A Guide to

Media Planning
and Buying in 2021

www.mediatool.com
 01

What's included?
The ‘buckle up’ mantra won’t take you far in the new normal. Whether you’re an in-
house marketer or an agency media planner, adapting to the new advertising climate
is crucial. More than that, reinventing your digital marketing planning to be able to
mirror consumers’ ever-evolving needs will be on every marketing leader’s agenda in
2021. If you’re looking for better ways to drive traffic, generate leads and deliver more
ROI, start by leaving the old tactics behind.

Table of contents

02
What is media planning?

03
Media planning vs. Media buying: what’s the difference?

06
The effects of COVID-19 on media planning

09
Your step by step guide to media planning

12
Media planning challenges

17
What's next?
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What is media planning?

Let’s get the semantics out of the way.

Media planning refers to the process of identifying, assessing, and selecting media
channels and platforms to reach a well-defined target audience. Media planners
determine how, where, when, and why a business will share media content to boost
awareness, reach, engagement, and drive ROI through paid advertising.

A media planner is responsible for developing a coordinated media plan for a given
advertising budget. The more that budget is optimized – or stretched, as they like to
say in the media world – to reach the largest audience for the lowest cost, the more
ROI can be generated. The sole purpose of media planning is to get a brand in front of
the right audience at the right time and persuade them to purchase a product or
service.

But wait… What is a media channel?

A media channel is a broad media class or medium used to deliver
advertising messages to prospective customers. Traditional media
channels include television, print, radio, outdoor advertising, and events.
However, these days, media planners could hardly expect to run an
impactful marketing campaign without covering a vast array of digital
channels.

Digital media channels include paid social media ads, search engine
marketing, email, native advertising, audio streaming services, and more.
Once the target audience is established, media planners move on to
strategizing which channels would be most effective. Then, the next step
is to determine which media vehicles and content types could garner the
best results.
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And what is a media vehicle?

A media vehicle refers to a specific channel advertisers employ to reach
their intended audiences. It could be a page in a local newspaper, a TV
talk show, or a LinkedIn remarketing ad. Within a broader, general
category of media, planners will pick out a varied mix of media vehicles to
reach a target consumer group on multiple occasions and influence their
perception of and interest in a product or service.

So, when planners talk about ‘selecting the right mix of media vehicles’,
they refer to the process of picking out the most effective combination of
media – from a sponsored podcast or niche email campaign to an ad on a
side of a city bus.

Media planning vs. Media buying:

what’s the difference?
How is media planning different from media buying? Although the two processes often
get lumped together, media planners and media buyers play distinctly different roles
in the media advertising mechanism.

Let’s look at the main differences between media planning and media buying, and
how both sides work in tandem to deliver the best results.
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What do media planners do?

Media planners are tasked with figuring out what media will be the most effective at
achieving marketing objectives. Like the name implies, media planners carry out
research, identify the ripest opportunities for achieving what the client/brand wants,
outline campaign goals and objectives, and allocate budgets for the chosen media mix.
In short, media planners take care of all the behind-the-scenes intel required for a
successful integrated marketing campaign.

The key responsibilities of a media planner include:

Internal market research: External market research:

Uncovering and understanding the client’s Assessing the advertising landscape,

brand identity, positioning, USPs and buyer competitor activities, past and current
personas. campaign performance, target audience
insights and the most effective media
channels for the intended audience.

Setting campaign goals & objectives: Determining the budgets:

Ensuring campaign profitability by

Based on the information uncovered
allocating budgets and deciding what
throughout their research, media planners
percentage of the budget will be spent on
bear the responsibility for setting ambitious
each channel.
but realistic and achievable goals for their
advertising strategy.
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What do media buyers do?

Media buying is the other side of the advertising coin. Media buying refers to the
process of securing media space – be it a time slot, ad space or an endorsement – to
meet campaign objectives in the most cost-effective way. Media buyers have a very
intimate understanding of the marketplace and a long list of contacts/relationships
with media vendors they’ve built over the years.

