Month: November 2021

Management Notes

Media Scheduling, Objectives, Types/Strategies, Pros and Cons

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Media Scheduling refers to the strategic process of determining when and where advertisements will be placed across various media channels to reach the target audience effectively. This involves planning the timing, frequency, and sequence of ad exposures to optimize the impact of an advertising campaign. The objective is to ensure that ads appear at moments when potential customers are most receptive, thereby maximizing reach, engagement, and ultimately, the return on investment (ROI) of the campaign. Effective media scheduling takes into account factors such as audience media consumption habits, budget constraints, campaign duration, and marketing objectives. It seeks to balance the need for repetition (to reinforce the message) with the risk of overexposure (which can lead to ad fatigue). Media scheduling strategies, such as flighting, pulsing, and continuous scheduling, are employed to align ad placements with the desired outcomes, whether it’s building brand awareness, promoting a seasonal offer, or supporting a product launch.

Media Scheduling Objectives:

  • Maximizing Reach:

Ensuring the advertising message is seen by the largest possible portion of the target audience. The aim is to cover a wide audience base without significant overlap or redundancy.

  • Optimizing Frequency:

Balancing how often the target audience sees the advertisement to reinforce the message without causing ad fatigue. The goal is to achieve effective frequency, where the message is repeated enough times to be remembered but not so much that it becomes annoying.

  • Ensuring Timing Relevance:

Aligning the advertisement’s airing or publication with times when the target audience is most likely to be attentive and receptive. This includes considering factors like seasonality, product launch dates, and consumer buying cycles.

  • Cost Efficiency:

Making the most out of the advertising budget by selecting time slots and frequencies that offer the best value in terms of cost per thousand impressions (CPM) or cost per click (CPC), depending on the objectives.

  • Achieving Campaign Objectives:

Tailoring the schedule to meet specific campaign goals, whether it’s building brand awareness, generating leads, or driving immediate sales. Different objectives might require different scheduling strategies.

  • Integrated Marketing Communications:

Coordinating with other marketing activities and campaigns for consistency and to amplify the overall marketing strategy. This ensures that all forms of communication and messages are carefully linked together across all channels.

Media Scheduling Types/Strategies:

  • Continuous (or Straight) Scheduling:

Advertisements are run steadily over the entire campaign period. This approach is suitable for products with steady demand throughout the year, such as consumer staples.

  • Flighting (or Intermittent) Scheduling:

Advertisements are aired or published during specific periods, followed by intervals with no advertising. This strategy is effective for seasonal products or when budget constraints exist.

  • Pulsing Scheduling:

Combines elements of continuous and flighting strategies. There’s a baseline level of advertising, supplemented by bursts of increased intensity during peak times. This approach suits products that have a steady demand with occasional spikes, such as during holidays.

  • Bursting:

Involves running ads heavily for a short period to maximize reach and frequency. This is often used for launching new products or for short-term promotions.

  • Roadblocking:

Placing ads across multiple channels at the same time to ensure a high level of exposure in a short period. This can be effective for major campaign launches or significant announcements.

  • Dayparting:

Tailoring ad placements to specific times of the day or days of the week to reach the target audience when they are most likely to be engaged. This strategy is particularly relevant for radio and television advertising but is also used in digital advertising.

  • Seasonal Scheduling:

Ads are scheduled to coincide with seasonal events, holidays, or consumer buying patterns. This approach is ideal for products whose demand peaks during certain times of the year, such as summer beverages or holiday gifts.

Media Scheduling Pros:

  • Optimized Exposure:

By carefully timing advertisements, media scheduling ensures that messages reach the target audience at the most opportune moments, maximizing visibility and engagement.

  • Cost Efficiency:

Strategic scheduling can help advertisers make the most of their budgets by choosing time slots and frequencies that offer the best value and return on investment, avoiding wastage on less effective timings.

  • Increased Campaign Effectiveness:

Aligning ad placements with audience habits and preferences boosts the likelihood of ad recall and positive action, thereby increasing the overall effectiveness of the campaign.

  • Audience Targeting Precision:

Scheduling allows for precise targeting, airing ads when the target demographic is most likely to be watching, listening, or browsing, thus reducing spill-over to non-target audiences.

  • Avoiding Ad Fatigue:

By varying the frequency and timing of ads, media scheduling can help prevent ad fatigue among the audience, ensuring the message remains fresh and engaging.

  • Leveraging Seasonality:

Capitalizing on periods of heightened interest or demand (e.g., holidays, major events) through seasonal scheduling can significantly amplify the impact of advertising efforts.

  • Integrated Marketing Communication:

Effective scheduling helps in coordinating advertising efforts across multiple channels, ensuring a consistent and unified message that resonates more strongly with the audience.

  • Flexibility and Responsiveness:

Media scheduling provides the flexibility to adjust campaign timings based on performance data, market trends, or changes in consumer behavior, allowing advertisers to stay relevant and responsive.

  • Brand Building:

Consistent and well-timed exposure through continuous or pulsing schedules can aid in long-term brand building, establishing brand presence and loyalty among the target audience.

  • Meeting Specific Campaign Goals:

Whether the objective is to create awareness, generate leads, or drive sales, media scheduling can be tailored to meet these specific goals more effectively through strategic timing and frequency adjustments.

Media Scheduling Cons:

  • Complexity in Planning:

Crafting an optimal media schedule requires deep insights into audience behavior, media consumption patterns, and the competitive landscape. This complexity can make the planning process time-consuming and resource-intensive.

  • High Costs for Prime Slots:

Securing advertising slots during peak viewing or listening times can be prohibitively expensive, particularly for television and radio. These costs may outweigh the benefits for smaller businesses or campaigns with limited budgets.

  • Risk of Overexposure:

Poorly managed scheduling can lead to overexposure, where the target audience becomes bombarded with the same advertisement too frequently. This can lead to ad fatigue, irritation, and potentially, a negative brand perception.

  • Difficulty in Reaching Fragmented Audiences:

With the proliferation of media channels and platforms, audiences have become more fragmented. This makes it challenging to create a media schedule that effectively reaches all segments of the target audience without significant overlap or gaps.

  • Rapid Changes in Media Consumption:

Media consumption habits are constantly evolving, influenced by trends, technology, and societal changes. Schedules made based on historical data may quickly become outdated, reducing their effectiveness.

  • Limited Flexibility Once Booked:

For certain media types, particularly traditional ones like TV and print, changes to the schedule can be difficult once advertising slots are booked and paid for. This can be a significant disadvantage in dynamic markets where agility is key.

  • Measurement and Attribution Challenges:

Determining the direct impact of a specific media schedule on campaign outcomes can be challenging, especially when using multiple channels. Attribution models can be complex and may not always accurately reflect the contribution of timing and frequency to campaign success.

University of Mumbai BMS Notes

Criteria in Media Buying

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They should be as specific as possible, and as actionable as can be reasonably expected. Avoid terms like “endeavor to” and “make best efforts”.  If there are concrete exceptions to an expectation, list them out.  If there is a process for having exceptions approved, document it. If there are expected seller consequences for non-compliance, identify them.

Buying Guidelines should be specific to the client’s business conditions and communication objectives. These should drive tactical goals in areas such as preferred or restricted content, commercial separation requirements, quality vs. efficiency expectations, competitive exclusivity, etc.

Include a brief target audience and media objectives overview including considerations beyond gender/age, secondary targets, recommended buying demographic or metrics, reach versus frequency or engagement priorities.

What are your delivery expectations versus Planned and Purchased? These are often expressed as a target percent vs. the goal (i.e. Actual delivery from 95-105% vs. Planned). These may also be further stratified to include expectations by week/flight/brand/message/commercial length (+/- 10% for example) within what may be broader annual or corporate buys.

