Media Planning Blueprints
Create unique media plans for each product and service using this tip. (Downloadable presentation at the end of this article).
Whether you are advertising to sell products and services, or to let people know about your business, you will need to create media plans for each campaign. Here is my tip for an easy to follow and effective way to create your media plans.
First, let us agree that all campaigns would fall under three distinct categories, Awareness, Consideration, and Conversion. However, the definition and ad manager design changes from one platform to another. For the sake of demonstration, we will use these 3 categories, but each business can change/add to them as they see fit for the needs.
| Awareness | Consideration | Conversion |
Awareness campaigns with the goal of Reach and Frequency are to create a brand or product awareness among our target audience. This is an effective way to introduce a new brand or product and service, or to make an announcement and to get new followers.
Consideration campaigns are usually a follow up campaign, especially on social media, and we also see it in Teaser campaigns on TV & OOH. The goal of these campaigns is to encourage your existing and potential customers to engage with your brand and service in specific ways, such as, sharing, liking, and commenting on your social posts, and to engage the community in a dialogue discussing your message. This will help keep your customers update to date with you, appreciating your business and services, and potentially encouraging further actions like sales and registrations.
The conversion type of campaigns is purely action based. The campaign setup especially on the targeting mechanism and content design/details is to help the business achieve business results, such as sales, registration, app downloads, and subscriptions.
Second, we tend to sell more than one product and service, and we do add new ones every now and then. This means that we will eventually have to launch multiple advertising campaigns with different objectives.
Therefore, it is extremely helpful and cost effective to have our unique references that suits our business, to minimize the trial-and-error situations, and to make the creation of media plans process smoother and quicker. Let us call this our own Blueprints.
From many years of working experience on creating media plans for different businesses and multiple products and services, as well as corporate messages, I find the following blueprint’s model highly effective to use no matter what type of business you are in and what type of campaigns you need to launch.
You need to divide your campaigns into the following criteria:
- New Brand
- Existing Brand
- New Product
- Existing Product
- Small Campaign
- Medium Campaign
- Big Campaign
Then, you will need to create the following table for each type of campaign (Awareness, Engagement, Conversion).
| Campaign Type/Size | New Brand | Existing Brand | New Product | Existing Product |
| Small | ||||
| Medium | ||||
| Big |
Finally, start populating each table with the best media plan requirements for each campaign objective (Awareness, Consideration, and Conversion). These requirements should cover the following areas:
- Media mix: what is the best combination you can use to achieve your goals?
- Media deliverables: what is the result that we will get from each medium?
- Media performance: what is the outcome of each medium deliverables?
- Budget: What is the total budget and breakdown by medium?
- Campaign duration: what is the ideal duration for this type of campaign?
- Creative format: what is the best creative format for this type of campaign?
Here is an example using this Blueprint:
An online shop that sells perfumes, through their website and app. Their service and customer base are in Saudi Arabia. They have an existing range of products, they launch new lines every 3 months, and they have promotional seasons throughout the year. They are regularly active on social media with a big followers’ base.
Their marketing team will launch many campaigns with the purpose of creating awareness, engaging customers on social media, and selling more perfumes. They would launch around sixty campaigns per year. They expect to make the best media plan for each campaign specifically, yet they need to make the process as quick as possible and be creative.
Therefore, they created the following blueprint to help the team managing the media planning process in meeting these expectations.
New product Awareness Campaigns
| Media Mix | Deliverables | Performance | Budget | Creative | Duration | |
| Small | Social media | 70% Reach | Brand awareness, new followers | 120,000 S.R. | Visuals | 4 weeks |
| Medium | Social media, Display | 75% Reach, 1m user | Brand awareness, new followers | 200,000 S.R. | Visuals | 6 weeks |
| Big | Social media, Display, OOH | 80% Reach, 1m user, 5 cities | Brand awareness, new followers | 500,000 S.R. | visuals | 4-6 weeks |
Existing product Awareness Campaigns
| Media Mix | Deliverables | Performance | Budget | Creative | Duration | |
| Small | Social media | 40% Reach | Brand awareness, new followers | 120,000 S.R. | Visuals | 4 weeks |
| Medium | Social media, Display | 50% Reach, 1m user | Brand awareness, new followers | 200,000 S.R. | Visuals | 6 weeks |
| Big | Social media, Display, OOH | 60% Reach, 1m user, 5 cities | Brand awareness, new followers | 500,000 S.R. | visuals | 4-6 weeks |
Consideration Campaigns
| Media Mix | Deliverables | Performance | Budget | Creative | Duration | |
| Small | Social media | Engagement | Engagement Through Rate, Completed Views | 200,000 S.R. | Video | 4 weeks |
| Medium | Social media, Influencers | Engagement | Engagement Through Rate, Completed Views | 270,000 S.R. | Visuals | 4 weeks |
| Big | Social media, Influencers, OOH | Engagement | Engagement Through Rate, Completed Views | 400,000 S.R. | visuals | 4 weeks |
Conversion Campaigns
| Media Mix | Deliverables | Performance | Budget | Creative | Duration | |
| Small | Social media | Conversion | App downloads/Registrations | 750,000 S.R. | Video | 4 weeks |
| Medium | Social media, Influencers | Conversion | App downloads/Sales | 1,000,000 S.R. | Videos/Visuals | 4 weeks |
| Big | Social media, Influencers, OOH, TV, Podcast, Radio | Engagement | Sales | 2,500,000 S.R. | Videos/Visuals/Audio | 4 weeks |
The best way to develop these blueprints is by looking into and reviewing your previous paid advertising campaigns. When running your first advertising campaign, you might need to consider your organic advertising results, as well as marketing research data.
Once you build your Blueprints, it is time to create a media plan template for each scenario (Excel sheet), where you include the exact numbers for each medium.
Finally, Blueprints are useful to create something that is specific for your needs, to make the media planning process smoother, to help you determine what initial budget and media mix and creative formats that you would need for each campaign. Nevertheless, you need to be creative and trying to add new medium, execution, or creative where and when possible, stay up to date with latest media trends and opportunities in the market.
By following these practices, you will always get the best results and be able to optimize your media budget on each campaign.
Download the presentation from the following link:
