Media buying and planning may not be the “showiest” part of marketing, but it is one of the most important functions that any agency, marketer, or business can do. After all, media buying and planning is what connects your brand, products, and services to your desired audience. If not for media, a digital ad would never leave a designer’s desktop, a social media post would stay on a copywriter’s screen, and a 30-second TV spot would stay in the editing bay. And, as an agency that takes great pride in our work for clients, we’d hate to not be able to “show it off.”

Some clients may think it’s worth it to keep their media buying and planning efforts in-house. But having an external media buying and planning agency allows you to leverage the connections and relationships the agency has already established with media vendors and platforms. An agency can also plan and implement more cost-effective and efficient media strategies than you can on your own.

If you’re looking to optimize your media strategies, the best thing you can do is work with a media buying and planning agency that knows how to. Working with an agency can help your brand drive more effective media placements and negotiations, enhance media planning and buying efforts, create greater marketing impact, and improve your return on investment.

Here’s how you can maximize your media planning and buying efforts by partnering with an agency.

What does a media buying and planning agency do?

Many companies may be reluctant or hesitant to hire a media buying and planning agency simply because they’re not sure what the agency does. This is reason enough to not go it alone. In many case, if you don’t look into the benefits of a media agency and decide to handle the work yourself, you’ll soon find out how expensive this “cost-saving” measure can truly be.

Let’s start with the difference between paid media and earned media. The latter involves public relations, and typically involves trying to earn positive coverage for your brand. Paid media is just that—you’re paying to have your advertising placed in the right medium (e.g., TV, social media, digital banners) to reach your desired audience.

Essentially, a media buying and planning agency purchases the media for you, whether that’s time on the air for a commercial or space on a popular social media platform for an ad. Sure, technically, anybody can buy media; anybody can design a logo, produce a video, or manage an account, too. The difference is the quality and performance of the work. This is your brand, and it deserves the best.

A good agency isn’t an unnecessary middleman but instead a strategic partner that can provide numerous benefits and tremendous value through its expertise, strategic planning, and industry connections. These benefits more than pay for themselves by saving time and resources, as well as driving better results for your marketing efforts.

What are the challenges in media buying and planning?

There are many challenges that come with media buying and planning. Paid media is a highly nuanced, strategic, and competitive marketing function that involves special skill sets, expertise, and experience.

Buying media is much more complex than simply buying an ad in the local daily newspaper. How many of your customers actually read the newspaper? Are you paying too much for the ad, or could you get a discount? Finally, could your ad budget be better spent elsewhere for a higher ROI?

These questions can get even more complex and granular. For example, what are the specific demographics and psychographics of your desired target audience? When and where are they most likely to engage with your ad? What type(s) of ads are the most effective at reaching them? And what new media opportunities are on the horizon that may deliver a better benefit to your business?

As you can tell, it’s a lot, and we’ve only covered a fraction of it. Asking and answering these questions are what a media buying and planning agency does every single day for each one of its clients. Whether it’s negotiating better rates, securing prime placements, getting access to exclusive deals, or tracking, measuring, and optimizing performance, an agency can help your company overcome challenges and streamline the media buying and planning process.

What are the benefits of working with a media buying and planning agency?

We’re big believers in media buying and planning. Check out our detailed breakdown of the pros and cons of media types. Honestly, we could probably write a book about why hiring a media agency is such a smart move, but we’re too busy actually doing the work. For now, here are the top five advantages of working with a media buying agency:

Access to industry networks: When you work with an agency, you get access to the agency’s established networks with media vendors and platforms. Why build these relationships and connections from scratch? An agency can benefit your bottom line in the immediate term by securing more favorable terms and conditions, and in the long term by negotiating better rates.
Expert negotiation and strategic planning: Most clients don’t have an infinite ad budget, so it’s critical to optimize your ad spend to maximize your reach and success. An agency is a steward for your best interest, and is able to negotiate rates to give you the best bang for your buck. At the same time, an agency can develop data-driven insights and tailored media strategies to help you select the optimal media placements.
Enhanced media placements: Securing prime media placements is highly competitive, and it’s critical for reaching and engaging your desired audience. An agency can make it happen, thanks to connections with media vendors and platforms, and strategic placements that enhance campaign visibility and engagement.
Save money and improve efficiency: Companies that think they can save money by buying their own media are missing out. An agency can pass its cost savings on to you through negotiated rates and bulk buying power. Plus, by outsourcing your mission-critical media work to an agency, your company can save time and money, and improve efficiency.
Achieve measurable results: Media buying and planning is only half the battle; you have to measure performance and optimize your approach based on the results. An agency is accountable to you, and tracks and measures the effectiveness of a media campaign. This doesn’t happen just once, as an agency will perform continuous optimization based on the data.

How we used social media to help Retrain Tulsa resonate with audiences.

Retrain Tulsa is a nonprofit that needed a cost-effective and efficient way to reach a broad demographic to promote its resources for launching, changing, and furthering careers.

Our paid media strategy followed an “always on” approach that built awareness and encouraged referrals. For each training offering, we crafted media-targeting and messaging specific to the audience most likely to seek that type of training.

Thanks to our work, more than 50,000 new users visited retraintulsa.org in one year alone, while paid social captured more than 4.6 million impressions.

Find out more about our work for Retrain Tulsa, and the results we achieve for this remarkable brand.

Ready to work with a media buying and planning agency?

As you can tell, media buying and planning is too complex and critical to go it alone. Thankfully, you don’t have to.

At AcrobatAnt, we can help CMOs and business owners maximize their marketing’s impact by leveraging our relationships and connections, deploying data-drive strategic planning and insights, and continuously optimizing our performance to achieve results for you.

If you’re looking for media that makes an impact, please contact us and discover the difference of working with AcrobatAnt.