Media strategy
A media plan tells you what you're buying. A media strategy tells you why — and how you'll know it worked.
It connects your business objective to your advertising investment, deciding which audiences you're pursuing, what to say to them, where and when they'll be reached, and how you'll measure performance.
We help brands define a media strategy from the ground up, or take an independent, evidence-led look at spend they're already making.
So whether you're building a strategy from scratch, briefing an agency, or you want an independent view on spend you're already committing, we bring evidence, senior media experience and a research mindset to the table — and no agenda to move budget in our own direction.
Many brands will simply work from a media plan for their advertising campaigns. Few have a media strategy behind it. A plan is a list of channels, dates and costs. A strategy is the thinking that decides which audiences you're pursuing, what you need to say to them, where they'll be reached, and how you'll measure whether it worked — before a budget is committed.
In a fragmented media landscape, where audiences move effortlessly between channels and devices, that thinking is what separates budget that grows a brand from budget that simply gets spent.
What is a media strategy?
The logic that turns a business objective into advertising investment.
A media strategy answers a specific set of questions. Get them right and the media plan almost writes itself — every line has a reason to be there.
Objectives
What does the business actually need this spend to achieve? Awareness, footfall, ticket sales, engagement, repeat visits? We start with the goal, not the budget.
Audience
Who are we trying to reach, and what do we know about how they consume media, where they are, and what moves them?
Insight & message
What do we need to say, and what do we know about the audience that makes it resonate with them?
Customer journey
Where are the moments that matter between someone first hearing about you and having intent to make a purchase or make an action, and which media gets them there?
Channel landscape
Of every media channel available, digital and traditional, which earn a place in the plan and why?
Measurement & learning
How will we know it worked, and what will we learn for next time? This is where a media strategy stops being a one-off campaign and starts informing long-term marketing strategy.
Why is a media strategy worth doing?
A media strategy gives you accountability. When the objective, the audience and the measurement are agreed up front, your team, your agency and your board are all reading from the same page, and "is this working?" becomes a question you can actually answer.
"What can we afford?" is a finance question. "What do we need to invest to meet our objectives and what is the expected ROI?" is a strategy question. The second is harder, and far more valuable. It's the difference between a budget that's rationed and a budget that's justified.
A strategy also justifies your spend. Without one, each year repeats the last: a plan is handed over, the money goes out, the targets are hopefully met, and little is learned. With one, every campaign is designed to teach you something, so next year's decisions are sharper, and your budget works harder each time round.
Media audits
A campaign can hit every KPI and still leave you short on learning. Hitting a number tells you the campaign was effective. It doesn't tell you if it was efficient or whether you could have reached the same people for less media spend, at the right frequency, through a better mix — or whether the result was incremental at all, rather than sales you'd have won anyway.
A Fabbrica media audit is an independent, evidence-based review of how your media is planned, bought and measured. We look at a variety of metrics, shown here.
Crucially, media audits are objective, media-neutral and independent of the media planning process, meaning there's no incentive to steer budget our way. If you already have an agency, you keep the agency you trust. You simply add independent oversight and a test-and-learn framework that makes every future pound work harder. It can make your incumbent agency’s media services better too.
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Are you paying a fair market rate, at the right frequency, with waste and duplication stripped out?
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Is spend reaching the people most likely to act, or just the people who are easiest and cheapest to buy?
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Can you trace real cause and effect, or is the last click quietly taking all the credit?
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Which tests (geo, creative, audience, channel and more) will show you what's actually driving results?
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How does your spend and performance compare with the wider travel and tourism sector?
Why Fabbrica?
Insight, independence and senior media people.
Independent & media-neutral
We’re media-neutral and not aligned to particular media channels or owners. Our only interest is your result. That's what makes our audits worth trusting.
Evidence & data-led
Sophisticated audience research tools means media strategy truly reflects who your audience is and how they behave, not relying on guesswork.
Senior practitioners
You work directly with experienced media people, not account juniors learning on your budget.
Specialists in places & spaces
Travel, tourism, culture and heritage are our home turf. We understand travel audiences, ticket and visitor acquisition, seasonality and the travel media landscape.
Understand the media landscape
Media training
The media landscape shifts constantly, and it's hard to build a strategy around channels you've had no time to learn. Part of good strategy work is simply making the landscape legible: how each channel works best, where it fits in the customer journey, and what it costs to do well.
If your team would rather understand the landscape than just be handed a plan, our advertising training gives you a practical grounding across every channel, so you can brief with confidence and challenge with authority.
Interested about media strategy, media audits or training? Let's talk.
Whether you need a strategy defined, a media plan sense-checked, or an independent review of your current media spend, we'd love to help.