The key responsibilities of a media buyer include:

Developing & leveraging relationships Negotiating:

It’s all about who you know when it comes Media placement pricing is not set in
to traditional media buying. Leveraging stone. Keep in mind that you can discuss
trusted relationships within the industry and the pricing and your budget with the
knowing the right people in the right places, vendors to bring the price down. Media
can help media buyers drive impressive buyers are in charge of negotiating better
ROIs. rates and optimising their budget to run
more cost-effective campaigns.

Tracking and tweaking campaigns in

motion:
Although media planners build out the
strategy, media buyers are the ones calling
the shots. Tracking campaign performance
in real-time allows media buyers to make
quick adjustments or instantaneous shifts While for some media planning vs media
to keep the plans on track and achieve their buying is a debate, the truth is that a
objectives. robust media strategy relies on both to
achieve high-impact business results.
In fact, with the advancement of online
advertising technology, greater reach
and personalization, it’s vital for media
planners and buyers to work
collaboratively and sync their
processes in real-time.
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The effects of the COVID-19

pandemic on media planning

The complexity of the media planning Of course, data-driven audience insights

and buying process is staggering. There is nothing new in media planning. Yet the
are so many moving parts involved that focus on mining real-time data is a newly
managing integrated marketing rediscovered superpower.
campaigns is becoming a challenge in
itself. Throw a global pandemic into the Uncovering emerging trends early allows
mix and you have a code red situation at marketing teams to act in time and be
hand. part of the conversation. And more
importantly, it provides them with dearly
And while there’s no playbook for these needed context for better tailored ad
unprecedented times, it seems crisis can creatives and copy.
be a perception-shifting exercise,
providing us with renewed clarity and
direction. Without a predefined plan for
how to communicate with our intended Unsurprisingly, some great examples of
audiences, we’re forced to be more data- trend-led consumer campaigns came
driven, collaborative and opportunistic to from Google’s own media team. Having
tap into real-time consumer intent. analysed Google and YouTube search
trends during the first few weeks of the
Consumer trends are driving global lockdown, they identified a
media plans more than ever significant uptick in “bread baking”
queries and jumped on the opportunity
before
to promote the Google Nest Hub screens
in that context. Have they ever thought
The outbreak of Covid-19 put many
about using bread baking references to
marketing teams in a pickle. As plans
advertise their smart home display
went out the window, marketers needed
device? Probably not. Has it worked? You
to find a new framework to ground them
bet.
in the unprecedented moment – that’s
when they turned to trends and
consumer behaviour data.
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Case study
Soft Surroundings, a women’s clothing brand, offers
another excellent example of jumping on a rising
trend. At the start of the pandemic, the brand was
forced to drop the original spring catalog creative
featuring travel scenes and look for new ideas to
showcase their products in a more relevant context.
That’s when they observed a surge in loungewear-
related search queries and tapped into the traffic with
a new home-appropriate campaign. The initiative led
to an 18% increase in Soft Surroundings’
loungewear revenue and achieved a 6.5X return on
ad spend.

Rediscovering the power of real-time insights will

most certainly serve savvy media teams in the post-
pandemic world.

Teams are acting on campaign As teams tightened the feedback loop

performance data faster than with more collaborative analysis and
they ever thought they could focused on hitting their media goals,
media planning became more grounded
A newly found sense of discipline has and less concerned with gloss and
been another unexpected side effect of polish.
Covid-19 on media planning teams.
While digital marketing has always been With strained marketing budgets and
touted to enable more speed, agility and increased pressure to deliver immediate
transparency, its potential had hardly results, tracking campaign performance
been tapped. The pandemic left no room became a number one priority for
for gut-driven strategies and over- marketing teams. While, in pre-Covid
complicated decision-making processes. times, marketers might have enjoyed
more wiggle room to iterate, test and
In fact, decisions that used to take days experiment with optimization tactics,
or even weeks to make are now being zero tolerance is now shown for
made in hours. underperforming campaigns.
 08

The importance of having the right tools Does that mean brand campaigns will
for campaign tracking and monitoring become a thing of the past? Not
has jumped a level. Advertisers are necessarily. The close scrutiny of
looking for easy-to-implement, plug- marketing budgets is driving media
and-play solutions that allow them to teams to reconsider their approach –
orchestrate their media campaigns and being more thoughtful about where,
spend in real time. One of the biggest when and why they deploy brand
drivers at Mediatool has always been to campaigns will help marketers to
simplify the digital marketing journey maximize their impact moving forward.
from idea to attribution. And over the
past year, we’ve witnessed a
tremendous increase in demand for a
more agile, end-to-end approach to
managing advertising campaigns. If the
pandemic has taught us anything, it’s
that lack of reporting transparency and
sense of urgency can have huge
opportunity costs.

