A Comprehensive Guide to Why You Should Hire a Media Buyer for Media Buying
You can save money and improve advertising results by hiring a media buyer to manage your marketing spend. Hiring Media Shark to manage your media buying will help you drive your costs down and target your exact online audience!
As technological marvels continue to develop in marketing, new roles are emerging. Media buying is one of those roles. Today, the media buyer job is one of the most sought-after career paths.
For many years, marketing agencies have relied on media buyers to find placements for ads. They would find ways to deploy TV campaigns on the right channels to drive sales or help companies boost their presence in newspapers and magazines.
Now, however, media buyers also support the development and deployment of campaigns across relatively new marketing channels such as social media and online video.
To learn why you should hire a media buyer, keep reading.
What Is a Media Buyer?
In the beginning, a media buyer may help you identify your target audience. Before they place the first ad, they’ll know what kind of consumers buy your goods.
Comprehensive knowledge of buyer personas helps media buyers understand what marketing channels will provide optimal results. This knowledge also informs media buyers as to how to promote your marketing campaigns.
A media buyer will also evaluate your competitors. They might begin by learning how your competition reaches their buyers.
It’s no secret that the free enterprise marketplace is fiercely competitive. Accordingly, you must make your brand stand out from the crowd. A media buyer will also evaluate what you can do to set yourself apart from your competitors.
Also, a media buyer will help you develop and conform to a realistic marketing budget. They understand how to establish promotional goals to help you reach your target audience.
Media buyers help you to keep your marketing campaigns on budget – without sacrificing content quality. They can also forecast the success of various marketing strategies.
A media buyer will also help you analyze the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. They’ll help you justify your advertising spend.
Media buyers use their creativity and insight to help make your marketing campaigns a success. Every organization has its definition of success. However, increased revenue means success for every enterprise.
A media buyer can help you to meet that goal.
What Is the Role of a Media Buyer?
The title media buyer sounds simple enough. It may make you wonder, “What does a media buyer do?”
A media buyer’s job is to place ads and negotiate the prices for your advertisements across digital, print, television, and radio mediums. They will also help you place ads on relevant websites.
Your media buyer will manage your entire advertising inventory. For instance, they will make sure that consumers view your ads on the right days at the right time.
They’ll also make sure that you purchase banner space that is the right size or video slots that are the right length. All the while, they’ll make sure that your marketing campaigns don’t go over budget.
Negotiation is a critical part of making sure that you acquire the advertising space that you need without overspending. Media buyers learn how to negotiate the best rates for your ads over time. If you’re a new client, however, it takes some doing to establish history as a benchmark for securing the best rates for your brand.
A media buyer will also help you develop a comprehensive media plan. Your budget is a part of that plan.
Your media plan will include detailed information about advertisement placement and prices, as well as your brand objectives. It will also include a detailed final budget.
Why You Should Hire a Media Buyer
Buying advertisements and building relationships with media representatives is an integral part of establishing pricing for your ad placements. A media buyer’s ability to build professional relationships directly contributes to their ability to negotiate the best prices for your ads.
In the beginning, a media buyer might start a new relationship with a publisher by getting to know the representative. They’d then go on to familiarize themselves with the publisher’s inventory prices. For example, they may ask for pricing for programmatic advertising or ads of varying sizes.
Building rapport is one of the most important parts of working with publishers. The media buyer vertical is a small space. Resultantly, advertising buyers and publishers tend to know each other well.
Media Buyers Bring More to the Table
Unless your brand is a multimillion-dollar corporation, you most likely don’t have significant media buying power. Media buyers bring buying power to your shop. Buying power enables you to access better ad placements with more efficiency.
Media buying is complex. A professional media buyer knows how to plan and negotiate deals. They’re also familiar with proven strategies that will help you optimize your marketing campaigns.
A media buyer typically works for a marketing agency. A digital marketing agency can help you save a great deal of investment.
They’ll help you get your marketing strategy right from the beginning. This benefit will help you realize considerable savings compared to learning how to promote your brand using trial and error.
Marketing agencies have well-established relationships with different media outlets. They spend considerable time negotiating deals.
This experience enables agencies to understand how the market works, even in the face of continual change. They have a greater understanding of how and why rates fluctuate and can use that knowledge to help you optimize your marketing spend.
