Promoting and marketing your business is fundamental to its success. Deciding on where and when to advertise can be time consuming and expensive. You may want to contact a media planning agency to help you develop a strategy. A media planning agency can add value to your company by ensuring that you focus on advertising which will bring you real sales. They can also help develop a feedback mechanism so you can track back which method of advertising helped you increase sales and also collect data about enquirers which did not actually convert to a sale.

If you are thinking of hiring a media planning agency, you should shop around, as with any other product or service you buy. Get recommendations from colleagues, do some research on the internet and be clear what you expect to achieve. Media planning agencies have the contacts and expertise to be able to negotiate discounts, one off deals and may even be able to suggest companies with whom you can barter your goods. If raising the awareness of your brand is your prime objective, a good media planning agency will be able to suggest the best ways to do this. If your objective is purely to increase revenue in the short term, a different strategy may be needed. Much will depend on the budget you have available. The media planning agency will be able to identify similar businesses to yours and apply similar tactics to help you achieve your goals.

There are many methods of advertising and promotion. You may like to attend trade fairs, although this can be expensive and it is difficult to calculate the real benefits. At the very least you will be able to get your logo and products in the public eye. TV and radio advertising are notoriously expensive. Advertising in magazines and newspapers can produce results if you choose carefully which publications you advertise in. The media planning agency can not only help decide which method of promotion to do, but actually help in designing the advertisements and writing the text.

For small business with limited resources, hiring a media planning agency might seem like an unnecessary expense and feel as though they can do the job in house. If the skills are available in house, then of course they should be used. However, if this is not the case, contracting in a media planning agency can save you time and money in the long run. For larger businesses, the cost may not be such an issue, but inevitably the budget will need to be agreed with the finance department before any contracts are drawn up. As the business owner or advertising manager, you will need to justify the expense whatever size your business is. If you decide not to employ a media planning agency you will still need to be able to decide on which media methods to use and justify the expense of the advertising. The main objective is to increase revenue and not keep promoting without getting any feedback whatsoever.