.kDiscuss the various steps involved in media planning. When and why media planning assumes relevance and significance for a marketer?

The word Media came from the Latin word "Middle". Media carry message to or from a targeted audience and can add meaning to the message.

Media Planning, in advertising, is a series of decisions involving the delivery of message to the targeted audience. Media Plan, is the plan that details the usage of media in an advertising campaign including costs, running dates, markets, reach, frequency, rationales, and strategies.

The components of a Media Plan.

The steps involved in media planning can be represented as a diagram as follows

Steps in Development of Media Plan
1. Market Analysis
Every media plan begins with the market analysis or environmental analysis. Complete review of internal and external factors is required to be done. At this stage media planner try to identify answers of the following questions:

* Who is the target audience? * What internal and external factors may influence the media plan? * Where and when to focus the advertising efforts?

The target audience can be classified in terms of age, sex, income, occupation, and other variables. The classification of target audience helps media planner to understand the media consumption habit, and accordingly choose the most appropriate media or media mix.

2. Establishing Media Objective
Media objectives describes what you want the media plan to accomplish. There are five key media objectives that an advertiser or media planner has to consider - reach, frequency, continuity, cost, and weight. 1. Reach - Reach refers to the number of people that will be exposed to a media vehicle at least once during a given period of time. 2. Frequency - Frequency refers to the average number of times an individual within target audience is exposed