Media buyers do a part of the job that most people don’t want to do. During a typical workday, a lot of small tasks can add up to a significant workload. For instance, a media buyer might:
- Conduct publisher outreach
- Execute media buys
- Measure campaign effectiveness
- Merge data from multiple platforms
- Negotiate future media buys
- Post ratings
- Reconcile invoices
- Search for new advertising opportunities
These examples are a small taste of some of the to-dos in the day of a media buyer. However, each task is vital.
As you probably already know, there’s never enough time in the day. Imagine managing all these tasks and also running your business.
Is Your Organization Ready to Recruit a Media Buyer?
Brands have many reasons for recruiting a media buyer. Some struggle to find advertising that helps them to meet their objectives.
Others have trouble weighing the benefits of various platforms, such as social media, banner network, and mobile advertising. It’s true that it’s a digital world. Yet, traditional platforms such as newspaper, radio, TV, and billboard advertising still hold merit.
Media buyers understand how to measure the success of a marketing channel that’s not tied to the internet. They also know what media channels work best for your kind of business. A media buyer will also help you learn important details about your ideal consumer, such as their age, gender, and household income.
A media buyer also knows if you’re getting the best deal for your investment. Because they’re familiar with the market, they can prevent you from overpaying for ad space.
More importantly, however, they know how to measure how many people view your ads. With this information, they can access how much it costs you to reach each person.
Customers need to see your advertisements more than once. A media buyer will help you track the performance of your marketing campaigns over time. They know if customers have seen your ads enough times for it to have the desired impact.
Building rapport with publishers also takes time. It’s a media buyer’s job to listen to what reps have to say and evaluate what represents the best interest of your brand.
Media buyers manage a lot of moving parts. They take the responsibility of managing all those moving parts from your hands.
Leveling Up: How a Media Buyer Optimizes Your Buying Process
In the marketing arena, experience is a priceless commodity. Your company needs partners who can help you to move your brand forward.
You need consumers to do more than view your advertisements; you need them to take the desired action. You need your phone to ring, and you need your website to receive hits. Most importantly, however, you need to generate revenue.
A media buyer has the experience to make these things happen. They know how to make smart decisions in the marketing space.
They can help you track return-on-investment and minimize wasted spending. A media buyer can also help your brand pivot with changes in consumer trends.
Media buyers invest in the tools that they need to do their job. They know the inside language that enables them to communicate effectively with their peers.
More importantly, they save you time and free you to focus on the core competency of your enterprise. By eliminating the need for you to perform tasks such as meeting with sales reps and auditing invoices, media buyers enable you to focus on what you do best.
A media buyer’s strongest skill is the ability to negotiate. They couple that skill with the ability to make the intricate moves needed to execute a marketing strategy successfully.
For example, a media buyer can help you make sure to pair the right creative with the right demographic. This kind of sophisticated decision-making is invaluable, as you most likely make a considerable investment in any ad that you create.
It takes a special kind of person to work as a media buyer. They are committed to their field and continual learning. However, you also need a special kind of marketing agency for your brand.
Finding the Right Media Buyer and Marketing Agency for the Job
Now you know the answer to “What do media buyers do?” and what they can do for your brand.
Media buyers work for media agencies. If you want to access a media buyer, you need to find a marketing agency. When searching for a marketing agency to manage your advertisements, however, you must do so carefully.
A marketing agency will represent the face of your brand. Accordingly, you must find an agency that you can trust.
With the emergence of the internet, the number of online marketing agencies has exploded. Unfortunately, this makes it hard to find one that you can count on.
The digital domain has opened up a wealth of opportunities. There are plenty of fly-by-night operations looking for their piece of the pie. The wrong marketing agency can drain your budget in an instant while yielding little results.
When looking for a marketing agency, make sure that you find a firm that will take the time to understand your needs. A competent marketing firm can help you understand what you need in terms of advertising, search engine optimization, graphic design, and other vital facets of your brand image.
The right marketing agency will also take the time to learn and understand your budget. You want a marketing agency that works to meet your goals, rather than run up your bill.
Also, look for an agency that doesn’t have anything to hide. For example, if you visit a marketing agency website and you can’t find basic information such as an address, don’t waste your time. A skilled marketing agency delivers full transparency.
Let Us Manage Your Media Buying, So That You Can Manage Your Business
At Media Shark, we’re dedicated to your success. We’ll take the time to learn about your media buying needs intimately. Our skilled marketing professionals will pair that information with industry best practices to make sure that your brand reaches its goals.
Media Shark can help you develop a successful, sustainable marketing strategy. We can help you figure out what it takes to scale your digital marketing campaign for revenue growth. Contact us today for a free marketing strategy session.
