Where does media fit in the marketing process?

There are many different steps to the marketing process, with different departments, tasks, and goals within each. Through the trials and tribulations of creating the most efficient and successful process, there is a big question that is up for debate:

When does media get involved in your campaign planning?

Recently, Flock facilitated a learning session at the 2016 Festival of Media which looked at where media fits in the marketing process. We asked the participants to map where media starts to become involved in the process, and the other sticker where they would prefer it to be.

The overall consensus? Most people said that media fell into the Insights and Brief steps, however they wanted it to be in the Prepare stage (where additional research is made, budgets and KPIs are planned and the customer journey is mapped) as they felt they have a lot of data, insight and value to add at this earlier stage.

So, how do you get media involved in the earlier steps to the process? We’ve got a few questions to ask yourself when getting ready to roll out your next campaign:

• Is your process clear, transparent, and fit for today’s world?
  • Is your process mobile-up, social-in, and always on?

• Are your roles and responsibilities clearly defined?
  • Is the entire team aligned on who is doing what?

•  Are your briefing templates ready to use?
  • Are these templates standardised and integrated?

• Do you have your markets grouped in the right ways?
  • Do you have the right campaigns for these market groups?

•  Is your data continually flowing through the process?
  • Is the data driving optimisation

•  What technology do you have to support the process?
  • Which parts of your technology stack is relevant to the process? Is the stack built under process, efficiency, and speed?

•  What budgets do you have, and how are they handled?
  • What budget is toward your Always-On strategy, your Campaign Activity, etc.?

•  When do you de-process – is there a time to do this?
  • How do you use the process framework for different types of campaigns?

By considering these questions, your media department will be in a good position to enter the campaign process earlier, which can lessen duplication, time and resource wasted, and create an efficiently developed process. For more information, or to discuss this further, please do contact us here