Sexy Looks Like This for a Regional Company’s Media Plan

When it comes to strategically placing media buys, the media portion is just as important as the creative.

TV, cable, radio, magazines, billboards, transit, videos, digital ads, emails, boosted social post, influencer and podcasting messaging…the list goes on and on with the different ways a company can get audiences to notice them. But do the delivery vessels really matter based on the size of your business? Absolutely!

For local companies in a single market, depending on the product or service, it might be as simple as contacting a local billboard company or reaching out to a coupon clipper or posting a message on the “town” social page. All done in a simplistic but still targeted manner.

A national company’s advertising isn’t as simple. Since their product or service is offered to all markets, they need to ensure they reach the masses and still drill down to smaller isolated demo audiences. Typically, they use corporate outlets to distribute their messages. There are some similarities but more differences between the two groups.

However, if you are a regional company, with the need to reach multiple but not all markets, deciding what is your best media strategy can be a dauting task! You need to highlight your brand, market by market but placing media buys in individual markets can be exhausting and difficult. And, you just don’t have the budget to justify wasting money by using national media means. Unless your company footprint covers most of the national footprint It would be to costly and wasteful to buy that way.

The best option for a company of this size is to find a media agency with experience in market by market strategies and outlet contacts that focuses specifically on the success of regional businesses. With thousands of agencies, both large and small available, most claim to be full service, or offer media buying services in addition to their creative division.

The key to your success is to find out where their specialty really lies and utilize them for that purpose solely. Not much different that having a list of medical doctors. You may go to your family doc for a physical, but you go to specialists when in need of specific services.

While it may seem obvious to do this it’s also more work and I can’t tell you how many clients have told me, that they wished they’d have known the importance of using multiple agencies instead of hiring one full-service agency.

Their intentions were good when they picked a company that had great creative and could handle the media placement as well, but what often happens is their media department is an add-on to their creative agency not their specialty. So, their creative is first class but their media capabilities lack the true expertise to prove successful.

I get it! While the creative stuff is the sexy, fun portion, many look at the media as just a necessary evil to deliver the message. But it’s not. Take the best creative and place it incorrectly and it will drastically reduce the effectiveness of the creative and completely miss the mark!

If the creative is the painting, then remember the media is the matting and the frame! And media can be down-right sexy and critical to a regional company’s success!