Are you getting the most out of your media plan?
Balance: it’s one of the most important and most difficult things to keep (work/life, anyone?). It’s the key to a great media plan as well—the right balance of efficiency and effectiveness means allocating your media dollars into just the right places to reach the people most receptive to your message.
Here at Hydrogen, we have a few strategies to help you achieve that balance and make your media dollars go further.
1. Do fewer things better
It’s a common mistake to try to do a little of everything—digital placements, print, TV, etc.—thinking your target will see your message everywhere. While this approach may seem effective in theory, it spreads the frequency of exposures too thinly, and your message gets lost. When dealing with tight budgets, make media dollars work harder by owning just a few channels, ensuring your message really resonates with the target audience.
2. Engage your audience where they are actively consuming media
The media landscape has changed a lot over the past few years. Consumers are generally more distracted—watching TV while looking at content on their phones—making it harder for messages to get through. While traditional TV and Radio are still the most effective vehicles for mass reach, new technologies allow us to target consumers who are actively engaged. Using media channels such as streaming TV, Over-The-Top Content (Apple TV, Hulu, etc.) and Pandora Radio, we can put your messages in front of consumers who are actively watching or listening in real time, giving us guaranteed impressions and a captive audience. These channels are also measurable, giving us insights that help inform future buys, improving how dollars are spent.
3. Stewardship is just as important as the buy
Fine-tuning media as it’s running can dramatically improve performance. Constant contact with all media vendors ensures campaigns will run properly. We have seen it all—TV spots pre-empted, print ads positioned in the wrong place, you name it. If you leave it to chance, you may not get what you bargained for. Another way to make media dollars more effective is optimization. Most digital media channels can show results as campaigns are running, allowing us to move budgets into tactics that are performing well and eliminate waste. Those optimizations and insights can also be used to inform creative as well (e.g., which ads are consumers clicking on more?) Using these consumer insights to inform both media and creative can go a long way in increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of entire campaigns.
The media landscape may be getting more complex, but with the right partner, that doesn’t have to mean it’s more difficult. At Hydrogen, our media team maintains relationships with countless vendors and keeps a finger on the pulse of new and emerging media opportunities. We can find the right balance of efficiency and effectiveness, passing on the knowledge—and savings—to you.
