How to allocate your media budget optimally
More channels is not the same as more impact
Sten Bossong
Project Lead, Flii Media
More channels is not the same as more impact
Every media plan starts with the same question: where should your money land? It is tempting to be present everywhere, just a little. A bit of radio, a bit of social, a bit of display. Yet that rarely delivers the most. A good split does not start with the channels, but with the goal.
Do you want more people to know your brand, or do you want people who already know you to buy now? Those are two different jobs, with different channels and different ways of measuring. You buy reach through channels that let you reach many people at once, such as radio, out of home, video and social. Conversion comes from channels where there is intent, such as search engines and retargeting.
Most brands need both. Research by Les Binet and Peter Field into hundreds of campaigns shows that brands in consumer markets grow best, on average, with around 60 percent of the budget for brand building and 40 percent for direct activation. In B2B the optimum is closer to half and half: around 45 percent brand and 55 percent activation. You can read more about that balance in our article on branding and performance.
See those percentages as a starting point, not a rule. A new brand without name recognition needs more reach. A well-known brand running a temporary promotion can shift more towards activation.
This is where things most often go wrong in practice. A channel only works once you reach enough people often enough. Nobody remembers a radio spot that airs once. Spread your budget over too many channels and you end up below that threshold everywhere, with no effect anywhere.
The rule of thumb: choose two or three channels you can fill properly rather than six you fill halfway. For each channel, first work out the minimum budget needed for sufficient reach and frequency, and only then see how many channels fit into your plan.
Adding a new channel only pays off once your existing channels become saturated. You can tell from three signals: your reach stops growing, frequency goes up and your cost per result rises. At that point, the next euro in the same channel delivers less than the first euro in a new channel. That is when it is time to expand.
A good media budget is not a sum of channels. It is a choice: which goal, which balance between reach and conversion, and which channels you can fill well enough that they really work. Fewer channels, better filled, almost always deliver more.
Sources: IPA, The Long and the Short of It and Les Binet and Peter Field, 5 Principles of Growth in B2B Marketing (The B2B Institute, 2019).