How to build a media plan

A media plan is a document, not a decision. The decisions belong in the campaign brief: who the buyer is, what the offer is, where and when. The plan is the schedule that spends the money, one row per thing you are buying, with real dates, real costs and a named owner. Its job is to let four people argue from the same page before anything is booked, and to let you check afterwards whether you got what you paid for.

One row per vehicle, and the row has to be specific

The line that ruins plans reads "Outdoor, Bengaluru, ₹X". That is a budget, not a plan. A row is one thing you can photograph.

The last column is the one most plans do not have, and it is the reason a review meeting turns into an argument. A hoarding is judged on branded searches and calls to its own number from that catchment. A search campaign is judged on cost per qualified enquiry. A trade magazine is judged on meetings with the right job title. A line with no number against it is a donation.

The calendar strip is where the mistakes show up

Under the grid, put weeks across the top and vehicles down the side, and shade the weeks each one runs. It takes ten minutes and it exposes things a table hides.

You will see the hoarding going up in week one while the landing page is not ready until week three. You will see the newspaper insertion landing on the Monday the showroom is shut for stock-taking. You will see four vehicles all starting and stopping together, so that when the enquiries move, nothing can be separated from anything else.

Put the non-media rows in the same strip: creative approval, printing, the day the tracking number goes live, and the weeks your team is away. Then mark the blackouts. Board exam weeks empty out anything aimed at families. Ashada is thin for gold and vehicles. The week of a big local election takes inventory out of the market altogether.

Give search and Maps a continuous line from day one. Every other medium in the plan sends people to search your name. A brand that cannot be found on the evening somebody remembers it has paid for a competitor's traffic.

Lead times decide more of the plan than the budget does

Each medium has a floor on how quickly it can start, and the plan has to be built backwards from the slowest one.

• A hoarding needs the site confirmed, the artwork at the exact size with its safe area, printing, and a mounting slot. The flex is the fastest part.
• A cinema slide or film needs certification before it can be screened, and that is a queue you do not control.
• A radio spot needs a recording with the right voice, and a Kannada version is a fresh recording rather than a translation.
• A newspaper booking depends on the day, the edition and the position, and the good positions for a Sunday go first.
• Metro, airport and mall media need the property's approval of the artwork, and sometimes a deposit, before production starts.
• Search and social can be live tomorrow, which is why they end up carrying the delay of everything else.

Write the deadline for each of these into the strip as its own row. A campaign that starts nine days late because nobody knew the artwork had to be certified is a cost, and it never appears in the cost column.

The money that arrives after the plan is approved

Media cost is the number everyone discusses. Put the rest in the plan from the beginning:

• printing and mounting, and artwork adapted to each size
• recording and voice fees, and certification of a film where it applies
• property deposits, and electricity for a lit site
• the tracking numbers and the landing page
• the agency's own fee, and taxes written out as their own line

A plan without a production column always overruns, and the overrun arrives in the third week when nobody wants to stop.

Reach numbers, and how to keep them honest

Sellers will hand you audience estimates. Some are panel research, some are traffic counts multiplied by an assumption, and a few are invented. Do not put them in your plan as though you counted them.

Keep a separate column headed with the word claimed, record the figure and where it came from, and leave it there. Your own targets live in the judged-on column, and they are things you can count. Enquiries. Calls to a number only this line uses. Scans of a code only this panel carries. Walk-ins during the weeks it ran, read against the weeks before.

Then add a proof column. For every offline line, write down the evidence you will be sent: a dated photograph, a broadcast certificate, a copy of the page, a screen log. Agree it before booking, because proof of execution requested after the cycle is over rarely arrives.

Two rows that protect the whole plan

Hold about a tenth of the budget unallocated, in a row of its own, and write the date you will decide where it goes. That is the money that lets you extend the line that is working in week five instead of arguing for a new budget.

Then write the review dates into the plan itself. A technical review in week one, a cost review at week four, an honest review at the end. Naming the dates in the document is what stops the campaign from running to its end unread.

Media planning and buying is where we do this for clients, including the drive to look at the sites. The plan itself is not a secret, and a business that builds its own has a much better conversation with every seller afterwards.

What to do next

Take the last proposal you were sent and try to fill these columns from it. The columns you cannot fill are the questions to send back that afternoon: which panel, which edition, which weeks, what does production cost, and who is the person responsible.