Better Options & Menus: Our Approach to Media Planning
Illustration by Matt Maguy
When it comes to marketing, picking an advertising medium is sort of like choosing where to eat. That is, there’s a multitude of questions you need to ask yourself to narrow down the choices. Digital or traditional platform? Sushi or steak? Eat in or take out? What’s your budget? Time constraint? Preference? There are dozens of variables to consider in your quest to find the perfect meal for this moment, one that fills your appetite and will sustain you.
Many people struggle with the same problem when choosing a media channel as when picking a place to eat. There are an overwhelming number of options, uncertainties, and opportunities. Choosing a media channel (or restaurant) becomes an exercise in paralysis by analysis. Just like basing a choice on how many dollar signs ($$, $$$, $$$$!) are in a Yelp review, brands can become more fixated on opportunity cost than on maximizing a channel's potential.
At JXM, we know the struggle of choosing the best advertising medium, just like we know the struggle of choosing the right restaurant.
“Our strategy of better media planning helps you avoid settling for “whatever’s most convenient” and instead choose a channel or combination thereof where your brand can feast.
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Break free from “the usual”
Too often, we go back to the same few restaurants time and time again. You’ve ordered from that place down the street a hundred times because it’s fast, convenient, affordable, and the food’s at least a notch above middling. The problem? It has diminishing returns. You’ve tried everything on the menu at this point, and you’re not even in the mood for the usual tonight. But you do it anyway because, hey, you’re hungry, and you know what to expect.
For many brands, this situation is all too familiar when choosing an advertising medium. They run another round of PPC ads or re-up their contract for a broad-distribution print ad because it’s what they’re used to. It’s easy and familiar. But that doesn’t mean it's cost-effective, let alone fulfilling the nutritional needs the brand craves to grow and thrive.
Instead of defaulting to the comfortable and routine, JXM helps brands take a media-agnostic approach to their marketing. No one says you need to deviate entirely from what’s familiar. Rather, we encourage brands to branch out and help them explore what’s effective.
What does your brand need for sustenance?
Choosing a media channel means understanding what your business is trying to accomplish and identifying the medium best suited to accomplish it. You (usually) can’t expect to go to a taco truck and order a slice of pizza, just like you can’t run radio ads and expect a bump in click-through rates.
It’s all about context. What do you need? How can you achieve it? Through a close analysis of primary and secondary KPIs and other key information unique to your brand like:
Campaign Goals
Creative Messaging
Target Audience/Personas
Geography/Market
Competitive Analysis
Timeline
“The JXM team develops media strategies and creative based on each client’s needs and objectives. That means getting to know your appetite for advertising, understanding your business goals, and choosing the most relevant and effective media channels to achieve them. ”
Even beyond channel selection, research in the development stage allows our team to zero in on target audiences and the ideal mediums, times, and places to reach them.
Consider it like sitting at a chef’s table at a fine dining restaurant, where everything on the menu is based on your dietary needs and made from scratch by a master chef.
A curated media menu fit for your brand
When brands work with partners who carefully consider their goals and objectives, they’ll find that a curated, customized marketing approach can be revolutionary. Once you understand the secret recipe, the combination of art and science that goes into creating the perfect strategy, why would you settle for “the usual,” same-old approach to advertising?
Don’t settle. Try something different. Instead, think of a well-cultivated media strategy as a thoughtfully curated menu and put your trust in JXM—chefs who take the time to get to know your brand’s position before they even begin to plan the meal.
When you dine with us, we’ll guide you on a journey to discover new media opportunities while keeping a few familiar strategies that you know and appreciate. We’ll even assemble a few new takes on "classics" that excite you. No matter what, it’s a great experience that’s satisfying from start to finish.
Get comfortable sampling new strategies
When you branch out and try new things, you become more comfortable with the concept of an agnostic advertising strategy. Instead of gravitating to what you know and what’s comfortable, you’ll have the confidence to develop a robust media strategy that explores new opportunities and embraces new flavors.
A performance-optimized media plan
One of JXM’s core beliefs is adapting, improving, and optimizing media based on performance. If your go-to media channel isn’t delivering the returns you’ve come to expect, it might be time to explore a different one or, at the very least, tweak the approach. It doesn’t need to be a drastic change, but it needs to be meaningful. It starts by recognizing what works for you and using that information as a jumping-off point to confidently explore beyond the familiar.
Just like your culinary tastes evolve and expand, so too can your approach to media. Media should be fluid. It’s an evolution in which channels, targeting tactics, and budgets adjust to achieve goals rather than stay fixed on a set plan. The magic happens once a campaign goes live, and we're able to closely monitor channel/tactic metrics to improve or enhance the performance regularly through a multifaceted campaign report auditing process.
Let us order for you
When you’re not sure what you’re in the mood for, you can find yourself settling for anything. We encourage brands to ask themselves what they really need out of an advertising campaign. Then, we offer them a menu of options carefully selected by our experts.
Afraid to try something new? Let JXM be your guide to the wide world of a la carte media. We have a passion for media strategy, and that means a smorgasbord of opportunities for the brands we work with. Contact us today and let’s talk turkey.