What level of vendor contracts is required on your behalf? Detailed, current (and signed) orders should protect your investment for every media property order and include the relevant terms and conditions. These are the link between agency and seller in the media supply chain. If you have a broken link, you have no accountability. This expectation should be outlined in the buying guidelines.

How are post-performance methodologies defined? Provide definitions and timing for reporting as appropriate per media type: broadcast media posting rules, circulation analysis methodology, buy types and count-of-record source for digital payments.

What are the provisions and timing for recovery of delivery shortfalls or non-compliance: credits, makegoods, bonus weight, under delivery recovery, etc.? What is the unit of measure for delivery? For example, in National TV, delivery is often measured over the course of a full broadcast year by network. Best practice in local TV is quarterly delivery at the station level (not market).

Do you have time of day (daypart) and other placement requirements and preferences including definitions?

What are your reporting requirements that support an appropriate and timely performance feedback loop? How often will post performance reports be delivered, and how long after the end of the media measurement period in question, and what will be consequences to the seller (and agency, if applicable) for any performance shortfalls vs. agreed compliance items?

Have you defined expectations for financial management including timely invoice reconciliation and payment? Consider specific target dates by media channel (i.e. 60 days end of quarter, etc.). Be aware of the client’s own payment terms to the agency and how these might impact agency payment to sellers.

Phase 1: Pre-placement

Advertising isn’t as simple as making a really good-looking ad design and slapping it up on a wall. There’s an entire strategy that is put in place. Coming up with that strategy often takes the most time, as there are several factors to consider.

Phase 2: Placement

It’s time for takeoff! You’ve found your target audience and discovered where they’re most likely to interact with your campaign. You’ve met with vendors and decided on the ones that are priced the best and located in the optimal spots.

In this phase, media buyers make sure that the media is actually delivered to the vendor and that the vendor fulfills the requests that have been made. The buyer is responsible for making sure that the ad actually appears where it was paid to appear and is in the right environment.

It’s always best to prepare for the worst. If your advertisements aren’t doing well in one place, move them elsewhere. If they’re getting more interaction at certain times of the day, adjust settings and your budget accordingly. Constant review and reevaluation isn’t optional it’s necessary. Nothing is set in stone.

Phase 3: Post-placement

What was this all for if not for measuring advertising effectiveness?

When working with a media buyer, this is a good point to touch base with them and look at the data. Were the places you chose to put your advertisements effective? What worked well? What could have been better? Was too much money spent in one place, and not enough in another? Search for both negative and positive patterns, and make a note so that your next campaign runs even better than the last.

University of Mumbai BMS Notes

Buying brief: Concept & Elements of Buying Brief, Art of Media Buying Negotiation in Media Buying, Plan Presentation and Client Feedback

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The activities involved in buying are called buying process. The activities involved in buying process are buying elements and sub-functions. The process of buying starts from buying plan. But it ends with actual buying and experience from the use after buying.

The sub-function of buying involves in buying process can be divided in four types as making buying plan, making contact with, talking for agreement and contracting.

  1. Describe your company

Provide context and background information on your company to help the designer or creative team get a better understanding of your business. Who are you and what services and/or products do you offer? Include links to your website and any other background material that might be helpful.

  1. Summarize the project

What is the project? And why do you need it? Do you need a corporate identity kit for your new company? Are you refreshing your company’s Facebook and Twitter pages for a new season? Describe what the project is, what it entails, and why you’re doing it.

  1. Explain your objectives

This is probably the most important part of the brief, and it’s essential that you think through your strategy and objectives completely before you get the project underway. Why do you need this project? What are you hoping to achieve with it? What are your goals? Is there a problem you’re trying to solve? How will you measure success? For example, if you’re developing an eBook, you might measure success by the number of downloads. These details will help the designer understand your goals and come up with solutions that address them.

  1. Define your target audience

Who’s your customer? Who are you trying to reach with this project or campaign? Share demographic information about who they are and any behavioral insights you may have on them.

  1. Outline the deliverables you need

Do you need a one-page brochure? A batch of 10 banner ads? A logo for print, just for the web, or for both? Be sure to include the file formats you need (i.e., JPG, PNG, PSD), size information (i.e., 300×250 pixels), and any other important details needed to deliver the right assets. 

  1. Identify your competition

Who are your competitors? You may want to include an overview of the competitive landscape and any trends or market conditions impacting your industry. For this project, what are your competitors doing as a point of comparison and as a point of differentiation? For example, if you’re refreshing your logo, what types of logos and colors do your competitors use? These details can greatly help inform the direction the designer will go in (they’ll do additional research as well). You can also include a few examples of designs you like or don’t like.

  1. Include details on the tone, message, and style

The style and tone should be consistent with your brand and will also hinge on what the project is, what you’re trying to achieve, and what action you want your customers to take. To help inform the messaging and ensure it aligns with your objectives, be sure to include your strategic positioning and the key messages that need to be addressed. For example, if you’re creating a landing page for a contest, you’d probably want the messaging and design to be lively and fun to inspire people to enter. If you’re developing an annual report, you’d most likely want something that looks and sounds more formal and professional to instill trust and confidence. If you have a brand style guide or examples of past campaigns or related projects, be sure to share them with your designer. And also provide any other factors or requirements that might affect the creative direction.

  1. Provide the timing

If you have a timeline in mind for your project, include it in the brief. During your kickoff meeting or initial conversations with your designer, make sure to discuss the timeline and agree upon a completion date. It’s also a good idea to talk about the overall creative process and discuss if edits and how many rounds of them are possible and whether or not they’re included if it’s a fixed-price contract. 

  1. Specify your budget

If you have a set budget for the project (which is often the case), include it in the brief and discuss it with your designer. If the designer’s estimate exceeds your budget, talk it over and agree upon realistic expectations, deliverables, and project costs before getting started.

  1. List the key stakeholders

If other people on your team or within your organization need to be included in the review process, provide their contact information. You can also include how you’d like to receive deliverables and provide feedback. On Upwork, the Messages tool makes it easy to communicate and share files.

Elements of Buying Brief

Planning For Buying

Planning for buying is the primary function of buying process. At first, the buyer realizes need of goods. Then makes plan for buying of goods, finally takes decision to buy the goods. Planning begins is buyer’s mind from want or desire for goods. Then the buyer decides when to buy, where to buy from, how to buy the goods. Such decision depends specially on buying situation, buying motive and buying behavior of the buyer.

Hence, need of buying is realized in buying plan. Budget for buying is estimated. Then decision for buying is taken. Finally, buying plan is ready for the combined form of mental and physical activities.

Contact Function

After making buying plan, the customers think from where and which source the goods to buy. For this they should search for suppliers and identify, prepare their list and establish contact with them for supplying the goods. This is called contact function. The customers may contact the suppliers through correspondence or visiting to their supply sources. Generally, if a large amount of goods are to be bought, the buyers contact supplier or sellers personally and find out the capacity and possibility of the supplier for supplying the necessary goods.

Before selecting supplier of necessary goods, the buyers think about different matters such as price of the goods, delivery schedule, transportation cost, quality, capacity of the supplier, means and resources, after-sale services, promotional policy, credibility and responsibility of the supplier, terms and conditions of selling, buying plan etc. Only then, proper supplier should be selected and contacted.

Art of Media Buying Negotiation in Media Buying

Another important function of buying process is to reach the decision to buy and sell goods or services through negotiation. After buying plan has been made, perspective supplier has been identified and contact with seller has been established, negotiation is held between buyer and seller. Such negotiation is held on terms and conditions of supply, price of the goods, discount, mode of payment, time, delivery schedule, means of delivery etc. and then selling and buying reaches the conclusion.

