Media strategy
Media strategy and planning services
A media plan answers five questions: where to advertise, how much to spend, when, how to tell if it worked, and when to stop. Most plans answer the first two. We write down the other three before any money goes out.
How we build a media plan
Start from the target
Revenue or bookings per month, the average value of a customer, and how many leads your team can actually handle. A plan that sends more leads than the phones can answer wastes the surplus.
Work back through the funnel
From bookings to qualified leads to leads, using your own conversion rates from the CRM, or cautious estimates when there is no history yet.
Give each channel a role
Search captures demand, social and video create it, retargeting follows up. The paid media overview explains how they fit.
Set budgets and timing
Enough per channel for its bidding to learn, phased with the seasons that move your market: Ramadan, the summer, the return to school, year-end.
Write the test plan
What each new channel must achieve, and by when, before it gets more budget.
Plan on the numbers in your CRM
Platform reports overlap and flatter themselves. A plan built on them over-funds whichever platform claims the most. We plan on CRM figures instead: cost per qualified lead and per booking by source, from revenue attribution.
Those figures also go back into the platforms. Once qualified leads and bookings flow to Meta through the Conversions API and to Google as offline conversions, each platform’s bidding aims at the same outcome the plan is judged on. Planning and buying then pull in one direction.
For larger budgets spread across many channels, marketing mix modeling estimates what each channel contributes, including the ones that rarely get a click, such as TV and display.
What a media plan contains
| Part of the plan | The question it answers |
|---|---|
| Target and funnel | How many leads and bookings do we need, and what can we afford to pay for each? |
| Channel mix | Which channels, and what job does each one do? |
| Budget and phasing | How much per channel per month, and when to push or pull back? |
| Audiences and messages | Who sees what, in which language, at which stage? |
| Measurement | Which number judges each channel, and where does it come from? |
| Test and stop rules | What must a new channel prove, and by when? |
How we review the plan each month
Blended cost per booking
All paid channels together, from the CRM.
Marginal cost by channel
What the latest increase in spend actually bought.
Pacing
Spend against plan, by channel and by month.
Test results
Each running test against its target and its end date.
Frequently asked questions
How often should a media plan change?
Budgets move monthly within the plan. The plan itself is reviewed each quarter, or sooner when the business changes: a new service, a new city, a price change.
Do we need a media plan for a small budget?
Yes, a short one. With a small budget, the main decision is what not to fund, so the money stays concentrated where it can teach the platforms something.
How do you set a budget when we have no history?
From search volumes, platform reach estimates and cautious conversion assumptions, then corrected after the first month of real data. The marketing budget calculator shows the logic.
What is the difference between media planning and media buying?
Planning decides where, when and how much. Buying sets up and runs the campaigns. We do both, so the plan and the campaigns are judged on the same CRM numbers.
Should the plan target cost per lead?
Cost per lead is a first reading. Cost per qualified lead and cost per booking are what the plan should be held to. We explain why in cost per lead is the wrong number.
Last updated · By the Napexy team
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