The proliferation of new, paid media channels is a lot for anyone to keep up with, and understanding your brand’s opportunity in any of these spaces is a full-time job — just ask our team of media planners and strategists!
To help start that conversation with our team, we’ve created the following list of six questions. Because, when we’re developing a paid media strategy for any of our clients, the initial project alignment discussion is critical to ensure we’re creating a paid media strategy that will yield results.
- What is your goal? It’s a simple question, but the most important one. If your goal is to introduce a new brand to the marketplace, we’re going to begin planning by looking at a different strategic baseline than if your goal is to increase sales of an existing product.
- Who is your ideal customer? Going hand-in-hand with question number one, knowing who your customer is is critical to the success of the campaign. If you’re a young brand and unsure of the answer, or if you’re launching a refreshed brand, we’ll need to pump the breaks here and engage in an audience definition exercise. Having a good grasp on the target consumer for your campaign will also help us hone-in on the media strategy. Media is a numbers game — we want to use a coordinated set of media channels that have the largest percentage of your ideal customer base utilizing them.
- What brands are complementary to yours? Who is your competition? Providing macro insight into how your brand operates within your larger industry is more important to developing a brand’s paid media plan than you may think, especially if your goal is related to growth, as most are. By understanding the answers to these questions, we can further refine the target audience profile.
- How will you measure success? Having a clear understanding as to how the success of a campaign will be analyzed by your team and the C-suite will also inform the paid media strategy. To use the example from Question 1, being able to provide metrics on the total population reached vs. the total orders placed calls for a different approach to each paid media strategy.
- What is your budget and timeline? All projects come down to approved investment levels and timeline. Budget levels certainly determine the media channels that can be explored, as some are more efficient than others and others have media spend minimums. And, understanding how long a campaign can be in-market will affect the recommended budget.
- Are there any politics in play? Let’s be honest, no matter how many times you explain audience targeting to some members of your organization, they’re not going to believe you’re paying for media unless they see it. Does your CEO always tune into the 6 p.m. news? Do you know the interstate your CFO takes into the office? Media placements can be arranged accordingly.
The benefit of working with a full-service agency to help you with the above six questions and develop a paid media plan comes down to the objectiveness and 360-degree view of the media landscape we can bring to the table. We’re not beholden to working with one media channel. We’re constantly refining our recommendations based on previous experience. And most importantly, we want to form partnerships with our clients because we share a mutual goal for success.
If you’re interested in talking with the B&Y team to see if a paid media strategy can help reach your business’s goals, give us a shout!