After such negotiation, buyer decides to give purchase order and makes agreement with supplier to supply the goods.

Contractual Function

Contractual function is the actual buying function. After the agreement has been made with supplier on terms and conditions, buyer gives purchase order. If the goods are to be bought by final consumers, they make agreement with seller on price at the selling place and buy immediately. Buying may be on cash or credit depending upon their agreement. If the goods are purchased on credit, the buyer has to follow and implement necessary terms and conditions mentioned in credit documents.

Industrial consumers, institutional buyers, government offices etc also make agreement with supplier to buy necessary goods. Buyer and seller both parties should follow the contract made for the supply of goods. If any party violets the terms and conditions or does not carry out the responsibility according to the agreement, the other party has the right to get compensation or fine or any loss. The seller should supply the goods as according to the agreement and the buyer should make payment of price according to the terms and conditions.

Plan Presentation and Client Feedback

Customer feedback is the information, insights, issues, and input shared by your community about their experiences with your company, product, or services. This feedback guides improvements of the customer experience and can empower positive change in any business even (and especially) when it’s negative.

Customer feedback is important because it serves as a guiding resource for the growth of your company. Don’t you want to know what you’re getting right and wrong as a business in the eyes of your customers?

There are 5 main reasons why you would want to collect feedback.

  • Customer engagement
  • Understand your customers
  • Product improvement
  • Obtain testimonials, reviews, referrals
  • Evaluate and get better things

Ways of collecting important feedback from your customers.

  • Regularly call your customers
  • Provide live chat support
  • Social media activity monitoring
  • Collect feedback from your live chat sessions
  • Provide feedback forms
  • Customer service performance analytics
  • Provide an active online community with support
  • New and existing customer email surveys
  • Use NPS to evaluate customer loyalty
  • Create a feedback area on order confirmation page
  • Online Polls
  • Review feedback on your competitor’s sites
  • Display any Positive Customer Feedback
  • Facebook reactions
  • Make your online store more ‘human’
  • Offer a gift or prize in return for feedback
  • Use negative feedback to showcase professionalism
  • Create a feedback area for cart abandonment
  • In-App feedback
  • Ask for feedback at the point of service
Management Notes

Media Buying Meaning, Role of Media Buyer, Objectives of Media Buying

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A media buy is the purchase of advertising from a media company such as a television station, newspaper, magazine, blog or website. It also entails the negotiation for price and placement of ads, as well as research into the best new venues for ad placement.

Media buying is a process used in paid marketing efforts. The goal is to identify and purchase ad space on channels that are relevant to the target audience at the optimal time, for the least amount of money. Media buying is a process relevant to both traditional marketing channels (television, radio, print) and digital channels (websites, social media, streaming). When done effectively, media buyers achieve maximum exposure among their target market for the least amount of spend.

Media buying is the act of acquiring real estate or inventory where advertisements may be placed. In television buying, a variety of factors must be considered, such as time, space, rates, lead demand, and more. The price of a television media buy will depend on the specifics of the advertising campaign, such as whether it will appear in a single city, regionally, or nationwide. On a website, the price for media buys would be determined by factors such as where the ad will be placed on the page, how many pages of the website the ad will appear on, how large the ad will be, how many days the ad will run for, how much traffic the website receives, and the website’s user demographics. The more exposure the advertiser is expected to receive, the more expensive the media buy will usually be. A media buy is different from earned media and owned media in that it is purchased.

Tools used

Online Advertising Research Tools: Alexa, comScore, Nielsen Online, Quantcast, SimilarWeb, Thalamus, SpyFu, SRDS, and Compete.

Online Advertising Competitive Intelligence Tools: comScore, Integral Ad Science, MOAT, Adbeat, Whatrunswhere, Keywordspy.

Demand-side Platforms: Doubleclick Bid Manager, Turn, AppNexus, Adobe Media Optimizer, Rubicon Project.

Offline Advertising Research Tools: comScore TV, Nielsen Media Research for TV Audience Measurement GRPs, Nielsen Audio for Radio Measurement (previously known as Arbitron), SRDS by Kantar Media for Print Advertising Ratecards.

Media buyers often use the following tactics to execute on media plans:

  • Programmatic buys: AI and algorithm enabled real-time bidding on ad space that matches consumer profiles (e.g. fashion designers leveraging a platform that will automatically bid on and place ads on fashion-oriented channels).
  • Manual bidding: Bidding on ad space and managing bids directly through an ad platform such as AdWords.
  • Direct buys: When a media buyer negotiates ad rates and run times with a specific advertiser (e.g. fashion designers working directly with the Vogue team to place ads on their site / magazine).

Role of Media Buyer

A media buyer is a person who places and negotiates the price of all the ads on different media. This media can be television, print, radio, or digital.

They ensure that the ads are placed on relevant and favorite sites. They have to consider the length and size of the placement of the ad on the website.

They are also responsible for ensuring that the budget does not exceed the budget for the advertising either while preparing the ad or while placing the ad on the website. They ensure that the advertisement reaches the maximum number of the target audience and is within budget.

The media buyer may work individually or with the advertising agencies. These days freelancing media buyer has become a popular trend in the advertising industry.

Having knowledge of digital marketing is essential for media buyers because media in digital marketing is not only economic compared to other forms of media but also has a wider and specific targeted reach.

A media buyer is expected to have exceptionally good communication skills in both verbal as well as written communication. Graduation in marketing and or communications is required to be eligible for the role of a media buyer.

Apart from communication, a media buyer is expected to have good negotiation skills, and networking skills are mandatory for this role.

Different Roles:

Negotiations

The media buyer is also responsible for contacting the media representative to establish a base price for the advertisements and negotiate for them. The media buyer has to have contacts in all of the media space where advertising can be done.

Media management

Planning the media for the customer and managing everything related to it is one of the most important roles of a media buyer. The media buyer makes a plan related to the ad placement, along with the estimated target audience and the reach of the media.

This is planned within the budget sanctioned by the client. Necessary changes may be made to fit the requirement of the client. The media buyer should prepare a detailed estimate giving delivery prices and the final budget required by the client.

Business Partnership

Media buyers establish business partnership with their media representatives and pull an extensive amount of business. There may be a mutual understanding between the representative and the media buyer, and some commission might be passed on to him, but the fact remains that media buyer is the primary business generator for the representative.

Revenue generator

A media buyer who is associated with an organization has the primary job of revenue generation. More often than not, the media buyer associated with an advertising firm or a media planning firm.

Their job is to bring different clients to utilize their advertising media and sell the advertising space in order to generate revenue. The media buyer also generates revenue for the client indirectly.

Mediator

Media buyer should have contacts everywhere in the industry right from market research to market planner. There are times when media buyer has to analyze market information and get the demographics data or other relevant data which is required for an advertiser to planners advertising.

The media buyer may have important inputs for the client regarding the advertising demand and the reach to the customers. This information can be collected from the market research team, which is why the media buyer has to remain in contact with them.

Campaigning

In some cases, media buyer helps in campaign preparation of the marketeers by providing technical information and being the missing link between the advertisement department and the market.

In the case of the inhouse advertising department, the media buyer, along with other teams of advertising and marketing plan as well as execute the campaign.

Objectives of Media Buying

Best slots assured

Media buyers understand how to achieve the highest level of engagement. Several events, such as the Olympics, political affairs, are held throughout the world, and as a result, ad impressions might be influenced.