Advertisers are prioritising

attributable media

In times of unprecedented uncertainty,

business leaders adopt a zero-risk
mentality. Every dollar spent has to drive
immediate results, and that presents
great challenges for marketing teams.
With investment in traditional media
falling sharply in 2020, it’s obvious that
advertisers are pulling back from brand
campaigns and redeploying their
resources into channels and tactics that
are easier to track, measure and report
on in real time.
 09

How to create a media plan in the

post-Covid world: your step by step
guide to media planning
Under pressure to deliver results in the post-Covid reality? Pandemic or no pandemic,
digital marketers must follow the good old principles of the agile marketing strategy.

01 Define your target

audience 02 Determine
campaign goals

Defining your target audience is the first You can’t measure campaign
and most crucial step in any marketing performance if you don’t know what good
plan. A target audience is essentially a performance looks like. Starting with the
group of people that you identify as end result in mind helps media planners
potential customers based on their age, select the right mix of media channels and
occupation, location, interests, gender or messages.
other factors.There’s no point in trying to
reach and speak to everyone – not Are you running a brand awareness
everyone will need your product or campaign or trying to generate sales of a
service. If you have a business that sells particular product?
baby products, your target audience will
be new parents or grandparents. You For instance, if you’re planning a
don’t want to target teenage girls with ads Christmas advertising campaign for a
for baby cribs, right? selected range of children’s toys like
bicycles or scooters, you’ll have to be able
Say, you establish that your target to connect campaign metrics to the
customers are young professional couples revenue generated from that line of
in mid-size and large cities who commute products. And without clearly defined
by public transport, have a passion for goals, you won’t be able to optimize
sustainability and a combined monthly campaigns on the fly or evaluate their
income of $8,000. This gives you plenty of performance later on.
information to get the neurons firing and
inform your next steps.
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03 Research the
market 04 Consider frequency
and reach
Once clear goals and objectives are Determining both the reach and the
established, the next step is to conduct frequency of your ad placements is an
research into market trends and the important part of the media planning
competitive landscape. These insights will process. Reach refers to how many
offer you more visibility into competitor people will see your ad, while frequency
strategy and potential opportunities. determines how often. The goal here is to
find the balance between maximizing your
How are competitors positioning their ad visibility and becoming too pervasive.
products? How can you differentiate You want your ads to be noticed but not to
yourself? What channels are trending the point where they become annoying.
among your target customers and why?
Market research will likely turn up insights Certain mediums, such as print media,
that will inform your advertising strategy need careful fine-tuning. For instance, a
and tactical decisions, so it’s not a step print ad needs to feature at least three
you can skip. times to be seen by the intended
audience and generate brand recognition.
Digital advertising will require its own
considerations to engage consumers and
drive ROI.

There are three main approaches to consider when deciding on ad frequency:

Continuity Flighting

This approach describes a continuous, Media placement pricing is not set in

consistent schedule of ads over the stone. Keep in mind that you can discuss
course of the campaign in the chosen the pricing and your budget with the
medium. It’s often used for goods that vendors to bring the price down. Media
aren’t seasonal and require constant buyers are in charge of negotiating better
nurturing and reinforcement to stay top of rates and optimising their budget to run
mind. more cost-effective campaigns.

