Making Media Matter: A Return to Media Planning’s Most Critical Questions
As of this writing, U.S. households will have an average of 4 television streaming services, engage with 8 social media accounts, and be exposed to more than 4,000 marketing messages — all while our beloved TikTok faces stiff regulations. Google has rolled out infinite search scrolling, and advertisers will continue to increase their digital ad budgets as we roll into 2023.
Media’s changing landscape has had resounding effects on marketing effectiveness and our ability to maintain and build relationships with our audiences. While it’s obvious we are no longer in the heyday of cable, media choices and habits have never been more dynamic. Media’s continued fragmentation and our persistent battle for attention across devices make planning much more complex.
But, it’s the complexity that turns this chaos into an exciting endeavor — one that is a must for marketing’s supportive role in institutional and brand growth. Higher ed marketers must return to the fundamentals and re-examine media’s critical role in brand strategy to get there. Because if we care as much as we do about our “product” (the brand experiences), then we must care about media, too. Let’s explore how we get there.
Media’s Impact on Brand Strategy
As I’ve argued before, higher education marketers must focus on two critical factors to combat a disconnected customer journey: the media’s continued fragmentation and the division of customer attention. Higher ed marketers must develop plans that connect the various “bits” into alignment and add value by selecting the right message, moment, and media to reinforce the brand. Let’s look at what underpins the ever-evolving landscape to understand how media can support brand strategy.
Media’s Evolving Landscape
Managing Media Fragmentation
More than ever, effective media planning has become crucial to supporting growing brands as media fragmentation dominates our landscape. This has four primary effects:
- It’s becoming harder to reach audiences
- It’s harder to gain incremental reach
- Platform costs are continuing to increase
- Multichannel campaigns are essential (increasing spending, asset cost, and overall ad management)
To manage these effects, higher ed CMOS should consider media as part of the overall marketing plan to support key brand and marketing objectives.
Reclaiming Attention
More channels, more ad inventory, and more competing content come with a decline in attention. Not only has fragmentation caused our messaging to become scattered across an array of marketing activities, but our ability to communicate a consistent message has also diminished and reduced impact. According to Lumen, only 9 percent of digital ads are looked at for more than a second. Understanding context and relevance is critical.
To manage the impact of attention across media, higher ed marketers must understand how much attention a channel can generate and how to leverage specific media environments. As former Harvard Business School professor Thales Teixeira wrote, “Marketers can best start their media buying strategy by understanding the attention potential of each media and context.”
Making Media Matter
For some time now, marketers have lost sight of the long view. Instead of focusing on how advertising has led to business outcomes, we’ve grown concerned with its short-term impact — often in a limited, channel-specific view.
Suppose our audience is exposed to thousands of marketing messages a day. Wouldn’t it better serve our brands to step away from the spreadsheets and return to the fundamentals of media planning — asking the routine questions when media was more monolithic?
To navigate this evolving landscape, marketing teams should be asking:
- Why should our audience notice our communications?
- How does our plan help to build relationships with our audiences?
- How can we gain a competitive advantage with our media choices?
- How do these choices support our brand position?
As cookies continue to decline, context is quickly returning to the conversation. Where and how an ad shows up can enhance the effectiveness of our advertising efforts. Yet, the more we rely on a limited perspective during these times of change, the less we can view our communications and the context they show up holistically. Essentially, we are building relationships with platforms and not focusing enough on people.
By asking the above questions, higher ed marketers are better positioned to find smarter media solutions and, more importantly, understand how media will add value to their brand.