Media buying guarantees that the ad receives the exact engagement and conversion that the company desires. While these events are receiving the most incredible attention, the transaction can be impacted little. But media buying doesn’t let the profit be influenced.

Ensure Best deals

Experts in media purchasing can assure excellent negotiating and the ultimate price of ad space. This undoubtedly leads to higher conversion rates for the company. These experts may promote their ad as a value-added procedure to media outlets.

At its finest, it may result in an impression tacked on a contract, which is a less fee agreement. This is portrayed as a win-win situation for both the company and the media outlet.

Higher ROI

When it comes to media buying, it involves more than just exchanging money for advertising space. Firms’ relationships with media houses improve when they maintain ties with them for outlets.

This makes it easier to reach out to media companies in the future and to receive the best prices for posting advertising. As a result, the ROI is projected to rise with time.

Management Notes

Media Buying Process: Buying Brief, Environmental Analysis, Science and Art of Buying, Benchmarking Buying Plan Presentation Deal Management and Post Buy

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Before a media buy happens, media buyers must perform research to optimize the return on investment on their client’s advertising budget. They will examine the target audience for a product and determine which venue or combination of venues will best serve it. For example, they may utilize demographic and geographic research related to the product to optimize their media buy. An advertiser’s budget also may dictate when an ad should run and where it should be placed. For example, bigger budgets can mean access to regional or national markets. Smaller budgets may mean local newspapers or radio. Once the right venue has been chosen, a media buyer will approach whoever owns the desired slot or space to negotiate a price, timing, and the rest of the deal.

Some important aspects of the media buying process include personal relationships between media buyers, media planners, and channel owners. Since airtime is finite, media buyers must foster relationships to get the most opportune placement and timing. Also, media buyers must keep abreast of changes in the marketplace. As the communications business changes, assumptions on what is the best venue for advertising must be challenged regularly. What was a great venue last year may no longer be the case this year, based on changes to a media publication’s reputation. Finally, media buyers should be able to create value for advertising clients by finding or creating deals.

Stage 1: Pre-Launch

This stage of media purchasing involves arranging the activities that must be done before the campaign’s debut. In this stage, the business investigates every facet of the following advertising. This step is further subdivided into many tasks:

  1. Get knowledge about the target market

The expected outcome of media buying is to reach out to more target audiences who can be consumers. However, if the ad is not effectively designed, it will be presented before the wrong leads, failing your campaign. Thus, first, identify your brand’s target demographic and then research their lives and concerns.

Keep track of which websites they visit, whose social media pages they use, if they click on prior advertising displayed on that particular media source, and so on. This extensive investigation will guarantee such losses are avoided in the future.

  1. Understand competitors strategy

When it comes to marketing, it is all about standing out from the crowd.

As a result, media buyers must conduct extensive research into what the various companies or rivals are doing in this sector or reach out to their target demographic.

Ask yourself several questions about the rival and attempt to obtain answers to every one of them.

  1. Make a media strategy

After the media buyers have completed their analysis of who the target audience is, their interests, and the competition, they develop a perfect plan for the media companies.

This step entails deciding whether to employ traditional or digital advertising tactics, which channels will be beneficial and so on.

  1. Create obvious goals

The firms’ aims must be explicit when selecting a media outlet to print the advertisement.

After launching this campaign, the company should be confident of what it wants to achieve. Thus, these achievements need to be made clear in the beginning.

  1. Negotiating the prices

The media procurement procedure aims to achieve a higher ROI in the future. As a result, media purchasers must negotiate prices with media firms exceptionally successfully.

As previously said, proposing a strategy to the media houses that may benefit both organizations would significantly reduce the cost.

To prevent continuously entering into discussions, the contract must always be long-term. Having strong media connections may aid in intensely negotiating and pricing and guarantee a solid profit.

Stage 2: Launching the campaign

This step entails the process of launching the campaign and subsequently tracking impressions. This stage is also divided into different phases of media buying:

  1. Media Delivery

Following the delivery of the advertising, the media buyer must monitor the reactions of the target audience. This entails addressing a few questions, such as:

  • Are there any follow-up responses from the audience?
  • How do these audiences interact with the media?
  • What impressions does the advertisement create?
  • Is the audience not enjoying it?
  1. Track and change

There may be times when the strategy does not follow the path that the business anticipated. As a result, the launched campaign must be tracked.

If the audience does not like it or wants modifications, the company must immediately alter the movement.

Stage 3: Post-launch

This step ultimately comprises analyzing the campaign’s performance. Before beginning each new campaign, ask if the previous campaign had any flaws.

What was the audience’s reaction to the advertisement? And how much were the costs and subsequently ROI at the end of the campaign?

Analyze the Effectiveness of the Campaign

Collect as much data as possible, and review statistics and granular reports to see the strong and weak points of the campaign.

Analyze the effectiveness of the media space and whether it generated revenues that were expected. Check how the audience interacted with the product, and assess consumer behavior. Evaluate the return on investment, and mark errors that have been made to avoid them in future advertising campaigns.

Collect Data

When you have all the data, it is time to use it. In digital advertising, data is used to build algorithms that help optimize advertising campaigns and provide better targeting. Data is a marketer’s best friend, so look at it carefully. Aggregate data, and look for major and minor trends.

Draw Insights

Don’t look at singular points, especially when they change the direction. Search for relationships among variables or correlation and dependence patterns that help understand the logic.

Finally, look at the data from different angles. Invite others to examine the data and discuss your impressions.

Management Notes

Methods of Setting Media Budget: Yardstick Method, Effective Frequency & Reach Method & Margin Analysis ROI Based Approach, Experimental Approach, Break Even Planning

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Yardstick Method

Yardstick method is an approach in which the company or business entities use in estimating the new operation challenges or damages, mainly through performance comparable guidelines for example the damages experienced in an agreement breaching.

Define criteria by which to choose a solution. This may mean including or excluding aspects of a solution. The criteria must be specific enough to narrow down the solutions. For example, the criteria for choosing an advertising method might include limited funds, broad appeal, and a desire to direct people to a website where they are able to purchase the specified product.

Compare each solution to the criteria. It is important that the analysis of each option be thorough and clearly explained. For example, television advertising would be expensive, but targets a wide range of people. Newspaper ads would target only a specific region of people, but would cost less. Internet ads would target a wide range of people and the budget can be adjusted as needed. Internet ads can also send people directly to website. Radio ads can reach a wide variety of people, but only in a specific geographic area and can cost a good deal of money. Billboard ads can be made cheaply with small roadside signs, but the size is limited and people driving by may not remember the web address.

Decide on a solution and make a recommendation. At this point, the facts should make the recommendation clear.

Effective Frequency

In advertising, the effective frequency is the number of times a person must be exposed to an advertising message before a response is made and before exposure is considered wasteful.

The subject on effective frequency is quite controversial. Many people have their own definition on what this phrase means. There are also numerous studies with their own theories or models as to what the correct number is for effective frequency.

The following are some key examples:

  • Advertising Glossary defines effective frequency as “Exposures to an advertising message required to achieve effective communication. Generally expressed as a range below which the exposure is inadequate and above which the exposure is considered wastage.”
  • Business Dictionary defines it as “Advertising the theory that a consumer has to be exposed to an ad at least three times within a purchasing cycle (time between two consecutive purchases) to buy that product.”
  • Marketing Power defines it as “An advertiser’s determination of the optimum number of exposure opportunities required to effectively convey the advertising message to the desired audience or target market.”
  • John Philip Jones says “Effective frequency can mean that a single advertising exposure is able to influence the purchase of a brand. However, as all experienced advertising people know, the phrase was really coined to communicate the idea that there must be enough concentration of media weight to cross a threshold. Repetition was considered necessary, and there had to be enough of it within the period before a consumer buys a product to influence his or her choice of brand.”

