Making Marketing Work with a Media Mix

As smartphone use and time spent on them have risen, more people use a wide range of websites and apps, and the way each individual buys has grown more varied.

That makes it extremely difficult to know each target user’s pattern of behaviour and market to them pinpoint.

So companies have increasingly turned to the media mix as a way to make the users present across every medium aware of their service and get them using it.

This article explains what a media mix is, along with its advantages and examples of how it is used.

1. What a media mix is

A media mix means combining several media, such as television, newspapers, radio and the internet, to make the case for a product or service to more consumers.

Media have grown varied, and each has its strengths and weaknesses.
By combining several media, which people encounter in different places and at different moments, you can have each one cover the weak points of the others and raise the effect of your advertising as far as it will go.

The term “media mix” originally referred to taking content such as a novel or a comic and extending it into anime, film, games, character goods and other media, growing it into something highly profitable.

This article covers the media mix in digital marketing.

2. Advantages of a media mix

2.1 You can make your case to more users

There are a great many sites and social platforms out there, all competing for people’s free time, so users are spread across every medium.

Showing your service on a single website or online shop therefore will not reach people unless you are already very well known.
Combining several media lets you make your case to more users, and that is one of the great advantages of a media mix.

2.2 You can increase the number of times people see your advertising

The second advantage is that you can increase the number of times people see your advertising.
The more chances people have to encounter an ad, the more it stays in their memory, and the better your advertising performs as a result.
Seeing an ad once, they may forget it straight away, but
seeing it again and again, in the news app in the morning, in search advertising when they look something up, in a social feed during a break, leaves a strong impression, and depending on the case you make they may come to like you.
That in turn makes a purchase more likely.

2.3 You can cover the weak points of each medium

The third advantage is that you can cover the weak points of each medium.
Each medium has its strengths and weaknesses, and the way a message comes across differs too.

Search advertising, for example, reaches people who are already looking, but you have to make your case in a short piece of text, and if it is even slightly off from what the person is looking for they are unlikely to click. A video ad, on the other hand, can make an impact depending on how it is made, and can convey more detail properly.
And using social platforms and owned media lets you put information out in real time, and to a broader audience.

In this way, combining several media and advertising methods well, increasing the chances of being seen and having each medium cover the weak points of the others, you can expect a strong promotional effect.

3. Disadvantages of a media mix

3.1 The path is hard to design

One disadvantage of a media mix is that the path is hard to design
Rather than thinking of each medium in isolation, you need to design a path that lets people reach the ad that caught their eye without any friction.

As interest grows you have to work out “what information to present on which platform” step by step: a stage for catching the eye with an ad, a stage for explaining the details, and a stage for having them consider a purchase.

For that you need to grasp how your target users buy and what they are like, then choose media accurately with their synergy and complementarity in mind.

3.2 It costs money

One measure to consider when thinking about advertising spend is cost per acquisition (CPA), but judging a platform’s return on spend by CPA alone leads to failure.
By its nature a media mix, which runs across several media, costs more in advertising spend than running ads on one medium. Cutting platforms with a high CPA without a plan can mean losing users you would otherwise have won.

Say, for example, you cut YouTube advertising because its CPA is high and pour the money into search advertising, where the CPA is low. Sales can fall as a result.

Suppose the ideal path was really for interest to begin with a YouTube ad and for the purchase to happen on the website. Fixating on CPA, cutting the YouTube advertising and adding another medium half-heartedly, you may fail to get the most out of it and lose the chance to win customers.

4. Points for making a media mix work

With a media mix, which advertises across several media, one approach is to reuse exactly the same creative everywhere to keep costs down.
But unless you optimise the content to suit each medium so that people take an interest, and change the case you make, you will not get the results you hoped for.
For example, even using the same video, Facebook and LINE are platforms used without sound while YouTube and TikTok are used with it, so the case the video makes has to differ accordingly.

Adapting how the ad is expressed to suit each platform is what draws out the synergy. Use the way the media complement one another well and make your media mix work.

5. In summary

This article has explained what a media mix is, its advantages and how to make it work.
Each medium is different, and the people using them are spread in different ways, so combining several media appropriately can be expected to improve how your advertising performs.

With smartphone use rising in recent years, the media mix matters more and more.
Advertising on the web has the advantage that feedback is easy to get, and that moving people between platforms, such as owned media, social and YouTube, is easier to encourage.
The media mix will no doubt keep evolving, with the internet at its centre.
Use a media mix and draw out people’s interest accurately.