TXC Philosophy: Lead with Strategy. Elevate Through Design. Implement Through Technical Expertise.
A marketing plan is only as strong as the strategy behind it and ensures that there is a clear direction for creative design and all of the tactical efforts that are to follow.
Our COO, Jamie Allen, recently made a speech at our Christmas party and one of her high points focused on how Texas Creative has evolved from a tactical agency into a strategic marketing agency over the past several years. "It has been rewarding to see that from creative, to media, to web development, and all departments in our company, have a process in which they lead with strategy," she said. And I couldn’t agree more.
I joined the Texas Creative team as the Media Director about 18 months ago, and from new business pitches to annual client planning, our team works together to pitch and deliver strong strategic marketing plans for current and potential new clients.
But why is this important? Specifically for media, having a strategy in place helps navigate through the vast world of media options (broadcast, outdoor, digital, etc.) and ensures that the media tactics selected will best meet your marketing goals. Based on my experience, below are a few things to consider in developing a media strategy.
- Establish the Basics: A few of the basic elements include knowing what your media objectives and goals are, who your target audience is, and what your budget is. These answers may already be pre-established, but media research tools can also be helpful for building audience profiles or competitive analysis for budgeting purposes.
- Teamwork: Collaborate with other departments and work together to maximize your impact. Try to avoid working in silos of media vs. creative. Your media strategy can be much stronger when you have an understanding of the creative approach and how other efforts like PR and owned tactics will be executed.
- Think Long-Term: For my team, planning annually vs. monthly or quarterly has helped us deliver more strategic media plans for our clients. We are able to consider key flighting and seasonality and how the media objectives may need to shift or evolve throughout the campaign. For social and digital, we have seen that planning for a longer time period gives the campaigns time to gain momentum and allows for on-going optimizations to drive more effective results.
- Measurability and ROI: A strong media strategy is not only built based on marketing goals, but also how the success of those goals will be measured. From increasing awareness to driving conversions, there are various KPIs that can be set to help measure the impact of your campaign. For digital media, working together with your web team to help implement tracking pixels and setting up Google Analytics goals are a few powerful tools to help track and report on key metrics. Furthermore, implementing an integrated digital marketing platform, like Tapclicks, has helped our team aggregate and report across multiple platforms.
It's the start of a new year and now is the perfect time to shift your marketing efforts to be more strategic vs. tactical. While these are just a few tips to consider for media planning, our strategy team at Texas Creative has an in-depth process to ensure that your overall marketing campaigns have a purpose and are designed to meet your marketing objectives. Contact us today or see some of our work that showcases how Texas Creative has successfully executed campaigns for current and past clients.