Reach Method

In the application of statistics to advertising and media analysis, reach refers to the total number of different people or households exposed, at least once, to a medium during a given period. Reach should not be confused with the number of people who will actually be exposed to and consume the advertising, though. It is just the number of people who are exposed to the medium and therefore have an opportunity to see or hear the ad or commercial. Reach may be stated either as an absolute number, or as a fraction of a given population (for instance ‘TV households’, ‘men’ or ‘those aged 25–35’).

For any given viewer, they have been “reached” by the work if they have viewed it at all (or a specified amount) during the specified period. Multiple viewings by a single member of the audience in the cited period do not increase reach; however, media people use the term effective reach to describe the quality of exposure. Effective reach and reach are two different measurements for a target audience who receive a given message or ad.

Since reach is a time-dependent summary of aggregate audience behavior, reach figures are meaningless without a period associated with them: an example of a valid reach figure would be to state that “[example website] had a one-day reach of 1565 per million on 21 March 2004” (though unique users, an equivalent measure, would be a more typical metric for a website).

Reach of television channels is often expressed in the form of “x minute weekly reach” that is, the number (or percentage) of viewers who watched the channel for at least x minutes in a given week.

Reach can be calculated indirectly as:

Reach = GRPs / Average frequency

Margin Analysis

The marketing margin, characterized as some function of the difference between retail and farm price of a given farm product, is intended to measure the cost of providiing marketing services. The margin is influenced primarily by shifts in retail demand, farm supply, and marketing input prices. But other factors also can be important, including time lags in supply and demand, market power, risk, technical change, quality, and spatial considerations. Topics for future research include improved specifications for margins and demand and supply shifters, retail-to-farm price transmission of retail demand changes, and impacts of vertical integration and policy interventions.

The limitations of the market share method are:

  • The conversion of industry forecast to the company specific sales forecast is quite tedious and hence requires the expertise.
  • It is a complex process as the entire business environment is scrutinized before reaching to the final forecast.
  • The wrong information about the marketing environment may result into a wrong sales forecast.

ROI Based Approach

In the percentage-of-sales method, advertising budget depends on the level of sales. But advertising causes sales. In the marginal analysis and S-shaped curve approaches increase in advertisement budgets may lead to increases in sales. In other words the advertisement budget can be considered as an investment.

In the ROI budgeting method, advertising and promotions are considered investments, like plant and equipment. In other words investments in advertisements lead to certain returns. Like other aspects of the firm’s efforts, advertising and promotion are expected to earn a certain return.

To many the ROI method is an ideal method of setting advertisement budget. But in reality it is rarely possible to assess the returns provided by the promotional effort-at least as long as sales continue to be the basis for evaluation.

Experimental Approach

Traditional marketing was designed to create a message and distribute that message as efficiently and effectively as possible. Experiential advertising uses modern forms of communication and interactivity to approach marketing from a different, more personal angle. It combines salesmanship with the ability to connect with consumers and give them something to encounter and interact with, rather than just see or listen to. “Experiential marketing reaches out to the consumer prior to the actual purchase event in a retail store and gives them enough information about the product to motivate them to go to the retail store to make the purchase,” according to Augustine Fou of Marketing Science Consulting Group.

Experiential advertising became possible in the 1990s and began to develop in the 2000s as businesses sought new ways to reach out to consumers in meaningful ways. Too often, consumers ignored traditional ads, commercials, radio spots and other marketing techniques that had oversaturated the market and become easy to dismiss or forget. To make marketing memorable again, companies began to seek innovate ways of displaying messages to customers so that their engagement or direct involvement was a necessary part of the experience.

Break Even Planning

Marketers need to understand break-even analysis because it helps them choose the best pricing strategy and make smart decisions about the short- and long-term profitability of the product.

The break-even price is the price that will produce enough revenue to cover all costs at a given level of production. At the break-even point, there is neither profit nor loss. A company may choose to price its product below the break-even point, but we’ll discuss the different pricing strategies that might favor this option later in the module.

Break-Even Price = Costs / Units

Break-Even Quantity (in terms of units) = Costs / Price

Components

Fixed Costs

Fixed costs can be defined as the business costs, which are directly related to the business but not directly associated with the level of production. Therefore, whether your production level is zero or at its highest capacity, the fixed costs are going to be there. For example, you are supposed to pay the rent of your factory building, whether there is no production going on for about a month.

The followings are examples of fixed costs.

  • Taxes
  • Salaries and wages
  • Rent of the building or lease charges
  • Energy cost
  • Depreciation cost
  • Marketing costs
  • Research and development expenses
  • Administration cost

Variable Costs:

Variable costs are the costs that are directly associated with the level of production. That means the variable cost will reduce with the reduction in the production and will become zero when you cease the production process. For example, the cost of raw material required for the production of goods is directly related to the number of units produced in the production process.

The examples of direct variable costs.

  • Cost of raw material
  • Cost of wages of workers hired, especially for production work.
  • Fuel consumed
  • Packaging cost

Indirect Variable cost

Direct variable costs are the costs that are directly associated with the production of goods but does not get affected by the level of production. For example, depreciation cost, machine maintenance cost, and Labour cost.

Semi Variable cost

Semi variable costs are the costs that have characteristics of both variables as well as fixed costs.

Initially, these costs are fixed, but later these costs vary with the expansion of business or with the complex nature of the business.

Management Notes

Methods of Setting Media Budget: Status Quo, Inflation Adjusted, Advertising Sales, Case Rate & Advertising Margin Method, Share of Market

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Status Quo

When a company’s owners feel that they have captured a strong market share they can realistically hold on to, they may attempt to maintain the status quo instead of expanding into other areas. This strategy is usually a temporary adaptation to circumstances rather than a long-term stance.

The status quo approach is one of several adaptive strategies in business. Adaptive strategies are responses to circumstances that may be localized or temporary and are therefore subject to change if the situation changes. If a company has a good, consistently profitable product in a competitive business but no obvious way to claim a larger market share, the owners may decide to concentrate on holding the line until something changes. They will defend the company’s existing market share, but won’t try to introduce new products or locations. This strategy is also referred to as active waiting, because the owners try to maintain the status quo while waiting for an opportunity.

Inflation Adjusted

Inflation is the decline of purchasing power of a given currency over time. A quantitative estimate of the rate at which the decline in purchasing power occurs can be reflected in the increase of an average price level of a basket of selected goods and services in an economy over some period of time. The rise in the general level of prices, often expressed as a percentage, means that a unit of currency effectively buys less than it did in prior periods.

Shifts in demand

A shift in demand can occur for the following reasons:

  • A change in government spending
  • A change in consumption
  • A change in taxes
  • A change in the monetary rule

Advertising Sales

  • Persuading clients to buy advertising space or time.
  • Finding out who controls the advertising budget in target organisations and contacting them.
  • Explaining the benefits of your medium, using statistics on readership or viewing figures.
  • Offering a price and negotiating around it.
  • Closing the deal and recording the details.

The Ad Sales Process

Selling advertising space to other companies requires a great deal of patience and planning in order to be effective.

The first step in any ad sales process is proactively prospecting for potential clients. This step isn’t optional if you want to be successful in the sales world, and the ultimate goal is to build a sales pipeline by consistently connecting with potential customers.

When reaching out to prospects, many factors come into play. Not only targeting the right segments, but your sales positioning and the timing of your outreach. 64% of customers are more willing to have a conversation when they have dollars available in their advertising budget.

