5 Steps You Should Follow to Complete Media Buying

In advertising management, media buying is the procurement of media inventory. The media buying function negotiates price and placement for advertisements.

Media buyers negotiate with media sellers to purchase certain number of audience with targeted ad releasing time and advertising space to convey a marketing message. They consider about many key factors, such as formats, price rates, demographics, geographic and psychographics relating to the advertiser's particular product or key performance indicator. All media inventory goes through phases of optimization, which is dependent on budget, type of medium (radio, internet, TV, print, etc.), target audience and target market. Media buyers can purchase media inventory regionally or nationally.

Therefore, it sounds like that media buying is a bit complicated. Below are five steps to complete media buying.

Step 1 - Identify your target market

The first step is that you should ask yourself questions about who you are trying to reach, and find the profiles reflecting the consumers you are trying to reach. These profiles can be information like their age, gender and average income. These questions will be helpful when you are trying to identify the best venue and to figure out in which place you should invest.

Step 2 - Research your target market

Once you've identified your target market, it's time to do some market research. You can do your own research, or you can depend on desk research. In this step, you should identify where you will find your target market, as well as other demographics that can assist you in selecting the right media buying.

It is also important to understand the consumer behavior of those you are targeting, including online market buyers, television watchers and magazine readers. It should be known what marketing vehicles will work best when it comes to place advertisements.

Step 3 - Set your objectives

After previous two steps, you should identify what objectives are most important for you on media buying. You can also share these objectives with those you are executing media buying from and ask about their opinions on whether their packages will work for that objective.

Step 4 - Define and plan out your strategy

It’s now time to define and create a strategy. Your plans should contain the following:

l  Where will you do media buying?

l  How much is your budget and how do you allocate that budget?

Step 5 – Execute your plan

At this step, you should contact the media outlets you have identified and start negotiating your media buying rates. Remind yourself by keeping a calendar and checking remaining budget at all times.

Keep your eye on your budget, your calendar, and most importantly the deadlines.

Certainly, make sure that you track the results after the execution and evaluate if your plan and strategy are effective. If not, adjust them.