Media Buying 101: 5 Things You Need to Know About

Have you heard about media buying 101 and didn’t know what it was? This article will explain everything that you need to know!

Successful marketing campaigns with ROI-positive outcomes don’t just have a catchy message or relatable idea. You also need to ensure that your ad will reach the right people at the right time. Most importantly, your efforts shouldn’t be overly expensive.

Indeed, digital marketing and online advertising have earned much prominence over the years and have often been applied to stimulate business growth.

This ever-growing understanding of the value of media buying online has also made many businesses invest more in digital landscapes.

It seems complicated, but it shouldn’t be because, in this article, you can brush up on your knowledge to learn a couple of things you have to know before even hiring a media buyer. 

But let’s first introduce what media buying 101 is.

What is Media Buying 101?

Media buying is a process of planning and purchasing advertising space in mass media. It is a subset of marketing and often involves data analysis to select target markets, determine the most influential media vehicles to reach them and then negotiate prices with the chosen media outlets. Media buying is often used in conjunction with other disciplines, such as public relations, direct marketing and sales promotions, to achieve an overall marketing plan for a product or service.

In other words, media buying is buying and negotiating ideal spaces and programmes or times for your marketing message.

That entails a delicate balancing act involving the available advertisement asset and media spaces, considering the ad spending budget.   

How does it work?

The main goal of media buying is to achieve maximum exposure for the advertised product or service. That can be achieved by choosing the proper channels and targeting specific audiences that will be most receptive to seeing your ads or hearing about your product or service.

Once you have determined which channels are best suited for your campaign, you can then choose an appropriate audience for your ads to reach. For example, if your business sells children’s toys online, it would make sense to run banner ads on websites like Pinterest or Instagram, where they might be seen by their target audience (parents).

That answers the question, “What does a media buyer do?” Actually, they are responsible for negotiating and choosing media space for all advertisements. 

Media itself is any medium in which information can be shared, such as newspapers, TV, radio and the Internet. In this article, we will focus mainly on digital media because of its under-utilised potential.

5 Things You Need to Know About Media Buying 101

Here are excellent things to get started with your media buying plan that will help you accomplish your business objectives, watch your progress, or even find the best media buying agency. 

• Understand programmatic media buying

Do you need a method to get the word out to consumers who could be interested in what you have to offer?

Of course, yes.

Paid advertising is an excellent marketing strategy for earning more qualified leads, helping your business stand out, and growing your online presence.

However, media buying online will leave you at a crossroads. 

Because there are many things out there and you can get lost easily. 

Thus, before you even start searching for a media buyer to hire, you must know some basic concepts in media buying to determine what is suitable for your business and objectives. 

Firstly, media buying can be categorised into different types: social media ads, display ads, paid search, video ads, digital OOH ads, and mobile ads. 

After you know the difference between each, you need to answer some questions; what does media buying 101 mean to you? What are your goals? What is your ultimate goal? How much can you afford to do so? What is the timeframe you need to see the results? What is your advantage or edge? What are the problems you solve for your target audience?

Display advertising, in particular, is a fantastic method of advertising your company on a website with high traffic and your target audience already visiting. 

So, take your time to answer these questions because it’s the most important part of the whole process. Then, keep searching, reading, and consulting to get answers to your questions and be ready for the next.  

• Media Buying 101 Might Leave You Confused 

Understanding how media buying 101 works can get everyone confused easily. So, often we use digital marketing to refer to media buying. Then we use paid advertising as a ubiquitous term.

This confusion is justified, by the way, because of many reasons. One: the media buying process constantly evolves. Two: the definitions of media buying vary with each industry. Three: Media buyers’ jobs can also vary, depending on every type of company. Four: there’s lots of inaccurate information everywhere. Five: many types of media buying are offered every day. 

That sounds like a complete hassle.   

Let’s break it down. In reality, there are too many types and methods of generating leads. Digital marketing is a general concept. Media buying 101 is part of your marketing plan. Paid advertising is one way to promote your products. Also, different channels and capabilities of each type are introduced every day. 

If you want to grow your business constantly and perfectly, someone with a profound background should be your partner in this journey. Also, you can hire a marketing agency that can craft a unique strategy aligned with your unique business qualities and characteristics.     

• Use the Right Tools

Since the dawn of e-commerce, marketers have asked the same question; what makes an ad campaign successful? It’s an age-old question, but it still resonates. Or you can tell it now has been replaced by “What are the right tools I should use to design a successful campaign?” 

In the past, media buying was less complex because there were limited mediums and methods to accomplish your mission. 

Today, many tools with tons of features with much or less value are out there. The answer is to be selective in defining what you need simply because you need to take the time to optimise your plan to save money.

That’s why we always recommend starting with a media buying 101 plan or programmatic advertising that will make your process even more accessible.  

Indeed, not all advertising is created equal, but if you are willing to get bang for your buck, you need to stay focused on what brings more impressions for your ad spend. Because that means that more people will see your ad, and you’ll ultimately get more leads and sales.

Indeed, programmatic algorithms are constantly improving, but it’s still your and your media buying partner’s job to invest in the most relevant and appropriate marketing methodology. 

• Be Prepared with Your Market Research 

To monitor your ad success, you need to track your performance marketing. To track your performance in marketing, you need to have measured criteria.  

To have an eye on standards or criteria, you absolutely need a digital marketing strategy.

Marketing strategy is nothing without defining your target audience. 

That’s what most companies overlook; ads can never get you satisfied outcomes without specific actions. These actions should start with research, marketing analysis and preparing a targeted strategy.

The first stage of any successful media buying approach is to conduct reach and planning.

Then, what?

As a buyer or advertiser, you need to understand your target audience. 

As a business owner, you have to invest in understanding your target audience well.

