of these aspects; it is important to have a planner to make sure that the correct media channels are being employed and then a buyer is also advantageous so that when purchasing the media you are getting the best possible rates. Media buyers obviously work with various media owners every day, this means that they can get beneficial rates often way below rate card, meaning that the client gets excellent value for money and their budget goes further.
We have an internal marketing department but are looking for fresh ideas to add to our media strategy and campaign, plus someone to carry out the booking, can you help?
Yes, we work with individuals as well as in-house marketing teams, we can offer input and fresh ideas if this is helpful or we can just book any required adverts to hit your target audience, as you wish. Many internal marketing teams enjoy the opportunity to bounce ideas around and with new options coming onto the market all the time, it's advisable to keep up to date with them so that your business, brand or company can keep ahead of your competition. Contact us and we can chat through whichever options suit you the best.
Contact Us
Contact us today and find out how our experienced media planning teams can help you take that next step in getting your company, service or product in front of the right people at the right time with a great media plan. Our planners will then put together a bespoke marketing plan to achieve the result you want. Our campaigns can be placed in any area to target potential customers. Remember that all quotes are free so there is nothing to lose from an initial enquiry.
We cover St Albans (Hertfordshire)