Mar 31, 2023

5 Tips for Building an Effective Media Buying Strategy

Behind every paid digital ad is what seasoned marketers know as a media buy. Gone are the days of simply throwing money at digital ads and hoping it sticks. Digital ad buying, also known as media buying, is a process that requires strategy, thought, and creativity — making it much more than just putting a…

5-Tips-for-Building-an-Effective-Media-Buying-Strategy

Behind every paid digital ad is what seasoned marketers know as a media buy.

Gone are the days of simply throwing money at digital ads and hoping it sticks. Digital ad buying, also known as media buying, is a process that requires strategy, thought, and creativity — making it much more than just putting a flashy message in front of audiences at scale.

With the right media buying tips and tricks, you can create a fruitful strategy that drives real returns on your investment, no matter what your campaign goals look like.

Media Buying Supercharges Your Marketing Efforts

Your ad may be visually appealing and get the message across, but without the right media buy, it won’t get you very far.

Media buying is a science. Strategy is crucial—and it starts before you even start buying. Media buying is all about finding the proper environment, time, and context to run your ads. The goal is simple: to get ad space on the most relevant channels to your target audience at the most optimal time — all for the least amount of spend.

Today, there are several ways to purchase media for your ad campaign, including:

  • Direct: Purchasing ad inventory directly with a specific channel or publisher
  • Network: Bidding and purchasing ad space through demand-side platforms and supply-side platforms
  • Programmatic: Buying ad placements using automated technology

No matter how you do media buying, one thing is standard: It’s a multi-step process that goes beyond the simple act of buying ad space. Media buying, especially in the performance TV and CTV age, requires careful consideration and planning to effectively bring your innovative ideas to fruition and keep up with the rife competition.

In short, it’s no longer enough to just have compelling copies and visuals. Because media buying can affect your company’s bottom line, your ads need to be placed in the right locations and at the right times and frequencies so that the right audiences see your message.

5 Pro-Tips for Your Media Buying Process

An effective media buying plan helps you get the most out of your advertising, but to see the results you’re after, you need to go about it the right way.

Here are a few tips for maximizing your media buying strategy:

1. Identify Your Target Market

According to Marketing Evolution, $37b is wasted in ad spend each year from ads that fall short of engaging the target audience.

The takeaway?

Understanding your target market in any campaign you take on can make or break your media buys. This starts with knowing their age, gender, income, location, interests, and more — and putting all that data to good use.

Ensure that your ad buys are delivering a solid ROI and expand your market size by choosing who you want to deliver your ads to. By discovering potential prospects, you’ll be able to uncover practical ways of targeting select user pools to generate the most qualified leads.

2. Define Your Campaign Goals

Big or small, startup or seasoned — whatever your brand looks like, it can’t be without a campaign objective.

What are you hoping to achieve with your media buy? Are you a newer company trying to raise brand awareness? An established brand looking to remarket one of your products? Was there a dip in ROI last year that you’re trying to mend this time around?

When looking toward the media buying process, you need clearly established goals before planning the creative. Consider your intentions and how you want to measure success, including any relevant KPIs.

Media plans only work if you strategize toward distinct and well-defined goals.

3. Determine Where to Reach Your Audience

Today, 88% of U.S. households tune into at least one video streaming service, whether it’s to binge Prime Video or catch the next big game without paying for cable.

This is where doing the most to reach your audience becomes crucial.

To stand out in an increasingly saturated market, you need to ensure your ads appear on brand-safe inventory sources at relevant, accessible, and visible times.

How? By choosing media channels that will have the most significant impact on your target audience.

With an integrated media planning approach, you can focus on buying the right mix of media to maximize your investment, whether that looks like OTT/CTV and paid search, social, or whatever else may fit the bill.

4. Optimize in Real-Time

Media buying isn’t just a one-and-done success story. It’s an ongoing optimization process that involves four key tactics — learning, analyzing, testing, adjusting, and repeating — to make a real difference in your campaign’s performance.

Whether it’s adjusting frequency and bids to maximize performance or shifting spend toward top-performing devices, you should be optimizing your ads in real-time to ensure your programmatic campaign is set up with appropriate parameters throughout the flight.

By doing so, you’ll have greater control over the outcome of your ad buys and verify they’re doing what you intended them to do.

5. Partner With a Knowledgable Media Partner

Buying media ads may seem like an easy feat, but DIYing your purchases often ends up with a campaign that only half works. To maximize your efforts, it’s best to partner with a knowledgeable media buying partner.

Experienced media buying strategists help you get the best ad placements, deals on your buys, and more with a reservoir of technology, expertise, and best practices to inform your campaign.

When you work with a skilled and trustworthy buying partner, you can benefit from solid, already-established relationships with outlets and publishers to successfully place, buy, and reconcile your ad spend.

That way, you can achieve the best possible results by driving quality impressions at a lower cost — without the extra heavy lifting.

How Digital Remedy Can Help

At Digital Remedy, we execute our clients’ media as if it’s our own.

Leveraging over 23 years of industry experience, we strive to overachieve outcomes that maximize performance and efficiency for our clients by utilizing reporting data and testing various solutions.

With our digital media solutions, we seek success from uncommon data and solutions points that yield strong performance.

Benefits of Working With Digital Remedy

When you partner with Digital Remedy on your digital media planning and buying initiatives, you’ll gain:

  • specialized team of media buyers with extensive industry experience and expertise
  • Comprehensive tech solutions, campaign management, and knowledge of best practices to effectively deliver advertising objectives across channels
  • Impactful recommendations from optimization specialists while still having complete control and transparency over budgets, creatives, and campaign direction
  • Access to premium inventory at efficient prices, as well as various tools and software to facilitate campaign needs, measure valuable insights, and achieve desired goals

To learn more about how we can help you meet your digital ad buying goals, reach out to a member of our team to schedule a demo today.