Pulsing

This approach combines the best of both

Continuity and Flighting. Pulsed campaigns
will balance between dripping and pouring –
you’ll have periods of low-intensity
consistent advertising, augmented by flights
of higher-intensity campaigns when
additional spend can generate the greatest
ROI.
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05 Select the right

media mix 06 Monitor, measure
and improve
Armed with the market research and goal- Once media plans are established and
setting insights, marketers must approved, media planners will hand them
determine which channels can bring them over to media buyers. Working within
the most success. The plethora of budget frameworks, media buyers will
traditional and digital channels available to actively seek out proposals from
media planners can be dizzying, so it’s traditional and digital media sales reps as
important to have an attribution well as estimate online advertising costs.
framework in place and continuously Maximising the return on investment is a
monitor campaign performance in each key priority for media buyers, but the
channel. overall campaign performance remains a
responsibility of media planners. And
Generally speaking, media planners that’s a lot of data to juggle if you don’t
choose between offline and online have the right tools!
channels:
Visual reports and dashboards make
Offline media: tracking campaign performance easier for
marketers who want to keep their finger
TV & Cable, Radio, Print publications,
on the pulse at all times. A single real-
Outdoor media
time report with multi-source data helps
Online media: to ensure media buyers have all the
information they need to optimize
PPC, Social media, Programmatic campaigns in-flight, shift budgets if
advertising, Digital publications, required and make better informed
Streaming media decisions for future plans.

With Mediatool’s customizable

dashboards and reporting capabilities,
advertisers can have a holistic view of
all their campaigns in one central
location. Real-time data feeds ensure
you get the most up-to-date snapshot
of your campaign performance and
can quickly make well-informed
decisions to adjust, pause and
optimize campaigns from a single
account.
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Media Planning Challenges

Besides the standard headaches that marketers have – attribution, proving ROI and
keeping up with trends – the ‘new normal’ in media planning promises to kick things
up a notch.

Targeting the right audience effectively

The better you understand your target audience, the more relevant and effective your
advertising will be. Audience research may be the most important step in your strategy
as it will inform every element of your marketing plan. Is there a secret sauce to getting
it right? Top marketers swear by these simple tactics for narrowing your focus while
expanding your reach.

TOP TIP
Compile the data you have on existing
customers and social media followers.

You’re probably tracking every campaign down

to the granular level, so collecting data points
on the following factors shouldn’t be a
problem: age or generation, location, timezone,
language, spending power and patterns,
personal interests and hobbies, challenges and
pain points, and their stage of life (students,
new parents, retirees, etc.). If you’re in B2B,
it’s worth also considering the size of business
and the roles of key stakeholders and decision
makers. Mapping out these data points will
help you construct a fairly accurate target
consumer persona and messaging that would
work with them.
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Forgetting about taxonomy

Taxonomy in marketing is a system to organize and classify marketing data. It helps

marketers to better analyze the impact of each channel and tactic, track changes in
performance and make smarter, data-informed decisions about optimization in near real
time. The challenge with implementing a data taxonomy lies with the fact that there is
no one right way to do it. The most effective taxonomies align with a business’s specific
structure and terminology, so they need to be tailored and often evolve over time.
Standardizing how data around your campaigns is organized from the get-go will help
you create attributable impact and increase ROI faster.

TOP TIP
Here’s a simple example of a clearly
defined taxonomy:

Step 1: Channel name, e.g. “Paid Search”

Step 2: Vendor or platform name, e.g.
“Google AdWords”
Step 3: Campaign Name, e.g.
“US_Search_MarketingCourses”
Step 4: Dimension to be tracked, e.g.
“Device Type”
Step 5: Ad group name: e.g. “Digital
Marketing Course”
Step 6: Ad name e.g. “[digital marketing]
+online course -free”
 14

Integrating data from all channels

The transition from multi-channel to omni-channel marketing campaigns requires

advertisers to connect and maximize the value of siloed data from various sources and
platforms. Only with the 360-view of your customer journey can you spot the
inefficiencies and opportunities in your paid media campaigns.