As someone who wants to be an influencer, you need to understand your target audience.

Advertising is essential to growing any idea. You also know that media buying can be a complex and costly process. However, you may not realise that understanding your target audience because knowing who you’re speaking to is crucial, which will help you further to design an effective media buying plan.

Here’s why: your target audience is the people who are about to buy your product or service. If you don’t understand who they are, what they like, what motivates them, and what they need, you could waste a lot of money on advertising that doesn’t reach them or resonate with them.

A well-designed media buying plan takes into account the demographics, interests, and needs of your target audience. By understanding your target audience, you can ensure that your ad budget is being spent in the most effective way possible.  

But how does it happen?

The short and easy answer is marketing research.

Why?

Because you can learn about the target audience you are trying to reach with your media buying plan. This information is vital to choose the right media outlets to purchase advertising space. Plus, market research can help you understand what type of messaging is most effective for your target audience.

So, if you don’t know how to build your strategy, hiring a marketing agency will help you find the best spot for that audience to retain the ad. 

Otherwise, you’d spend a lot of time and money on something no one cares about.  

• Know the Difference Between Media Buying and Media Planning

They are the kinds of terms that we misuse. 

To help clear things up, let’s compare and contrast the most significant features of these two essential aspects of advertising.

Media planning is all about strategy. It involves figuring out which channels will be most effective for reaching the target audience and then creating a plan for how to best use those channels. It focuses more on conducting market research, building out goals, and establishing a budget. That includes things like timing and frequency of ads, as well as budgeting.

Media planners work closely with clients to know everything about their target audience to display the product and which messaging the audience will love and engage with.

So, a media planner’s job will end at the moment when a digital marketing team selects which channel they want to buy for ad spots on and for what price.

Then, a media buyer should work on the outcome of a media planner.   

So media buying, on the other hand, refers to purchasing ad space to promote a product or service. That can be done through various channels, such as television, radio, print, or online. Media buyers will communicate with their counterparts across the agreed-up media channels and sites. 

In this process, sales/account executives might get involved to negotiate placement, cost, and time with your company if they find you a relevant advertiser.   

Getting off to the right start in marketing requires an appreciation of the fundamental distinctions between the two approaches.

• Know How to Allocate Media Buying Budget

This step can involve many steps, but setting your budget can make or break any digital marketing campaign.

But before even using any template to prepare your budget, you need first to track your previous marketing expenses and analyse variants. Then it would help if you found out what works and what you should avoid in the upcoming ad campaigns. 

Otherwise, you will find unnecessary expenses are wasted in the wrong ways. Also, assessing what you’ve done so far is important. Start by chasing down invoices and generating reports of all numbers to reevaluate the whole situation.

Then what?

Ensure your campaign’s goals align with your organisation’s top priorities for the upcoming period. Plus, you need to review which initiatives marketing is designed to support these priorities and to what extent. 

For example, if your company is seeking to push sales by 10% next quarter, you need to determine what you can do through media buying 101 to make this happen.

Landing an official budget for your advertising will require a balance between your marketing strategy and your business objectives, and that’s how you can make significant progress.

Before even connecting a digital marketer to launch your media buying 101, it’s not just that you need to review last year’s or quarter’s results. 

For example, let’s say you spent £20,000 on Facebook Ads two months before and saw no clicks, no conversions and no significant attribute revenue. It’s, of course, an indication that there was something wrong.

So, it doesn’t make sense to run the same ads within the same budget, right?

The first thing you will want to consider is immediately asking your marketing team to pause for a while and analyse the data to avoid further making the same mistakes. 

That’s why it’s inevitable to continuously review your later campaign performance, collateral, and activities so that you can allocate your future funds appropriately.

So, we have complicated some of the most critical questions in this step:

• What marketing activities and initiatives contributed positively to our bottom line?
• Which step should you take now; maintain or grow your budget?
• What is the condition of the market?
• How are your competitors performing?
• What didn’t marketing activities align with your bottom line or at least as much as you had hoped?
• Is there anything you can consider or change about these campaigns that could improve your performance?
• Which channels did achieve better performance than others?
• For those better channels, how can you continue this trajectory?

In such a case, you have to finalise your budget, which means what’s worth investing in, what additional costs need to be considered, and where you’ll be investing. 

That’s how you can finally solidify your media buying 101 budget, submit it for approval, and get to spend appropriately. 

How Can ProfileTree Help You?

Searching for media buying 101 services? It’s our job to ensure your ads are beautifully placed in front of interested people.

Whether you want to launch programmatic media buying or not, we are masters in using the right automated technology for your advertising campaigns. We can cater to all of your marketing and website needs.

Our goal is simple- to get your brand the recognition and brilliant results it deserves as sustainably, quickly, and profitably as possible.

The process of buying advertising space has become much easier with us. As opposed to traditional (often manual) methods, digital advertising will help you reach what you exactly want. But no one wants to waste money; you shouldn’t be aimlessly investing in marketing without a strategy.

We utilise data insights and algorithms to show your ads to the right user at the perfect time and at the right price. 

How can we do this?

• By establishing Programmatic media buying campaigns to help you see substantial growth in the aspects that matter.  

• Our team of battle-tested performance media buyers and marketers will help you generate striking results every time.

• Whether you’re looking for purchases, a higher return on ad spends, or leads, you are in the right hand because we’ve got tried and tested strategies that significantly influence and impact your profits.

• You will never get overwhelmed with marketing jargon and confusing terminology; you will get access to precisely what you need.  

• Get a well-crafted strategy to push your sales by designing how your brand wants to reach your audience through Facebook Ads, creative web designs, PPC advertising, email marketing, and much more.

You can check out our services page or reviews for more information, or why not contact us now?