The first question people often ask each other upon meeting is
“So, what do you do?”
For a long time I couldn’t figure out how to explain what I did in a cocktail-party fashion. When I would say
“I’m a media buyer and planner”
I would either get a blank stare and someone would say “Oh OK” and not really know what I was talking about or they would ask me to clarify and I would go into a long discussion about my process. This was before I learned the two-minute elevator pitch idea. The only time I wouldn’t get a blank stare was when I was at a party with other advertising professionals.
Jay Levinson, the author of Guerrilla Marketing, explains media buying this way. There are two parts to a marketing plan-the creative strategy and the media plan. The creative strategy involves developing the ads and the media strategy involves placing the ads. When I explain my position this way I’ve got a good elevator pitch.
So, I’ll discuss in a little longer than two minutes the basics of media buying and planning. To begin, most likely you’re a small business and if you’re like most of us these days you’re looking to cut back on expenses and don’t want to hire a big ad agency. So, you really just need two professionals to help you get started-A media planner/buyer to plot your advertising course and a creative designer/writer to develop the ads. You can add more professionals as your business grows. This sort of ala carte choice can help you get your marketing plan going.
There are two parts to a media strategy: media planning and media buying. In large advertising agencies you’ll find people who are either media planners or media buyers. At smaller agencies, you’ll find media buyers do both. A media plan involves targeting the best mediums (television, newspaper, radio, internet, etc) to reach your target audience. It also involves looking at the advertiser’s objectives and finding the best way to reach those goals. Usually the target market consists of an age group such as 25 to 54 year-olds and a gender or all adults. The target audience can get more defined like targeting households with incomes of $75,000 or more. The more defined the target audience is, the easier it is for the media planner to reach the desired audience most effectively. Most advertisers have a gender and age target demographic already established. Companies should have defined their target audience while they were developing their business plans but if they don’t have a defined target audience, a media buyer/planner can usually help them define one by conducting media research.
Media planners define goals for media buyers based on media planning/buying formulas such as cost per thousand (cpm) and cost per point (cpp). These formulas are used as measurements for media’s effectiveness. Media buyers then take these goals and plans and implement them by negotiating with the media to get the most cost efficient advertising. Tools media buyers use to negotiate include the cpm and cpp formulas as well as negotiating for what we call “added value”, such as sponsorship mentions, internet advertising or promotions. Media buyers tend to form strong relationships with media sellers and therefore they have an added advantage over someone who has never worked with sales representatives.
Media buyers/planners are experts at getting (sorry I’m going to use a cliché here) the most bang for the advertiser’s buck. So if you are planning on advertising, before you order an ad from a sales representative that has told you they can offer you a great deal on an ad in their magazine, internet site (fill in medium here) check with a media buyer/planner first. They may tell you that although the out-of-pocket cost is low, you would only be reaching ten people who are in your target audience thus making your cost per lead extremely high. Or, you could be paying more for the ad then the media buyer could negotiate for you. Media buyers/planners are your unbiased friends. Don’t implement a media plan without them.
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