Why Media Planning?
Media planning in HR marketing is about an employer's self-promotion. In HR, it is defined as the cost-benefit planning of all advertising materials used to promote an open position. The aim is to use a predefined budget so that you reach your predefined target group as effectively as possible (keyword: reach).
A few years ago, running recruitment campaigns in HR marketing was simpler: you placed a job ad in several online and offline mass media outlets and benefited from broad reach. A large number of applications followed, and the open position could be filled quickly and easily. Today, however, things look different, because the media landscape has expanded significantly: several thousand job boards compete for companies' attention and budgets, and for job seekers.
To avoid wasting time and budget, employers should think carefully about how best to reach suitable candidates for each applicant group. Which channels do potential candidates use, and how should they be addressed there? The media plan documents the results of these considerations. It therefore essentially consists of:
- a planning component that decides on the individual channels to be filled with content tailored to the target group.
- a cost component that describes how much the individual measures cost and how the available budget is allocated.
- a time component that specifies how long the channels will be used and how long the entire campaign will run.
The Goal of Media Planning
The goal of a media plan is to reach many people in the target group on the right channels with a tailored message while using the budget optimally. In other words: the goal of media planning is to maximize a campaign's efficiency. What matters is, on the one hand, that the selected channels complement each other sensibly and, on the other, that a consistent message is communicated across all of them. Ultimately, a media plan contributes significantly to achieving your goals and thus determines a campaign's success.
Before Media Planning
The media plan itself is only one part of campaign planning. It is preceded by three important tasks:
- Before you create a media plan, you first need to know what you want to achieve. The first step is a goal definition of your own. Determine which goals you want to achieve to improve your current situation. This also makes your campaign measurable.
- Next, you should use a situation analysis to assess where your company currently stands. This helps you identify potential for improvement. In many cases, a company's employer brand is weak or simply nonexistent. It is also possible that too few or the wrong channels are being used with the wrong content, to name just a few examples.
- Now only one step remains before you can begin the actual media planning. Create a target group definition and set targeting filter criteria. It is important that the target group(s) are defined based on the position(s) to be filled. For example, the applicant profile for an open management position differs greatly from that of an internship.
The Individual Steps of Media Planning
Once these preliminary tasks are done, you can start working out the actual media plan. The first thing to clarify is how much budget you have available and what you want to communicate. Be sure to plan your campaign early, as the following steps take a lot of time.
1. Target Group Analysis
Since you have already defined your target group(s), you now need to analyze them. Find out who you are dealing with. The characteristics typically examined in this context are
- demographic (age, gender, place of residence, marital status, etc.),
- socioeconomic (education level, occupation, salary, etc.) and
- psychographic (values, motivations, opinions, etc.) characteristics.
This gives you all the key information about the people themselves, but also reveals your target group's interests and attitudes. You also gain insight into their media usage behavior and therefore know which media the target group uses.
2. Media Conception
With these insights, you can now identify the channels (e.g., social networks and job boards) where your potential candidates spend their time. This is also known as intermedia selection. Topics such as SEA (search engine advertising), social media advertising (online advertising on social networks) and mobile advertising (advertising on mobile devices) are also considered here, provided these channels are relevant to your target group.
Make an initial selection and make sure the channels are combined sensibly. Another important aspect of intermedia selection is that the channels must be suited to achieving the goals defined beforehand: the benefit of the advertising medium should be relatively high at the lowest possible cost. During intermedia selection, you therefore get a first impression of the expected costs. The campaign period is also determined in this step, so that there is a concrete start and end date.
3. Campaign Development
These initial planning results are refined and developed further into a detailed plan. It records the media already selected and defines the chosen advertising formats relevant to your target group (e.g., online banners and ads). This selection is also referred to as intramedia selection (choosing formats within a medium). In this phase, a media schedule is also created. It provides information on the planned time periods and the number or frequency of placements for each advertising format. From this, you can in turn derive the costs and allocate your budget across the channels accordingly. Here, too, the focus should be on an optimal cost-benefit ratio.
4. Campaign Management
The actual media planning process is now complete. In campaign management, the plan is put into action: the campaign launches and must be kept on track, and monitoring helps you do this. Monitoring refers to tracking and measuring ongoing processes with technical tools and tracking systems such as Google Analytics. If inconsistencies or problems arise, you need to identify the cause(s) and make optimizations or take appropriate countermeasures. The campaign may need to be realigned or replanned to achieve its goals.
5. Performance Review
In this phase, the key figures from the starting situation are compared with those after the advertising measure or campaign. If the goals have been clearly defined and made measurable, the performance review shows how successful the campaign was and whether the goals were achieved. Either way, this final phase is all about gaining insights. These make it possible to learn from any mistakes for the future. Perhaps the campaign was a success, in which case certain measures should be repeated in upcoming campaigns.
Conclusion
Media planning contributes significantly to a campaign's success by using the media plan to record all costs and benefits of the respective advertising formats. This in turn enables optimal use of the budget. Ongoing reviews measure all processes and measures and make them scalable at the same time. This allows you to take appropriate countermeasures when performance falls short. As a result, media planning makes it possible to design a campaign for maximum efficiency.