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In this video we’ll show you how to Create a Media Plan for your Campaigns using Bionic.
Creating a media plan is a complicated process. Without the right system, it’s hard to avoid making mistakes and wasting a lot of time. There are tens of thousands of advertising options to choose from, dozens of advertising channels that each operate in a unique way, scores of different pricing methods, and special pricing arrangements.
It can often feel like walking through a minefield with hundreds of ways to fail. Fortunately, Bionic will help you every step along the way so you avoid costly errors, and deliver your media plan with confidence.
To get started, simply click the Create New Campaign button in the top right corner of the screen.
This will bring up a window with:
- The Advertiser
- The Campaign’s Name
- Budget and Flight Dates.
Now, let’s enter a Campaign name and give our new Campaign a budget.
We can now decide on the Flight Dates for the Campaign’s total run time.
After you’ve added all your information, click the Confirm button in the lower left corner, and voila, you’ve created your basic Campaign.
When you create a new Campaign in Bionic, it adds all the settings from your specified Advertiser, which saves time and avoids mistakes by importing all the special arrangements with your client.
There are a few different options for filling out your Campaign’s media planning this area. Let’s start by using the simplest option by manually entering Placements. Click the far right icon to Manually type in your information.
On this screen, you’ll see a number of different options to fill out for your media plan. Start by filling out the first section with the name of the advertising program, which could be a website, a newspaper, radio station, or any other advertising vehicle. As you type, it will automatically guess the program you’re trying to enter.
The next section specifies the advertising product you’re buying. There is a convenient drop down with a list of types to choose from. Select your product here and click it. Once picked, the rest of the line’s base information is automatically completed. This includes the Channel, Ad Unit, Flight Dates, and Rate.
Next, you’ll be able to override the default Placement Name of the product.
Finally, add the quantity you will be buying. After this information is entered, Bionic will calculate all the costs for you – including net media cost, commission, fees, and total cost.
With this, we can add more lines to your media plan. Since our first media plan involves online media, let’s choose an offline media avenue for the next part of your campaign and learn what else Bionic can do.
With your offline media program, let’s move on to the product you’ll be buying. Here, you can select from a number of common offline media products. If nothing comes up, simply click the data card icon next to products. A list will appear that you can choose from for common items.
Next, you can fill out the channel information for this product. Often with the program you entered, this channel will pre-fill for you. In this case, The New York Times Newspaper is our program.
You can specify:
- The ad unit
- Flights dates
- Rate
- Quantity
After you’ve filled out the parameters, let’s go ahead and add some more media outlets to your media plan.
Add a new line and pick your program. In this case, we’ll do radio. Pick your ad placement from the drop down, which will be different according to the chosen media outlet.
Once you pick your product, Bionic will fill out the rest of the information for you. It’s still very easy to change the format by choosing the items from the drop down menu.
It also gives you the typical price per spot and the option to pick how many spots in the radio airtime you’d like to buy.
Let’s add another placement for a magazine ad. Pick the site you’d like to advertise on and next pick your product. In this case we’ll use a full page ad. It’ll calculate out and try to guess how many months the ad will run for, and how much it will cost to run.
Another feature you can use is called Flighting. Let’s add a placement at Yahoo.com. We’ll pick our product, then leave the other parts of the ad at their defaults while Bionic fills in the specifications for us. Fill in the rate and the impressions you’d like to buy.
Next, click the Pencil and Paper Icon on the left. A drop down will appear with a number of options choose the “Enable Flighting” option, and enter the amount of Flights you’d like, then click Add Flights.
This will break up the advertising time into even flights over a period of time. You can now individually change the flight time for each ad to appear on the site of your choosing. This makes scheduling your campaign out simple and painless, with just a few clicks of a button.
You’ve now learned some of the basic media planning tools in the Media Plan section of your Campaign!