How to Make Your Media Strategy a Success College entrepreneur Matthew Fishman gives us the skinny on how to implement a media and advertising strategy for your startup.
By Matthew Fishman Edited by Dan Bova
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As the person in charge of marketing and PR at startup Agent Anything, a job marketplace platform for students, one of the things I learned quickly was that planning media campaigns isn't easy and organization is key.
If you are in the midst of getting your strategy off the ground, here are some key points:
Be prepared for the waiting game.
I learned when checking out various advertising options simply getting the information needed to make a decision about a company's advertising offerings might take longer than you want. While some may be faster and have all the information you need, others can be difficult to reach or the data you need is unavailable. If the latter is the case, you may need to estimate some of the metrics.
Formulate a plan.
After you've reached out to the different advertising channels and got all the data you needed, now it's time to organize the information in a document. This is key, as it will allow you to compare the various options you've received and start making decisions. Some information you may want to include is click-through rates, reach, and user acquisition cost, among other data points. By having everything in a spreadsheet, you can compare data side-by-side and see what might be most cost effective for the audience you are trying to target.
Know what you can afford.
Before you make a decision, you need to decide what is going to work with your budget and what doesn't make sense. If an advertising option is too expensive for your startup, realize there is room to negotiate with companies -- the worst they can say is no. Also, you can reach out to companies to see if there is a cheaper package or if you could do a smaller trial campaign.
Make sure your strategy is measurable.
After you've made all the decisions, it's time for executing. Make sure you have sufficient metrics in place and ability to track each campaign. We use Google Analytics and KISSmetrics to get a good look at our internal metrics and site traffic.
We also use MailChimp for our email marketing, which allows us to test different landing pages and subject line copy.
Optimize.
Once you have your strategy in place, look for ways to optimize. Spend on strategies that work and change things that don't.
What other tips do you have for implementing a media and advertising strategy? Let us know in the comments below.
