Media Buying
Securing a knowledgeable, experienced media buyer is vital to the success of your organization’s paid advertising. Whether you’re purchasing traditional media or digital advertising, effective media buying can produce maximum exposure in your target markets for the least amount of ad spend.
Our media buyer:
- Connects with sales teams and account executives.
- Locates available media placements.
- Negotiates pricing and timing.
- Monitors and optimizes campaigns to ensure meaningful results.
We form good relationships with advertising sales agents to obtain the best prices and values for advertisement placements, campaigns, or even media bundles.
Our media buyer will choose the best possible venue or medium for an advertising campaigns using market research information, such as:
- Demographics
- Media Usage
- Ratings
- The Type of Content in a Given Vehicle
We also monitor the purchased media to make sure the advertisements appear as planned, and we bill clients, at an agreed upon schedule, to settle accounts with the various media vendors.
How Do We Develop Your Media Plan?
- Identify your target audiences.
- Collect information about the kinds of audiences that can be reached by the different media types and the approximate size of those audiences.
- Determine how to best communicate your messaging.
- Find a combination of media that will enable the client to communicate their message.
- Aim to reach the highest number of people with the lowest-priced advertising possible.
- Coordinate the launch of your media campaigns with important departments.
- Determine when advertising campaigns should run.
What Does a Media Buyer Do?
- Build relationships with media sales companies.
- Negotiate rates with media sales companies to obtain most competitive prices.
- Buy advertising space in magazines or newspapers or time on radio and television.
- Use a combination media types to reach different audiences.
- Monitor buying strategies.
- Monitor and optimize effectiveness of campaigns.
- Keep abreast of industry figures, including distribution and audience figures.
“It pays to plan carefully. Plan first, then buy. A skilled media buyer can save enormous sums by playing one media owner off against another. After all, there are many different media routes (or media vehicles) to the minds of the target audience.” - Paul Russell Smith & Jonathan Taylor. Marketing Communications: An Integrated Approach.
Specialty Expertise Needed
If your organization’s marketing goals are extensive, hiring an experienced media buyer can ensure you adhere to all legal and ethical boundaries within your media buy.
For example, the HIPAA Privacy Rule limits how a person’s protected health information can be used and/or disclosed when used for marketing purposes. With limited exceptions, the Rule requires an individual’s written authorization before the use or disclosure of his/her protected health information. So as not to interfere with core health care functions, the Rule distinguishes marketing communications from those communications about goods and services that are essential for quality health care.
How the Rule Works
The Privacy Rule addresses the use and disclosure of protected health information for marketing purposes by:
- Defining what is “marketing” under the Rule;
- Excepting from that definition certain treatment or health care operations activities;
- Requiring individual authorization for all uses or disclosures of protected health information for marketing purposes with limited exceptions.
Learn more about what marketing is regulated by HIPAA and what advertising health-related entities can do.