More often than not, new admans will set up their own ad buys and handle the media buying themselves. While this power be a marvelous educational experience, it is normally a big mistake, costing the company time, money and marketing results. Even if your company has experience in buying media, it would be wise consider the following eight reasons for working with a professional media buying services agency.
1. It Costs Nothing
When you use a media buying services agency to buy your company's radio and television advertising, the agency is paid through an agency-only discount provided by the station. For example, let's say you want to buy an ad spot that costs $1000. If you work directly with the media station gross revenue rep, that spot costs $1000. If you work with a media buying agency, that spot still costs $1000. Why? Because television Stations of the Cross give the media purchaser a discount (normally 15%). This discount is not available to your company; only an established media buying agency is eligible to receive it. Your company pays the exact same amount, and your media buying services agency does the work, paid for by the station.
In our example, it power seem like overkill to introduce a purchaser into the mix. If you were buying a limited keep going a single station, you could probably eff yourself. On the other hand, longer runs or ads running on more than one station are much more complex. As a matter of fact, as you read on, you will find that not only does exploitation a media purchaser not cost anything, it actually stretches your ad budget to help you get much more for your advertising dollar.
2. Negotiation "Clout"
Media buying services agencies often have quite little of buying influence - in both local and national markets. Professional media buying agencies place advertising for several clients, giving them a total spend much bigger than a single company power bring back the table. As you power guess, this level of disbursal gives them some real advantages when negotiating contracts. Your advertising agenda will benefit with lower prices per spot and better timeslots.
3. Negotiation Know-How
Professional media purchasers will tell you that negotiating media buys is often more art than science. A really good purchaser truly understands the Stations of the Cross being bought, knows how to reach a compromise that helps your company also as the station and understands the tricks and traps that could cause problems with the buy.
Here's an example: For one reason or other, television Stations of the Cross often "bump" musca volitans (remove them from the agenda). If your negotiated price is below a certain threshold, your musca volitans have a high likelihood of being bumped instead of other adman who is paying higher. The professional media purchaser understands this and knows how to prevent this problem.
4. Tracking & "Make-Good" Ads
When you buy television advertising, your cost is supported the station's promise that a certain number of people will see your spot. What happens if they don't? Let's say they promise a million TV audience but only half that number tune in (something that happens quite often). What then? Think the station will track you down and let you know it happened, then offer some way to make up for it? Not likely.
A professional media purchaser tracks the ratings for your advertising to make a point you get everything that you paid for. In the case above, your media purchaser will request "make goods," basically free musca volitans to make up for the ratings difference. This is huge benefit that will save your budget spell also increasing delivery of your message. (For example, in 2008, we caterpillar-tracked a more than 20% under-delivery in one of our markets, saving our clients hundreds of thousands of dollars.)
5. No More Sales Hassles
Your media buying services agency becomes the point of contact for all media reps - those working with your company and those who want to. You're ne'er stuck on the phone discussing "special advertising prices" or "one-day deals" again.
For one of our clients, this was by far his top benefit - even more than the money he saves, he enjoys the power to tell media reps that he has a media agency and they should call us instead of him.
6. No More Accounting Hassles
No matter how hard you plan, television advertising charge fluctuates and is sometimes incorrect. This ascribable programming changes, programing adjustments and many other reasons. Within a media buying services company, you have an accountant that is accustomed to working with television Stations of the Cross to make a point that budgets are kept. This helps you avoid surprises in charge, and it gives you piece of mind that your invoices are correct.
7. More Time In Your Day
If you take away all of the accounting hassles, calls from gross revenue reps, research into shows and networks, and all of the other miscellaneous work that goes into good media buying, then you can save lots of time. If you've worked with a media buying services agency, you know that working with one contact and company saves tons of time over placing on fourfold media outlets.
8. Big-Picture Strategy
One of the biggest benefits of working with a media purchaser is that they can often see the big picture in a way that the individual gross revenue reps cannot. Your professional media purchaser knows your target customers also as all of your placements and all of your marketing goals. Instead of ordering media supported a station's open inventory (what TV Stations of the Cross call their commercial slots), a professional buy is supported acquiring you what you need at best prices available.
