Where To Focus Your Media Budget in The New Financial Year

It’s exciting and exhilarating to start planning and preparing for the new financial year.  It’s where you go over all your previous efforts, celebrate your victories and discover what went wrong in order to fix it. 

 

What about media planning? Choosing the right platforms can prove to be challenging. Especially when trying to figure out WHERE to focus your media budget.

 

Hootsuite reported that 98% of Australian internet users aged 16-64 still use a conventional search engine, over 1 in 3 users turned to social media to gather information about brands they were considering.

 

 

TV vs. Online – a debate as old as the internet.

 

Since the day social media took over the internet, we’ve seen studies and analytics trying to figure out the human behavior and time spent on these outlets. And the COVID-19 pandemic affected these studies tremendously, as we’ve seen a huge rise in online usage whether for shopping or entertainment.

 

In fact, “With travel and mobility curtailed, 75% of Australians went online to do their shopping, creating a large spike in a wide range of markets; and over two-thirds of 55–64-year-olds regularly went online for their purchases,” according to Hootsuite. 

 

That does not deny the fact that TV still plays a huge part in our daily lives. But staying at home only boosted the time spent watching TV by 15 minutes.

 

How to figure out your media budget for the upcoming financial year? 

 

Between traditional media and social media, you must be wondering what media is best for your message and your business? Let’s go through your options. 

 

The most important questions to ask. 

 

Successful media budgeting depends on how well you understand your business.

●       Who is your target audience?

●       What are your objectives?

●       What is the go-to-market consideration?

 

If your target audience is young and glued to their phones, it will prove ineffective to use traditional media to reach out.  

 

Let’s break it down… 

Social Media

Social media is highly effective when it comes to targeting as it allows us to edit and change criteria depending on our message, target audience, and objective. It’s one of the easiest platforms to set up targeted ads, by choosing location, lifestyle, age… 

 

The added bonus of Social Media

One of the most efficient benefits of social media targeted advertising is “targeting by interest.” For example, have you ever tried searching for a new phone and then got bombarded with ads for different phones in the market? 

 

Another benefit of social media targeting is the opportunity to interact with your audience directly and receive feedback. 

 

But beware that the most important part of social media advertising is creating relevant and relatable content to connect with the audience. 

 

GDR is all about content marketing and storytelling, which will help boost your social media presence using great content, purposeful imagery, and adequately targeted ads.

 

With storytelling in our DNA, GDR Media Group understands the value of seeing your next marketing campaign from beginning to end.

 

This involves creating a Media Strategy and a Media Plan before taking care of your Media Buying to ensure all areas of your campaign are covered.

 

Traditional Media

Traditional Media can also be targeted.

 

Businesses spend the better part of their marketing budget to find the “ideal customer,” and then avoid using traditional media like TV, Radio, and Print to reach their target audience, because we usually consider it to be broad marketing.

 

But if your target spends a lot of time in their car listening to the radio or usually skips ads on social media because of their busy schedule. Then, traditional media should be your go-to.

 

One study suggests that over three-quarters (78%) of those who hear a radio ad targeted to them took some form of digital activity within 24 hours (Source: Radio Alive).

 

That does not mean compromising on targeting! 

 

Traditional media is the grandfather of audience targeting, we simply must choose the right programming to advertise using the correct message.

GDR will help you in developing engaging, impactful, and memorable campaigns that demand attention from your customer.

 

Remember! The most important thing to do when preparing your media budget is to set realistic goals, track your goals, and invest in areas that help you reach those goals.

 

For more information on what be right tools for your budget and target, get in touch with our team.