To grow your business in today’s digital world, you need a marketing strategy built to get your products or services in front of the right audience. A company’s marketing budget typically includes a portion devoted to paid advertising. Media buying and building a media buying strategy play a key role in advertising. Throughout this article, we will explain what media buying is, the goal of media buying, and how you can build a media strategy for your company.
What Is Media Buying?
Media buying can differ across industries, but in simple terms, it involves buying television, radio, print, and digital advertisements to promote your company, products, or services. Media buying represents a wide range of activities, from buying ad time during television or streaming programming to buying ad space on websites such as Google and YouTube.
Media buying also involves monitoring your ad campaign’s performance and adjusting the strategy as needed for optimization. This involves a good deal of negotiation and strategizing to maximize your advertising budget. Negotiation and strategy are usually handled by the media buyer.
What Is a Media Buyer?
A media buyer might be thought of as a person in charge of buying your campaign’s media. But the media buyer does so much more. The media buyer is responsible for many aspects of your campaign, including:
- Staying abreast of the costs and availability of various media platforms and which platforms would be the most beneficial for your campaign.
- Negotiating the best rates, locations, and time slots for the distribution of the content of your campaign.
- Maintaining relationships with stakeholders, such as platforms, customers, and influencers.
- Building your media buying strategy and determining the direction, goals, and priorities.
- Managing the content team and the campaign to ensure it is meeting goals and is cost-efficient.
What Are the Types of Media Buying?
There are three types of media buying:
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Direct buying:
Media buyers nurture relationships with specific advertisers and platforms to negotiate the best ad rates and runtimes.
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Programmatic buy:
Media buying is done via the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithms that allow real-time bidding on ad space on platforms that match your target customer profile.
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Manual or network buying:
Media is bid on and purchased through ad platforms.
What Is the Goal of Media Buying?
Media buying is about putting the right advertisements in the proper format to appeal to your target audience at the right time to increase awareness of your company, products, or services. In the end, the goal is to identify and purchase ad space on platforms that are relevant to the target audience at the best time, at the lowest cost.
Why Is Media Buying Important?
Media buying is an important part of your marketing strategy. Your campaign’s success is dependent on where, when, and how your target audience receives your chosen media. It also serves other purposes, including:
- Increasing the overall return on investment in advertising and marketing.
- Improving access to the best deals and time slots.
- Increasing brand or company awareness, leading to greater conversion.
- Improves your footing with competitors.
What Is a Media Buying Strategy?
A media buying strategy entails your overall plan for buying media that will help your media buying team determine the best platforms and negotiate the best terms. To build a successful media buying strategy, ask yourself the following questions:
- What are your campaign goals and objectives?
- Who is your target audience?
- How much money is allocated to the campaign?
- What are the key performance indicators and metrics?
- How will you measure performance and progress?
- How long will the campaign run?
- Do you plan to use a mix of media or focus on one type?
How Do You Build a Media Buying Strategy?
After you’ve brainstormed and answered the questions above, you can begin building your media buying strategy. These six steps can help you build an effective media buying strategy:
- Identify the best platforms and advertisers for your campaign.
- Purchase ad time and space by negotiating the best rates for your needs.
- Launch your media campaign.
- Monitor progress and measure results.
- Optimize your campaign to meet your goals.
- Consider working with an online marketing agency like EWR Digital.
Located in Houston, EWR Digital is a nationally recognized full-service digital marketing agency specializing in end-to-end digital solutions from strategy to web design for today’s fast-paced businesses. Contact us today to discuss your business’ digital media marketing needs.