In this article, we will guide you through the general steps to create a media plan.
To start the process of creating a new media plan, click on the button displayed below "+ New media plan" that you find in the calendar view.
This will take you to a form where you will define the basic information of your media plan.
The Initial Set-up:
Important things to note in the form:
The Period field will define the dates when this media plan will take place, this will also limit the max and min dates that you will be able to set up for your campaigns.
The Objective field will define your main KPI for this media plan. It is not mandatory, but it is recommended to set up one so you can easily follow-up this KPI later once the media plan is live.
The Budget is an optional field that you can set up at this point if you already know the amount, otherwise, don't worry, the budget will be defined by the campaigns that you will include in your media plan later.
The Brief is a place where you will summarise the purpose of this media plan, the goals, etc. You can enrich the format by using different heading styles, bullet points, bold letters, etc.
You can upload files of up to 50 MB. Once you are done click on Create.
Finally, you can create or apply a "Workflow" to your media plan at this point. Workflows allow you to define a set of tasks that need to be accomplished before launching the campaigns and you can also assign managers that will be in charge of following up on a specific task. You can read more about this functionality here.
Creating the structure:
Once you have finished with the initial set-up you will get to the view shown below
At this point, you can add groups, campaigns, or import campaigns, which are already created, into your media plan.
The groups allow you to sort your campaigns and operations to build the structure of your media plan. For example, in the image below, we have created 3 groups; Awareness, Prospecting, and Retargeting
Adding new elements is quite easy!
Just click on the "+" bubbles that you find in the left bottom corner when hovering over each element of the structure.
Moving, duplicating, or removing elements is also very simple, just use the buttons displayed when hovering over the elements. They are shown below in the following order: move (drag and drop), duplicate, remove.
When adding a campaign to your media plan, you need to assign a source of traffic for the campaign as shown here:
If for a specific source, you also have an ad account of that source connected to Paragone, you will be able to select the ad account for the campaign.
There are also other tabs that you can use while creating the media plan.
Timeline: Where you will be able to see the campaigns that you are planning in a calendar.
Creatives: Where you'll find the creatives that are select in your already created campaigns.
Collaboration: Where you will be able to collaborate with your peers leaving messages for them and you will be notified about the last status of your media plan.
Validating your media plan:
Once you are comfortable with your media plan, you can go ahead and validate it to start working on it by clicking on the "Validate the draft" button below.
Don't forget to verify that all your campaigns have start dates, end dates, sources, and budgets, this is mandatory to validate your media plan.
The media plan will change to the Validated status.
Working on your media plan:
Once your media plan is validated and if you linked ad accounts to your campaigns, you will have a new button "Create". This is where you can start creating your campaigns in Paragone.
The campaign dates, campaign names, and budgets will be automatically filled during the campaign creation using the information that you provided in your media plan.
You can also find the templates to create the campaigns based on the information on the media plan at the beginning of the creation flow in Paragone.
Once the campaigns are running, in the calendar view, you will be able to follow-up on the progress of your media plan in terms of spend and the performance of your main KPIs.
And that's all for the basics of the creation of a media plan.🤩
We have more articles with extra details on the media plan and calendar view, if you want to get more information.👩🎓👨🏽🎓