In order to connect with the correct decision-maker at precisely the right time, we recommend following these six tips:

  • Define your audience

The idea of prospecting can be overwhelming, but defining your audience is the ideal place to start. By defining the characteristics of your ideal partners, you can narrow the field to a more manageable search of who exactly your target audience is and the best way to reach them. Winmo revs up prospecting efforts with powerful sales intelligence that allows you to source leads quickly and accurately. Our team of researchers works to find contacts at hard-to-reach agencies, provide sales predictions, and stay on top of what media clients are buying, and we house all of this information under one roof in our platform.

  • Personalize your outreach

In order to stand out from the crowd, it’s imperative to personalize your outreach. Shooting out a generic email to a big list of contacts is not the way to go. Rather than sending emails with your fingers crossed hoping to get a response, make your efforts count and provide relevant and interesting information in your prospect’s inbox. Personalization demonstrates your willingness to speak directly to a prospect and work a little harder for the sale.

  • Strike while the iron is heating up

In business, timing is everything. It’s critical to pitch to a prospect when they’re ready to buy. In order to stay one step ahead of your competition, prospect proactively and keep an eye out for business triggers such as new hires, new funding, spending shifts, and product launches to name a few. We will break down each of these and more later on in this article.

  • Make prospecting a habit

Prospecting is not optional if you want to be successful in the sales world. In order to keep it a priority, we recommend blocking time out each day to update lists, craft emails, and follow up with potential prospects. Prospecting is important because it creates opportunities, and we’ve got the numbers to prove it.

  • Find commonality

It’s a known fact that people are hardwired to like people who seem similar, so be sure to do your homework on the prospect’s current work, interests, and how your service or product could potentially meet their needs. Taking the time to personalize your outreach in this way will set you apart.

  • Track rejections

While it’s essential to stay positive in prospecting, it’s also grave to keep track of contacts that said no, and their reasons for doing so. Why? So you can improve future pitches and be prepared to address common concerns. Successful ad sales reps understand the value of rejection in the selling process. Rather than taking rejection personally, use it as an opportunity to receive constructive criticism and determine how you could make your outreach better in the future.

Case Rate & Advertising Margin Method

In the world of business and finance, a margin is the difference between two values or sums of money. Marketing involves a company’s attempt to inform potential buyers of its product or service, drawing attention to it in such a way that an audience will be willing to purchase it. A marketing margin applies to a company that buys a product with the intent to resell it.

When companies buy a product to act as a distributor or retailer, it must sell the product at a higher price than that at which they purchased it. In such situations, the marketing margin of a product is the difference between what a company pays for the product and what it charges for the product.

Share of Market

The Market Share Method is yet another sales forecasting method, wherein the company first works on the industry forecast, then applies the market share factor and then finally arrive at the company’s forecast. Simply, the company’s sales forecast is deduced from the data gathered on the industry sales and from the market share of the company.

The market share of the firm is the key factor in this method, and it can be determined through the past sales records, company’s present position its plans for future, competitor’s sales records its plans and marketing strategies, customer’s brand preferences, etc.

University of Mumbai BMS Notes

Importance of Media Budget

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An Media budget is an estimate of a company’s promotional expenditures over a certain time period. The term “advertising budget” in essence is nothing but planning the advertising expenditure. The amount of money to be utilized for advertising purpose is charged to the profit and loss account of the co. and therefore is of vital importance both to the company and to the advertising agency that handles advertiser’s account. Advertising costs money & before spending, it is necessary to ensure its proper investment.

Every ad is a long term investment in the personality of a brand. Therefore, when advertising is recognized as a type of future investment, care must be taken today to make it more effective with proper planning of advertising budget.

More importantly, it is the money a company is willing to set aside to accomplish its marketing objectives. When creating an advertising budget, a company must weigh the value of spending an advertising dollar against the value of that dollar as recognized revenue.

Importance

  1. Check on Media expenditure

Media budget helps to have a check on advertising expenditure. Depending upon the budget, the advertiser will utilize the right funds to achieve the advt. objectives. There will be no wastage of funds by over spending on advertising the right amount will be spent to achieve the advertising objectives.

  1. Approval from top management

The framing of Media budget will enable the advertising manager to obtain approval from the top management. If the top management feels that the budget amount is more, then the advertising manager may have to provide necessary justification for higher budgets.

  1. Balanced focus

The ad budget is prepared taking into consideration the requirements of the products that are to be advertised. The right product is to be allocated the right amount of money. Again, there will be proper focus on the right place & the right period of advertising.

  1. Facilitates Planned Execution

The right amount will be spent on the right product in the right media at the right period and place. This will enable the advertiser to achieve ad objectives.

  1. Provides direction for drafting of Ads

The Ad budget provides a proper direction for drafting of ads. Depending upon the budget, the ads will be filmed or drafted. When there is a large budget, the advertiser may think of selecting popular personalities, shooting the film at exclusive locations, using sophisticated computer graphics & so on.

  1. Selection of Media

When Media budget is large, the advertiser can select rich media mix which includes television channels, various magazines, newspapers & even outdoor media. However, if the budget is small, the advertiser has to be very selective in the choice of media.

University of Mumbai BMS Notes

Factors to be considered while Framing a Budget: Advertising Task, Competitive Framework, Market Dominance, Market Coverage, Media Cost, Market Task, Pricing, Frequency of Purchase

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Companies’ expenditures on print, broadcast and other forms of advertising rely on the funds in their media budgets. Media buyers specialize in wringing the best array of exposures for brands and products out of their clients’ media allocations. Buyers’ efforts drive down the cost of each TV or radio spot, newspaper or magazine ad, billboard, transit ad or any other pay-to-play placement, maximizing advertising impressions and effectiveness. New media options take their places in the 21st-century media budget, expanding brands online.

Advertising Task

A more effective budgeting strategy would be the one which considers the firm’s overall promotional objectives. The budgeting then is done according to the requirements for meeting these goals.

Objective and task method:

The most logical budget setting method is the objective and task method whereby the company sets its promotion budget based on what it wants to accomplish with promotion. This method entails defining specific promotion objectives, the tasks needed to achieve these objectives and estimating the costs of performing these tasks.

Objective setting and budgeting should not come in sequence, one after another. They should be considered simultaneously because it is difficult to establish a budget without specific objectives in mind, and setting objectives without regard to how much money is available makes no sense.

The approach used by the objective and task method is buildup approach consisting of three steps:

  • Defining the communications objectives that are to be accomplished,
  • Determining the specific strategies and tasks needed to attain them
  • Estimating the costs associated with performance of these strategies and tasks. The total budget is based on the accumulation of these costs.

Implementing the objective and task approach is somewhat more involved. The manager must monitor this process throughout and change strategies depending on how well objectives are attained.

This process involves several steps:

  1. Finalise Communication objectives.

Any company generally has two kinds of objectives viz. the marketing objectives for the product and the communications objectives. The first job is to establish the marketing objective and when that is done the net task is to determine what specific communications objectives will be designed to accomplish these goals. Communications objectives must be specific, attainable, and measurable, as well as time limited.

  1. Determine tasks required:

The strategic plan designed to attain the objectives consists of various elements one of which could be advertising in various media, sales promotions, and/or other elements of the promotional mix. Each has its own role to perform and hence the specific tasks should be finalised.

  1. Estimate aggregate expenditures:

The next stage is to determine the estimated costs associated with the tasks fixed the last step.

  1. Monitor:

A regular monitoring is required as to how much the objectives have been attained effectively. If advertisements are an investment then a close monitoring of the invested amount and its return is must.

