Planning the Media for your Campaign:

Today, there are a lot more media options available than what was available ten years back. And this statement will remain evergreen, in my opinion :)

Just like I mentioned in my last post, you need to first figure out your Target Audience and then understand what their media consumption is.

But before you set your foot to do this, you need to clarify a few things in your head:

What are the marketing and communication objectives?

·         Are you advertising to build a brand?

·         Is it a sales oriented campaign?

·         Is there a specific call to action? Call / visit to a website?

What are your competitor’s media spends?

·         Are your competitors advertising on mainstream?

·         How do they tackle advertising?

·         Is there anything you can learn from them?

Now that your objectives are clear in your head, you need to figure out the strategy to accomplish the same.

First of all you need to define your Target Audience:
This step was covered in my previous post as well. The only way to figure this out is to listen to your current and prospective customers and post that categorize them into standard Target Audience definitions.

In India, there is a knowledgebase known as TAM. According to TAM, you can define your target audience basis

• Socio-economics - SEC A/B/C/D/E/F
• Demographics – Age, gender, locality, etc

TAM is just like google for TV! They know what you like and dislike, what you watch, what you do in your free-time…

So let’s say you have a product such as ‘toothpaste’. Now you’ll think how one can categorize toothpaste basis socio-economics and demographics as everyone uses it! True, everyone uses it, but through our campaign, we might want to attack the person who is actually buying the toothpaste!

Now you need to study who is the person who purchases toothpastes in most households and once you’ve figured that out, you need to categorize them as per TAM TG Definitions.

Once you’ve categorized your TG and mapped it on TAM, you can study the TV viewing habits, radio habits, etc. Basis that, you can find out which medium to choose and within that medium which all channels to choose.

Decision-Making components for TV:

• TVR - The % of audience exposed to a particular programme
• GRP - A summation of all the TVRs for a particular media schedule
• Reach - The net unduplicated number of people that the plan covers at least once in the defined period
• AOTS / average opportunity to see - The number of times, on average, the audience reached sees the commercial during a given period
• Channel Share - Out of the total TV viewing universe in the specified time period what proportion of the audience has viewed the channel
• Affinity – The likeability of a channel/genre of a specific target set as opposed to the universe

Decision-Making Components for Print:

• Circulation - The number of copies each edition sells
• Average Readership -  The total number of adult readers for each title
• Sole readers - A percentage / portion of the audience who reads only a particular vehicle and nothing else
• Also consider:
  1.       Type of publications used
  2.       Periodicity (Dailies v/s Magazines)
  3.       Color v/s B&W
  4.       Specific ad placement positions like back cover, etc

You should do a similar study for each of the media vehicles in your target audience. Then go ahead with the mix that gives you maximum reach and frequency and visibility amongst the clutter.