Media sponsorship: getting strategic with your media buying

Media sponsorship continues to be an important facet of many of our clients’ integrated media strategies. Done right, it’s not only a channel for message amplification and increasing brand awareness, but a way to steer the agenda around a particular topic and generate leads from potential customers who feel as if they already know you.

At Babel, we boast excellent working relationships with some of the most well-known and widely-read technology and telecoms publications, and we’ve worked to ensure our clients get the most out of the increasingly impressive suite of products these publications offer.

Below are some of the most important things worth bearing in mind when allocating your media buying budgets:

Be clear on your objectives

A prerequisite for success in any endeavour is having clear and relevant objectives. These should support your overarching marketing strategy, which in turn needs to feed into your organisation’s commercial strategy.

Whether you’re entering a new market, selling new products into an established base, or aiming purely to maintain brand presence, it is vital that you have a clear picture of the audiences you wish to engage as well as the impact you want to have on them.

Clear objectives keep everyone on the same page and will also often help your media partners unlock value for you beyond what’s available on their media kits. In an increasingly digital media and events landscape, tracking the performance of campaigns is becoming more sophisticated. Defining objectives that are measurable will ensure you can report success and adapt strategy and partners as need be.

Integration is integral

As alluded to above, the most effective paid executions are successful because they work with your wider marketing strategy.

Paid media needs to act as a pillar of your communications programme, and messages across your earned, owned and shared channels need to be aligned. This way there’s no room for confusion. You’re consistent across all channels and mediums, and your target audience understands the value you represent to them, regardless of which publication or platform they’re consuming.

This is also where communications agencies come into the spotlight. We take the time to understand you and your stakeholder groups, and we’re experts in crafting convincing communications and messaging frameworks that ensure engagement at the point of contact.

The second point here is a slightly more tactical one. Content strategies, whether you pay for them or not, are intended to support your business development. You need to be clear about where your target audiences are in your marketing funnel, and content needs to help ladder audiences to the next stage. If you’re speaking at an event for the first time, how is your speech helping to move people toward considering you as a partner? If you’re delivering a webinar to industry folk already aware of you, do you have a conversion strategy in place for those that do attend?

Slow and steady wins the race

If you’ve little experience with media buying and advertorial, the breadth of what’s involved (costs, packages, products) can feel a little daunting. And if you’re not careful, you can end up spending quite a lot with little demonstratable reward.

Whether you have the support of an agency or are going it alone, starting slow and with a defined purpose will help you test the waters and develop the necessary structure for sustainable success. At Babel, we have decades of experience in negotiating packages that work for clients, publications and readers/event attendees. We can navigate the landscape, offering as much or little assistance needed, as part of a wider PR and comms programme.

If you’re interested in learning more about how Babel PR can support your paid media and advertorial ambitions, get in touch here.