media planning
Media planning is the advertising plan that supports the marketing and communication strategy of a brand in every way. Public relations and digital PR must be supported by an advertising campaign to reinforce the brand image and the messages it wants to get across.
The advertising plan is implemented through various steps, which can be summed up in 4 stages:
- Identify the target of the company: this is basic information that is required to profile the user that we want to target our advertising message at and to understand which channels we should choose for these activities;
- Identify goals: depending on the purpose you want to achieve, we will choose one channel over another.
- Study the strategy: identifying the best channels to use for advertising.
- Planning the channels (online and/or offline): the channel identification stage entails discussing and defining the advertising communication plan according to the budget, goal, target and strategy.
- Assess the results to understand whether the activities were effective.
Generally, it is always a good idea to be able to have an overview of the market and of how the brand’s competitors work when establishing an advertising plan.
“A man who stops advertising to save money is
like a man who stops a clock to save time.”
Henry Ford
Arguably, this is not a new phrase, yet decades have passed and it still holds water. That’s no coincidence. Advertising is an investment that companies cannot overlook in a world that is increasingly competitive and global. Companies that stop advertising, lose time. An effective advertising plan will never be purely a cost for a company, but rather a tool for success.
Alongside a “traditional” advertising plan for print, TV and radio, online communication plans have become more common in recent years, encapsulating the internet in terms of magazines, specialist or generalist portals and blogs, with investment being increasingly made in social media.
Indeed, social networks which were once considered merely a pastime a few years ago, now play an incredibly powerful role in the communication strategy of companies and when drafting the advertising plan. As with all forms of media, the target and goal should be analysed because not all social networks work for all brands. Some will find their typical user on Facebook, others on Instagram or Twitter, or even Pinterest or Youtube (some of the most popular social networks in Italy). Linkedin is a different story, as it is a significant professional resource that today offers interesting possibilities to run campaigns on the platform. Meanwhile, latest trend – especially among young people – is the new social network Tik Tok, which focuses on short videos.