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Media Planning

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Digital Marketing - Study Notes:

Building a media plan

A media plan is something that not a lot of brands and businesses use but they’re so important. A media plan is essentially a blueprint for how your ads are going to be bought. And it involves listing out all the different channels that you have; then within that, itemizing all the different activities, so formats, or specific moments that you have; and actually listing against that, your total spends; and then going into it more detail and listing your month-by-month costs.

  1. You can start on the left-hand side, and list out the channels.
  2. What percentage does each channel get in terms of budget? Allocate that.
  3. List out the items.
  4. Each item within each channel, what percentage do they get of the total for that specific channel? You do that for every channel.
  5. And then you go across in the months. And then in the months you identify, again, using ratios, what percentage of your budget is going to go into what month and why.
  6. And then you apply the percentages to the totals. Apply the percentages to the each of the line item totals.

And very quickly what you have is a very concise and very precise media plan of how everything is to be implemented. This gives your team a real clear plan of what is happening, when it’s happening, when it goes live, and when it should be reported on as well.

This gives you a document that you go to your superior with, you put it on their desk, and you say, “Here’s the budget, this is how much I need. Are you happy to sign this off?” They sign it off. It’s implemented. There are no questions. It is important to have a paper trail with this, not because there’s a lack of trust but purely because it gives you documentation that actually supports everything you’re doing.

If anyone ever questions what you’re doing, you have two, three documents that you can take out at a moment’s notice to say, “Yeah, we’re doing this because of this reason.”

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Matt Mooney

Head of Digital Strategy @ DDFH&B

  • Head of Digital Strategy @ DDFH&B
  • 8+ years working with brands in social media, content and digital strategy
  • Expertise in developing integrated digital strategy
  • Experience with local and global brands in the US and Irish markets
  • Five time winner of ‘Social Media Agency of the Year‘, 2013-2017

Data protection regulations affect almost all aspects of digital marketing. Therefore, DMI has produced a short course on GDPR for all of our students. If you wish to learn more about GDPR, you can do so here:

DMI Short Course: GDPR

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ABOUT THIS DIGITAL MARKETING MODULE

Strategy and Planning
Matt Mooney
Skills Expert

This module teaches you how to create an all-encompassing social media marketing strategy. It starts by providing best practices for planning and conducting research into your strategy, and covers topics such as owned research, accessed research, desk research, audience research, competitor research, and social listening. You learn how to set measurable objectives and KPIs for your strategy, and how to analyze and track your activities. Finally, you learn how to build and execute your strategy, and how to measure its impact and performance.