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Media buying is one of the most time-consuming aspects of marketing that our clients encounter. Getting sales calls throughout the day for various services can bog anyone down, particularly when it’s tough to tell the different services apart. Media buying can be frustrating and time-consuming, but it’s a necessary part of marketing.  Here are a few helpful tips that we’ve gathered over the years. We hope it alleviates all the headaches and saves you some time.

KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE

One of the first things that we suggest is creating an ideal representation of your best customer(s). We refer to these as “buyer personas.”  This process benefits all businesses regardless of size or industry. Why? Because in order for you to decide which marketing medium is fits your target audience best, you must first define your audience. You should understand how your goods or services will meet the needs of all of your customers. Start out by defining your customer demographics, what their daily life looks like. Think about their pain points and how they communicate.  If your target audience gathers all of their information online then you probably don’t need to waste your time speaking to reps that sell newspaper ads.

CREATING A BUDGET AND UNDERSTANDING ROI

Create a marketing budget and use your experience to rework it on a regular basis. Surprisingly, many businesses have never created a marketing budget and have no st way of measuring their marketing success. At the very least, businesses should set a standard metric to determine the average revenue generated per customer. They should then use this average to determine effective marketing return on investment (ROI). This information is essential to determining the right fit for your various marketing channels.

BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS WITH YOUR REPS

Another great way to save time on marketing is to build trustworthy relationships with your reps. Although this may seem like more effort initially, there are significant benefits to building an open and honest relationship with them.  For instance, if a publication you’ve used for print advertisements now offers digital services, you can leverage your relationship to package your marketing. This will save both time and money in the long run, with the added benefit of cross-channel marketing.

HIRE SOMEONE TO DO THIS FOR YOU

In the end, unless your business has an internal marketing staff dedicated to doing all of the above, media buying will always be a process that takes away from your core competency and revenue generation. Finding an agency that understands these points and has built reputable relationships in the marketing community is often a far more cost-effective solution that will allow you to focus on what you do best.

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