  1. Re-evaluate objectives:

Once specific objectives have been attained the budget should be reevaluated to check how better it can be used to attain the other goals. Thus, if one has achieved the level of consumer awareness sought, the budget should be altered to stress a higher-order objective such as evaluation or trial.

The major advantage of the objective and task method is that the budget is developed from the bottom to up, which is a proper and rational managerial approach. The method does not rely on past sales figures, forecasted sales, what the competition spends and considers only those factors, which are under the advertiser’s control.

  1. Payout Planning:

The budgeting for a new product is a very different story because the first months of a new product’s introduction require heavier-than-normal advertising and promotion appropriations to stimulate higher levels of awareness and subsequent trial. James O. Peckham studied the Nielson figures of more than 40 years and estimated that a new entry should be spending at approximately twice the desired market share. But the major question is what will be the profitable amount of spending on promotion of the new product.

In order to determine this, marketers often develop a payout plan that determines the investment value of the advertising and promotion appropriation. The basic idea is to project the revenues the product will generate, as well as the costs it will incur, over two to three years. Based on an expected rate of return, the payout plan will assist in determining how much advertising and promotions expenditure will be necessary when the return might be expected.

Competitive Framework

In a market with a large number of competitors and a high advertising spending, a brand must advertise more heavily to be heard.

Market Dominance, Market Coverage

To get a good market share in comparison to their competitors, the company should have a better product in terms of quality, uniqueness, demand and catchy advertisements with resultant response of the customers. All this is possible if the advertisement budget is high.

Despite the empirical relevance of advertising strategies in concentrated markets, the economics literature is largely silent on the effect of persuasive advertising strategies on pricing, market structure and increasing (or decreasing) dominance. In a simple model of persuasive advertising and pricing with differentiated goods, we analyze the interdependencies between ex-ante asymmetries in consumer appeal, advertising and prices. Products with larger initial appeal to consumers will be advertised more heavily but priced at a higher level that is, advertising and price discounts are strategic substitutes for products with asymmetric initial appeal. We find that the escalating effect of advertising dominates the moderating effect of pricing so that post-competition market shares are more asymmetric than pre-competition differences in consumer appeal. We further find that collusive advertising (but competitive pricing) generates the same market outcomes, and that network effects lead to even more extreme market outcomes, both directly and via the effect on advertising.

Media Cost

Media cost is the price you pay display, run, or present your advertisement or campaign during a specified date range or campaign period. There are many different ways to price media including points, impressions, flips, clicks, leads, actions, days, weeks, months, etc. Media Cost excludes the cost to create the advertisement (copy or artwork) and other costs.

Market Task

Marketing management has to do a set of tasks necessary for success in marketing. The basic tasks of marketing are as follows:

  • Develop marketing strategies and plans
  • Creating marketing information system
  • Build customer relationship
  • Build strong brands
  • Determine marketing mix
  • Deliver value
  • Communicate value
  • Create long-term growth
  • Implementation and control

Pricing

Advertising costs are a type of financial accounting that covers expenses associated with promoting an industry, entity, brand, product, or service. They cover ads in print media and online venues, broadcast time, radio time, and direct mail advertising.

Advertising costs will in most cases fall under sales, general, and administrative (SG&A) expenses on a company’s income statement. They are sometimes recorded as a prepaid expense on the balance sheet and then moved to the income statement when sales that are directly related to those costs come in.

Advertising costs are typically not a surprise to a business owner. In fact, many will have budgeted for a certain amount of advertising costs. The U.S. Small Business Administration notes that most companies set their marketing budget based on revenues.

Frequency of Purchase

Purchase Frequency is the number of times an average customer purchases a good or service from your store in a specified time period.

Purchase Frequency = No. orders / No. unique customers

Remember that some businesses won’t typically have people buying from them regularly. Online stores that sell larger, high-value goods can expect to have a lower Purchase Frequency than businesses selling consumable products.

Reasons:

Repeat shoppers drive business success. One of the most common mistakes businesses make is constantly chasing new customers. Why is this a mistake? While new customers are important, it’s your existing customers who drive the success of your business. There are two main reasons for this. Repeat customers are cheaper and easier to acquire than new shoppers. According to one estimate, trying to recruit one new customer costs up to five times more than nurturing an existing one. Second, engaged and retained customers are your best fans and biggest advocates! That same research study found that loyal customers spend 60% more than one-off customers, and are five times more likely to share positive word of mouth messages about your business. If your customers are busy recruiting new customers on your behalf, it means you don’t have to! So, keeping your existing customers coming back time after time makes sense for your bottom line.

It helps you to understand how to drive profitability. You have two main routes for increasing sales among your existing market: you can either attempt to encourage your customers to buy more with each visit, which is known as increasing the average order value, or you can attempt to get your customers to shop more frequently with you. Until you know how frequently your customers are already purchasing from you, it’s impossible to choose the best possible route.

It helps you segment your market and structure your marketing strategy around your segments’ habits. After decades of research, supermarkets know that they can essentially segment their customers into two types based on their habits: weekly shoppers, who try to grab everything they need for the week in one go, and top-up shoppers, who might also do a weekly, or even a monthly shop, but who pop in to buy the odd item they need here and there. Knowing the distinction is important there is little need in trying to tempt top-up shoppers into greater purchasing frequency with bulk discount deals, for instance. By combining knowledge about how often your customers are purchasing with demographic and other information about your customers’ buying behavior, you can perform a segmentation analysis that can help you create highly targeted, powerful marketing campaigns.

It’s the basis for deeper understanding into your operations. While customer purchasing frequency is a simple metric, it holds the key to much deeper analysis that can help you optimize your processes. For example, starting with frequency of purchase data, you can pinpoint the exact days of the week and times of the day when the most profitable purchasing takes place vital information for smoothing inventory management and supply chain operations. You can also identify those customers that contribute the most to your overall revenues and profitability, and develop appropriate methods to reward them.

University of Mumbai BMS Notes

Steps in Formulating Media Strategies: Defining the Target Group, Market Prioritization, Media Weights, Media Mix, Media Scheduling

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Defining the Target Group

Identifying your target audience is essential in developing an effective media strategy. In addition to understanding identifying your target audience is essential in developing an effective media strategy. In addition to understanding your audience’s key demographic traits, really dive deep to try to get to know and understand your target audience. Ask yourself these questions:

  • Where and how do they spend most of their time?
  • What does a typical day look like for them?
  • What are their fears?
  • What are their interests?
  • What media channels do they use?

Have clear objectives for making media

Objectives are even more specific than your goals. Objectives need to be SMART:

S: Specific

M: Measurable

A: Achievable

R: Realistic

T: Time-bound

Market Prioritization

Project prioritization is the process that helps you take on the work that will influence your marketing goals most effectively.

Here are some examples:

  • Your regular content marketing brainstorming process
  • Notes from customer support and sales teams
  • Trending or up-and-coming topics and audience challenges
  • Competitor’s content (or gaps in their content)

Chances are, you have a new idea in your head, inbox, or whiteboard more often than you can handle. This is where a project prioritization matrix comes in.

A project prioritization matrix is a decision-making tool that can be used in any type of project management.

Audience Profiling

After you have identified your target audience and participant communities, create a profile for each that includes details such as:

  • Demographics: Race, gender, ethnicity, age, education, religion.
  • Geography: Local, national, international, remote, urban, rural.
  • Attitudes: How do they perceive the issue; how proactive they are? What would it take to get them to take action?
  • Media habits: What media do they have access to, use and like?
  • Culture: What is their cultural background, what languages do they speak or read?

Media Weights

Media weight is a term used in advertising to refer to the size of the audience reached by an advertising campaign. Media weight is determined by the number and placement of advertisements in media such as television commercials, online ads, or billboards.

