Why Media Planning is Useful, & Useless

Media planning. The process of figuring out where and what to spend one’s Marketing budget on, with the aim of getting the most out of it. Personally, I really enjoy media planning, forecasting and the whole process. Even beforehand, the Go to Market (GTM) and the whole shebang. But how useful is it?

Before we answer how useful it is, let us answer a more important question.

Why do we do Media Planning?

Media plans are super helpful for a range of different reasons. First, when done well, they enable one to realise the potential impact of a channel’s future performance, crossing over into a forecast. To the question of whether media plans should have impact in terms of leads/customers and other related business metrics on them, I always say yes, where possible, absolutely.

Secondly, Media plans can highlight weaknesses in the funnel and/or a firms’ customer journey. For example, a well crafted strategy, media plan and creative do not make up for poor CRO and customer experience on a website or app. And that can sink the strongest of campaign ships.

But back to Media plans. The best media plans incorporate base case scenarios which factor in current conversion rates and the like, to avoid any nasty surprises. Always helpful to avoid surprises.

The other reason, we do media plans is it’s one ‘go to document’ which (ideally can be linked to from a brief) that can be a ‘source of truth’ throughout the lifecycle of the campaign activation, and potentially afterward. Interesting and helpful for campaign wash ups too, like QBRs etc.

It’s useful for an activation team or individual, or indeed if someone has gone of sick, one can refer to the media plan to know what’s left in the budget, and what levers can be pulled.

Indeed, for longer term campaigns, they are also useful as a reference point, to see where the campaign is in terms of expected results.

The downsides of media plans

Media plans, especially in larger organisations, are seen as the reference document.. They are used to plan and gain existing and future budgets. The larger the budget, the more important, naturally, they become.

This means that any errors, whether via omission or commission, are amplified. Thankfully, I’ve gained a number of years of experience with media planning so have a decent set of eyes for these things. Nevertheless, it’s always worth looking, re-looking, and getting second opinions, when larger numbers are involved.

When things go wrong

It’s important to note that new-go-to-market media plans are sometimes quite hard to produce. There are lots of unknowns, lots of caveats, and in a lot of cases, it is just super hard to know what could happen. In honesty, one can never know what could happen. The Media Market is like any market, namely full of thousands of other actors, with free will, making unpredictable choices.

So what can we do if our media plan is looking wrong or not getting us the results we want?

If it is realistic for the market but not meeting our client or firms expectations, then it is time for a conversation. If clients or our firm expect a boat load of LinkedIn leads for £5 a lead, that’s not always possible when CPCs in some markets for some verticals are £10, for example.

If it looks wrong numerically, check your formulas. If it’s super wrong, take a break and review it. In some cases it is sometimes easier to start again than fix a mess. You’ll do it faster second time round anyway.

How useful are the in-platform forecasts?

They give you numbers, sure. They might know their market better than we could, possibly. But two factors limit my belief in the platforms forecasting tools. Firstly, they are corporations, mostly public, with profit goals and they are open that in most cases 90% of revenues and profits, come from ads.

Secondly, the data they give is based on the past, and is not always accurate. What I say is, it is a base. If this is a brand new campaign, with no historical data, often it is best to pilot to get some basecase numbers in. Otherwise use the datasets you trust most, caveat and scenario plan accordingly.

How useful are media plans?

So we got there in the end. They are useful. They help in all manner of ways. But they are not fixed. One may need to amend plans, as in life. Things happen. Maybe your CPAs are half what you thought. Awesome. Maybe they are double.

Hopefully you’ve smashed it and want to get more budget. Good. Go for it.

But, you’ll need a media plan/forecast to get it.