Using a Media Planner Tool To Help Build Your Media Strategy
If your agency juggles clients with complex media buying needs, a media planner tool can be indispensable. Some clients may prefer to run advertising on only one medium, but for many clients a mix of several media is the ideal way to penetrate the market and reach their target audience. In cases where a multimedia strategy is the chosen approach, using a media planner tool can help agencies orchestrate the various media channels at play while keeping the entire campaign within budget.
As any media planner can attest, there are a number of factors involved in laying out the plan, from the chosen media to available vendors to seasonal influences. A media planner tool allows the user to put all these factors on screen at once, usually on an annual calendar. This tool should allow the user to first input a topline budget and date range and then select the range of media and vendors. If the budget by media hasn’t already been decided by the advertiser or agency, this aspect of the tool will allow the user to forecast the right allocations of the budget by putting all media and vendors on a calendar at once.
Using a Media Planner Tool to Allocate Your Budget
By knowing what media and vendors are available to be integrated into a media plan, the planner can allocate dollars across the options and range of dates. The media planner tool can account for holidays, seasonality, and hiatus weeks, if so desired. The goal is to stay on budget while determining which media, and ideally which vendors, will be on the plan. Just as importantly, it allows the user to flight the various media and vendors as necessary to have advertising coverage throughout the campaign.
A good media planner tool is not complex. It should provide a clear road map for clients and media buyers, so being able to output a plan by printing or exporting a PDF is vital. Usually, an agency does not want its clients to see insertion orders, but exporting a media plan gives the client a view into the media strategy and the deployment of their ad dollars. It’s also the guidepost for the media buying team, as they will build their buys around the vendors and allocations selected during planning.
GaleForceMedia from GaleForce Digital
Whether you’re an agency with a few choice media clients or hundreds of accounts, media planning is the crucial first step of implementing your media strategy. A quality media planner tool can help organize and orchestrate the various factors involved in managing your clients’ media budgets. To that end, GaleForce Digital now offers GaleForceMedia, the new way to plan and buy media. GaleForceMedia represents a makeover of traditional media planning and buying—a modern, user-friendly interface that offers features as robust traditional media software. Reach out today to learn how you can leverage GaleForceMedia for your agency and clients by going to our Contact Us page or calling 866.233.8499.