Media plan

To start the media plan it is very important that you know all the information about your client. To do so, it is necessary to answer several questions that will help you to prepare your document.
In this link you will find some of the questions you should ask your client to generate the media plan, keep them in mind and in the following steps you will realize that they respond to the concerns you are presenting in your advertising planning.

Sample media plan brief

According to your client’s answers, certain objectives must be established in the construction of the digital media plan. This step is closely linked to the achievement of KPIs (key performance indicators) or management indicators, in digital media you can find several indicators that will serve to associate with the objectives.

In the table above, you can see 2 large groups that respond to the type of campaign you can generate in digital media. At the front is associated a specific objective and the indicator that you will be able to acquire when executing the campaign.

These are campaigns to make brand presence, these are based on the impression of ads in digital media with the objective that users who browse the Internet see the ad with a certain frequency.

This type of campaign is used so that users who browse the Internet, in addition to seeing the ads, interact with them and perform an action as a result of the stimulus of the ad.

The specific objectives should be defined with your customer according to the objective he expects to obtain from digital media. Do you want them to see your new brand of cat food? Do you need to get more visits on your website to inform your potential buyers? Do you need to support your sales force with the acquisition of new potential customers?

The payment indicators are the items that you can configure in the campaign and request to the platform; that is to say, in Facebook or Google you can configure your campaign to obtain more clicks and pay for clicks or configure it for video views and pay for views, for example.

In this step you respond to the requirement of finding the right users to show the ads to. You and your client must find those people for whom the product or service is targeted. Get out of your head the popular: “people of any age, in any city”. A segmentation is a joint work where you must find the features of real people to whom you are going to direct your advertising.

In all digital media it is possible to configure demographic segmentation; so, at this point you must consider the geolocation, age and gender of the users to whom you are going to direct the campaign.

Each media has its own features, configuration, personality, etc. In that sense, the media have differences when it comes to segmentation. The most relevant ones are listed below:

Google Ads: keyword targeting, targeting according to users’ browsing history (audience), targeting according to the topic of web pages, blogs, forums, mobile apps, youtube channels, etc. (content).

Facebook Ads: segmentation by interests, segmentation by behaviors within the platform.

LinkedIn: segmentation by work experience, skills and abilities, education level.

Twitter Ads: segmentation by keywords, affinities and interests.

Find more information about market segmentation in this link.

After defining your objectives, describing your audience and defining what type of campaign you need, it is time to select the media that work to execute the campaign. To do this you need to know the personality and formats available in each medium.

In the diagram above I explain how you should associate people’s behaviors with the different media and also align them with the rest of the strategy you are building. Each medium has different channels, placements, networks or however you understand it best, where your ads will appear.
Ideally, you should choose the medium and the channel simultaneously.

In the following I will describe a little of how they work so that you can analyze further and logically discover where to make the best investment.

Basically it is the Google results page, you will pay to appear first. This network works for various business models, especially those that require immediacy such as a locksmith, a battery change, or responding to the need for an unforeseen event. However, it contributes significantly to the sale of products and services in many categories. Ask yourself how long ago you made a query to Google. Not too long ago, right?

Display networks are huge sets of websites, blogs, forums, mobile apps, etc, affiliated with a big player like Google. Simply put, the owners of these web properties “rent” spaces to Google to place their ads and in return Google gets the advertisers and pays a small percentage to those owners for each click, impressions, etc, so that they keep generating interesting content. Everybody wins! As you can infer, Google can categorize all those properties and offer us an inventory of millions of pages with real visits where it is possible to place ads.

Display networks are ideal for branding and awareness campaigns, users who visit your favorite content and apps will be able to see our ads.

YouTube is the second most visited search engine on the internet and is owned by Google. If you have been watching videos on this platform and an ad has slipped into your navigation, you have already found the location of these campaigns. To do this you must have a channel and publish your video, here you can pay per views and this medium is ideal to give greater visibility to the brand of your customers.

Most of us have a Facebook or Instagram profile. There are also pages and you need to have one to advertise your products on this platform. Facebook Ads is ideal for finding people with interests related to your client’s product or service.
People browse the platform while the ads you have on the air appear, this platform is currently one of the most economical to advertise in relation to the rest of those I have already mentioned.
An important point in favor is the attainment of potential clients that you will be able to obtain from here. With a good segmentation and a moderate budget, your client will be satisfied to receive data of people interested in the services you offer so that the commercial area can contact them.

The super power of LinkedIn lies in the segmentation of professional profiles that exist on the platform. You can reach directors, engineers, company presidents, secretaries, etc. and they will be sure of that investment because of the serious personality of this medium. It must be said that it is one of the most expensive digital media, your client must have patience and a large pocket.

In twitter you can segment by keywords in conversation and some demographic features of the users. It is not possible to buy a Trending Topic through the self-management platform, this must be done directly with commercial representatives and most likely it will be expensive.

The digital media tactic is a map that you must draw by making your client understand the points we have already developed above. Make them understand graphically which are the media you selected, with what objective and how you are going to get the results in the execution of this digital media planning. You can take the above diagram as an example.
Learn more about digital ad formats here.

We have reached the climax of the digital marketing media plan, the core of everything that has already been said and where you will summarize everything that will be executed. In the campaign budget you must be clear, concise, real and achievable, it is your client’s money that is at stake.

The important thing here is to define the selected media, the indicators to be bought and the projections based on a general budget. But don’t worry! I have prepared this simple media plan format in Excel that will help you to guide you and show you what you need to do. Download it!

Download “Media plan budget” format

You should check this other article that talks about digital management indicators, you can see it here. When you read it, you will have more clarity about what you are going to put in the budget definition. This table, chart, format or whatever you want to call it is also known as Media Flow.

The last but not least point to mention in your advertising campaign media plan is how you are going to monitor or follow up the campaigns. A report is always sent to the client with the indicators and results achieved, as well as emphasizing the key points to be measured. In Datareporte you will find several ways to make reports and templates; however, here are some links to give you an idea of what you should deliver as a result of the campaigns.

Digital media planning is a profession that has become popular thanks to the democratization of these services by advertising platforms that I have already mentioned. My interest is that you apply my methodology or that you use it to develop your own and contribute to the construction of better tactics and strategies in general.