Chapter 6 - Creating the Plan

-the key ide to keep in mind when making the plan is your media startegy;

There are several steps to the Creation of a plan:

1.Target Audience's Use of Media:

-finding out which media your target audience uses;
-discover the media habits of your petential consumers through syndicated services, ot conduct studies on your own; or do some mini-reserach on ur own;

2. Timing of the Plan:

-some items are tied to specific holiday celebrations (Valentine's Day, Thanksgiving);
-But for the majority of goods you would ideally want to promote them continually getting your message pn a very regular and frequent basis to reach as many people as you can as often as possible.

-There are 2 obvious drawbacks here:
  1. most advertisers (eg.small businesses), cannot afford doing this;
  2. bombarding the audiences with your message might result in irritation and produce negative results and they will start ingoring it;
--you need to focus your efforts on particular months,weeks,or days. Most businesse have seasonality to them.

-Either you could focus your efforts on promoting your product before peak period, reminding people of your existence;
-Or you could try to build up sales at other times of the year.
-Combination of the two;

-Consider the seasonality of the media you use (eg. around X-mas they are cluttered; time should be booked well in advance);

Balancing Reach and Frequency

-As you develop you media plan it is important to keep track of how well it will perform;
-That is you need to keep calculating your reacn &frequency measures to compare one potential plan against another.
-The Goal is to find the right meduim, or combination of media, that will achieve your media objectives give the amount of money you have to spend.

Media Models:

-A media model is a statistical routine performed by PC software packages that goes through data and mnipulates it to project the effectiveness and efficiency of a plan.
-The overall goal is to provide numbers to support the plan;
-Lately econometrics models, where statistics are used to try to figure out what marketing (media) elements are dring actual sales are being employed;

Schedule your Ads:

-Do you want them running each week for #weeks (continuity), or twice a month all year (bursts), or for alternating 6 week periods (flightning)..?
-the Answer will depend primarily on 2 interrelated factors:1) on your media objective and 2)your sales pattern.
-There should always be a timing component stated in your objective;, which will give you some guidance for the scheduling on the plan.
-you should also think about the scheduling of different media and their combination;

-If you wish to reach as many different people as possible in your target audience, then you want to disperce your message across media vehicles, or days and dayparts for example.
-On the other hand if you want to ensure that your audinece hears or sees your ads several times in a gien period, you would concentrate them in fewer media, vehicles, days,dayparts.

-THE PATTERN OF SHCEDULING DOES NOT SEEM TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN TERMS OF TOTAL REACH!!

-OF COURSE, THE TIMING ELEMENT COULD BE CRITICAL DEPENDING ON YOUR PRODUCT (EG, SUNTAN LOTION.x-MAS DECORATIONS

-2 TV sceduling tactics that are smth used among major advertisers are :
  • double-spotting - refers to placing 2 spots within the same program. the effect is to increase the likelihood of exposure to your ad message.
  • raodblocking - means placing the same ad across as many channels as possilbe at the same time.The impact, is going to be increase in reach..
Cost Efficiencies:

-in addition to keeping track of reach &frequency , you must also consider the costs involved;
- If you need to increase the frequency of your message, it is going to require more time or space, which means more money;
-cost efficiencies can be calculated in therms of cost per thousand (CPM) or cost per points (CPP).
-The more "mass " the medium, the cheaper it will be on a CPM basis, but the less targeted it will be for your situation;- there will be a lot of "waste" exposures of people who are probably not interested.

3. Tactical Considerations:

-additional considerations that are specific to your product/service:

Trade Merchandising: -for many goods/services the trade plays a critical role in the brand's development and sales;
-Many medi aplans are geared primarily to the consumer market also have side benefits o trade;
-by pushing thr brand retailers increase their revenues too;
-it is important to look at what trade-merchandizing elements can be attached to it;

Consumer Merchandising: -coupons, sampling, press releases, exhibitions,displays;

Testing:
-NOT for smaller advertisers;
-first on small-scale-to test wheter your new approach is likely to increase sales or harm them.
-testing is also a good idea for making changes in media wight (GRPs);

A Media Plan Example:

Eg. Advertising objective: 1Raise awareness of the blah blah among target from 40% to 50% during 2011;

Eg. Media Objectives
  1. advertise to target group (demeographics..)
  2. Acheive the following communication goals..
  3. Provide year-round media support to stimulate usage..
  4. Schedule advertising to run... to complemet
Summary:
-When creating a media plan it is crucial to consider first the target audience's use of media, in terms of which categories and vehicles they use;
-Then, you must determine the plan's timing, if there are seasonal sales or toher elements of the marketing Mix (Pricing, promotion, distribution, or product changes) that will affect the plan's timing;
-For scheduling your chosen vehicles, financial consideration and reach &frequency goals will help determine when, and how often  your ads will apperar;
-Tactical elements are important too, particularly tade and consumer merchandising, to receive maximum support from dealers, distributors and retailers, and maximize the impact of advetising.
- If funds permit, or major changes to the plan are being contempleted, it is reccomended thatthe plan be tested on a small-scale before it is launched.





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