Case study
Disney is a great example of a brand that gets omni-
channel marketing right. From its beautiful mobile-
responsive website that seamlessly adapts to any screen
size to the trip-planning tool that allows customers to
move across devices without any glitch. Once the trip is
booked, the entertainment giant allows clients to plan
every detail of their trip including dinner bookings and
Fast Track passes. And with the recent launch of its all-
in-one smart device MagicBand, Disney brings it all
together: customers can check in at FastPass+
entrances, enter parks, unlock hotel room doors, store
pictures and even order food from one watch-like
bracelet. Not only does it provide incredible user
experience, the brand gets a bird’s-eye view of its
customers’ habits, interests, spending power and all
the other crucial data points required for successful
targeting and optimization.
 15

Struggling with workflow and collaboration madness

Digital advertising campaigns require a great deal of communication, fine-tuning and

cross-functional collaboration. According to a McKinsey study, knowledge workers
spend around 28% of the work week managing their email and nearly 20% searching
for internal information or tracking down colleagues who can help with specific tasks.
The study suggests that by fully adopting the right social technologies businesses have
the opportunity to raise the productivity of knowledge workers by 20 to 25%.

In the wake of a recent global pandemic, the challenge of achieving effective

collaboration has become even more apparent. Teams that had the right tech stack
gained momentum during the unprecedented times, while others struggled to adapt
and deploy campaigns in time. A survey by NewsCred found that organizations using
planning and project management tools faced fewer challenges as a result of Covid-19
compared to those that don’t use any tools.

TOP TIP
The first step towards streamlining your
marketing team’s collaboration is
understanding what productivity and
communication tools they need to keep the
projects moving forward. The secret here is
to find one or two platforms that can do it
all. Bringing in too many new tools might
end up being more disruptive than having no
communications infrastructure at all, so do
your research!
 16

Dealing with budget restrictions

As finance teams put the breaks on spending in a bid to protect cash flow, most
marketers will face significant budget cuts in 2021. Rather than going for blanket cuts
across all paid media campaigns, teams should focus on making strategic selective
cuts that could help mitigate the losses, shore up cash flow and, in some cases, even
improve performance in the long run.

If you think you’ll be dealing with budget restrictions, follow these guiding principles
when drawing up your marketing plan and budget:

Review all marketing spending in Consider churn and acquisition

detail: costs:

Before pausing or shifting marketing Be careful when cutting spend on

activities, spend time analyzing all locked-in activities that can cause damage in the
commitments, contract terms and paid long run, such as brand campaigns or
campaigns with the aim to repurpose, paid search altogether. What may seem
renegotiate or shift to a higher-return like a quick win today, will have a
activity. negative impact on the overall
performance marketing costs and
results. Even if you have to make cuts,
consider these metrics to anticipate the
impact.

Evaluate performance quickly: Run experiments to find new

winning combinations:
Use KPIs and benchmarks that reflect the
Even when your focus is on cost
current climate, consumer needs and
reduction, you still have the opportunity
business objectives to quickly evaluate
to experiment with formats and data.
marketing performance and identify
Explore creative formats, new media
inefficiencies. Cut with no regret and shift
channels, possible partnerships and novel
your focus to experimentation with other
ways of using consumer insights to
channels or tactics.
discover a new mix of tactics that are
most effective.
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What’s next?
One thing is clear – brands need to get comfortable with the new discomfort. While no
one has ready-made contingency plans for this new reality, some companies seem to
be adapting better: rather than taking reactive measures until we go back to normal,
they’re building for the new reality that’s already here, and here to stay.

If brands want to stay ahead of the curve, they need to reorganize the way they
operate, reinvent their processes and embrace software that makes media planning
easier and more effective, they’re bound to emerge on the other side unscathed, if not
re-energized.

About Mediatool
So, who are we, the company behind the guide?

Mediatool is a Cloud-based marketing platform that helps brands and agencies to

plan, track, collaborate and optimise media and marketing campaigns.

Hundreds of productivity tools for remote teams in a user-friendly interface including:

total budget control, seamless data integration, and campaign optimization
intelligence for high-performance marketing. Visualize your results to make the data-
driven decisions you are not making today.Get a comprehensive overview of all your
marketing activities. Everything your team needs to deliver better campaigns, and
better results.

Interested in learning more? Book a demo with the Mediatool team to make your
marketing more productive.

Book a free demo

The all-in-one platform for better
media and marketing campaigns.

www.mediatool.com