Media weight is usually expressed in the form of GRP’s (Gross rating Points), AOTS (Average opportunity to see) and reach of target audience. The main use of media weights is to monitor how well the goals of a communication plan are being reached. There are different ways to measure media weight.

Measurement

The most important method in measuring media weight is analysis of past records. The analysis is done on basis of television, print and magazines reporting. Television spending’s are reported as TAM rates and print as card rates. TV spending’s can be analysed on the basis of program genre, channel type, time duration and total airtime. The print rate analysis is done on the basis of colour/monochrome, magazine, issue, placement of ad, month, and other variables.

Types of brands

Research carried out by John Philip Jones on the advertising of different brands in 23 countries found that the brands could be classified into two types: profitable brands and investor brands.

Profitable brands

These are brands that are advertised less in proportion to market share are categorized as profitable brands. These are brands which may have advertised many times previously but at present are enjoying higher market share with less advertising.

Investor brands

These are brands that are advertised more in proportion to market share. These brands tend to be newly introduced brands, which have less impact on the audience and are in the growth phase of their product lifecycle (PLC) curve.

Media Mix

A media mix is the combination of communication channels your business can use to meet its marketing objectives. Typically, these include newspapers, radio, television, billboards, websites, email, direct mail, the Internet and social media, such as Facebook or Twitter. Combining these channels in a media mix enables you to communicate in the most effective way with different types of customers and prospects at different stages of the purchase decision, according to Entrepreneur.

Aligning Media Mix with Buying Stages

Entrepreneur notes that the emphasis in the media mix changes at different stages in the buying cycle. When prospects are looking for information, they may read publications covering their interests, search websites, visit trade shows or check product review sites. So, it’s important that you have information in the places they are likely to visit. The emphasis in your media mix would be on raising awareness through advertisements, press releases, product pages on your website, participation in trade shows or comments on social media.

When prospects have expressed an interest in your products, you can use a different media mix to nurture them and move them toward a buying decision. The mix at this stage might include email offering detailed product information, a seminar or a customized sales proposal.

Right Message to the Right Audience

An effective media mix delivers the right marketing message to your customers and prospects at the lowest cost and with minimal waste. If you want to reach a consumer audience across the country, you might use a media mix that includes national newspapers, radio or television. If you wanted to reach a specific group of business decision-makers, such as technical directors, your mix might include specialist business magazines or exhibitions aimed at those directors. To reach a small number of key executives who influence a major purchasing decision, you might include personalized direct mail or an executive briefing session in your mix.

Integrated Media Work Harder

The components of a media mix are more effective when they are integrated. The benefit of an integrated campaign is that the media mix is more effective when the components work together and communicate consistent messages each time, according to MMC Learning. In practical terms, that means using the same creative themes and marketing messages across all elements of your media mix. Prospects viewing an advertisement, website page, direct mail piece or product guide from an integrated campaign would receive consistent messages, with each element of the mix reinforcing the others.

Media Scheduling

Media Scheduling refers to the pattern of timing of an advertising which is represented as plots on a flowchart on a yearly basis. The plots in the flowchart indicate the pattern of periods that matches with favorable selling periods. The classical scheduling models are commonly known as continuity, fighting, and pulsing.

Media scheduling depends upon a number of factors such as:

  • The nature of product: Whether it is consumer usable, durables or industrial.
  • The nature of sales: Whether the sales is seasonal or regular.
  • The product lifecycle: Whether the product introduction is in growth, maturity or decline.
  • The pattern of competitor’s programs.
  • The entry of new competitors in the market.
  • The availability of funds for advertising and marketing campaigns.

Types of Scheduling:

The advertiser has to consider two types of media scheduling problems:

Macro-scheduling:

The macro-scheduling involves allocating advertising expenditure and frequency (repetition/reproduction of message) in relation to season or broad picture of business cycle. The macro-scheduling problem concerns with how to schedule advertising in relation to seasonal and business cycle trends.

The broad picture of seasonal and/or cyclical trend is considered. This is due to the fact that the demand is fluctuated as per seasons and/or business cycle. Therefore, it is desirable to vary advertising expenditures to follow seasonal patterns. Company, as per its calculation, can spend more or less during the season or particular phase of business cycle.

According to experts, advertising does not have immediate impact on consumer awareness, sales, or profits.

So, one should study relationship between:

(1) Timing of advertising and consumer awareness,

(2) Consumer awareness and impact on sales, and

(3) Sales and advertising expenditure.

Advertising timing should be adjusted as per time gap exists between advertising time and its impact. Computer-based mathematical model can be formulated to study these time relations. Advertiser has to decide on advertising time for different types of products, such as frequently purchased, seasonal products, and low-cost daily consumed products. Along with seasonal or cyclical aspect, an advertiser should also consider impact of the past advertising. Many consumers continue buying even without the present advertisement.

Micro-scheduling:

The micro-scheduling problem concerns with allocating advertising expenditure and frequency within a short period to obtain the maximum response or impact. In other words, the problem deals with how to distribute advertising expenditure within the given time.

For example, a company has decided to advertise specific message 60 times (that requires approximately Rs. 500000) through daily regional newspapers in a year. Now the question is to decide on which days/weeks/months/seasons the 60 times advertisement is to be allocated. Similarly, the same issue is related to radio or television spots.

Alternative Scheduling Strategies:

A company has following alternative scheduling strategies to decide on micro-scheduling:

  1. Continuous Advertising:

This scheduling involves advertising the message evenly throughout a given period. For example, if company wants 48 television/radio spots, it will advertise 4 times in a month or once in a week, or on every Monday.

  1. Concentrated Advertising:

This scheduling involves giving all the advertisement in a single period. Thus, the concentrated advertising means to spend the entire advertising budget within one flight. It is applicable when product is sold in one season, event, festival or holiday. For example, the company advertises 48 spots within four days during Diwali festivals, 12 times a day.

  1. Fighting Advertising:

This scheduling involves giving advertisement at specific intervals. Company advertises for some period, followed by break of no advertisement, followed by the second flight of advertisement and likewise. Company with seasonal, cyclical, or infrequently purchase products follows such scheduling. Company with a limited fund prefers to advertise during a specific season or festival only.

  1. Pulsing Advertising:

This scheduling is the combination of both continuous and fighting advertisements. It includes continuous advertising at low-weight level, reinforced periodically by waves of heavier activity. In other words, the company spends certain portion of advertising fund for continuous advertising, and the remaining fund for fighting advertisement.

For example, the company may advertise once in a day with a brief advertisement message. And, its detail advertisement appears for a week regularly after every three months. This timing is preferred by the financially sound companies.

Factors Affecting Advertising Scheduling:

The allocation of advertising expenditure/frequency over time depends on advertising objectives, nature of product, type of target customers, distribution channel, and other relevant marketing factors. But, mostly, following five factors are considered to decide on the timing pattern.

Turnover:

It shows the rate at which new buyers enter the market. The rule is, the higher the rate of buyer turnover, the more continuous the advertisement should be.

Purchase Frequency:

It shows the number of times during the specific period that the average buyer buys the product. The common rule is, the higher the purchase frequency, the more continuous the advertisement should be.

Forgetting Rate:

It shows the rate at which the buyer forgets the brand. The rule is, the higher the forgetting rate, the more continuous the advertisement should be.

Financial Condition of Company:

It shows an ability of a company to spend for advertisement. The rule is, the more is the ability to spend, the more continuous the advertisement will be.

Level of Competition:

Company facing a severe market competition will opt for more continuous advertisement through multiple media. The rule is, the more is the intensity of competition, the higher the frequency of advertisement will be.

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