Getting the most out of your Media Plan?

Media buying is the negotiation and placement of advertising in various media channels. In today’s economic times, it’s imperative to stretch your advertising budget as far as possible and generate every ounce of value from your advertising investment. 

The best way to ensure you’re maximizing the results from your media plan is to use an agency that specializes in media buying. Unlike traditional full-service agencies where media buying is often an afterthought to creative, at Marketing Performance Group, media buying is at the core of what we do.  It’s where our expertise lies. Many people at creative agencies don’t consider media buying all that “exciting.”  We disagree!  We think that enabling our clients to reach more of their target market, while gaining better control over their ad spending, is very exciting.

At MPG, the process of media buying has three key elements. The first element is negotiating low rates.  But, getting low rates isn’t the only way to generate maximum value from your advertising, so our media buyers are aggressive in negotiating no-cost value added programs and media promotions that will enhance the performance of your advertising.  Finally, through aggressive auditing and post-buy analysis, we work to ensure the maximum efficiency of each media buy — providing exhaustive follow-through well after the advertising has run. Our objective in media buying is to deliver media plans that make each ad dollar our clients spend work and feel like it’s worth much more.

Our comprehensive Media Buying services include:

• Researching appropriate media vendors and programming
• Evaluating proposals from media vendors
• Negotiating media rates
• Generating add-value and creating media promotions
• Creating insertion orders and run lists
• Confirming scheduling
• Reconciling invoices
• Managing execution of buys;
• Negotiating appropriate make-goods for preemptions
• Conducting post-buy analyses
• Rendering payment to media vendors, as requested by client
• Re-evaluating the media plan to further optimize your media buys

Media Negotiation

At Marketing Performance Group, we have contacts in all major media outlets across the country. Our media buyers are experts in all formats — television, radio, print, guerilla, outdoor, and various Internet media formats.   Armed with years of experience and the knowledge coming from buying in so many markets, our buyers are tenacious negotiators, working exhaustively for the lowest rates possible. Our expert media buyers are able to negotiate with media vendors and reduce your advertising rates, sometimes by as much as 50%. Read more about the art of media buying from one of our founders: A Scientific Approach to Media Buying.

The media buyers at Marketing Performance Group leverage a wide array of online and offline research tools   to such as Nielsen, Arbitron and SQAD to effectively forecast media costs and set aggressive buying goals.  Based on the customized media strategy, we determine how to purchase the most efficient media buy for our clients. For broadcast media, our media buyers will utilize an appropriate combination of that include upfront, scatter and remnant.  We can also buy via either fixed placement, direct-response or on a “per inquiry” basis.

Generating Added-Value

MPG buyers are continuously searching for exciting promotional events and sponsorship opportunities. On radio, this could take the form of an endorsement by a popular radio personality or a remote broadcast from your company’s location.  On television, it might take the form of a short sponsorship tag during the news broadcast.  Often, these “value-added” opportunities are negotiated as part of the media buy itself and come at little or no additional cost to the client.  In some cases, our buyers work with the media to design an customized event for a client that is specifically tailored to meet their unique business goals. Since many of these opportunities are offered at little or no cost, they serve to further stretch the overall impact of a campaign.  Click here to see an example of a media promotion that added tremendous media value to a client’s advertising campaign and ensured outstanding results from their promotion.

Auditing and Reconciling the Plan

At Marketing Performance Group, we don’t consider our work done, just because the media buy has been approved and placed.  In fact, much of the work is done well after the media actually runs. 

After the campaign runs, we conduct a thorough and comprehensive audit of the both the actual media placement and the media invoices.   As part of this audit, we review the exact placement of each ad to ensure our clients are getting the best positioning, location, or rotation for their advertising. We establish, early on, with our reps, the “rules of engagement”; our reps know how serious are media buyers are about using every angle and every advantage in attempting to maximize advertising value for our clients.   The media team at MPG never settles for “pretty good” or “fair” for our clients … and our media reps know it!   (And, it’s gratifying to see how often they work to help!). 

In addition, MPG does comprehensive post -buy analysis to verify each advertising program achieved both the specific media goals, as well as the overall business objectives. We don’t mind being held accountable for the success of the media program — in fact, we like it!  After all, our main objective is to help build our clients’ profitability — and that’s how we measure our success.

Are you getting all of the media credits your company deserves?
Sometimes ads don’t run as planned, they run too close to a competitor’s ad, or they run in the less-watched programming breaks.  And, sometimes certain television programming doesn’t generate the viewership that was forecasted. When this happens, MPG is aggressive in negotiating credits and “make-goods” to make your advertising dollars go farther.

Learn how MPG can help your business.