What is Media buying?

Birk Creative’s Media Buying Services Help Brands Boost Audiences and Awareness 

As a Benefit corporation, helping brands make a positive impact through creative strategy and technology is foundational to Birk Creative’s work. But beyond designing a client’s Visual Identity, Branding, Social Media and more, nothing is more integral to a campaign’s success than Media Buying, which is the strategy behind taking your ad or content and purchasing offline and digital ad space to reach your intended audience. But before we buy the space, we diligently research and identify your current and aspired audience, and where the campaign should live so they see it. Media buying can be programmatic, YouTube, TikTok, online news, social media, highway billboards, television, streaming radio, transit, street posters, google search, post cards, influencers and more. For example, an elderly awareness campaign would be more successful on radio and OOH billboards, whereas a Gen-Z spot would be more effective on social. Media buying is a highly persuasive marketing tool, but it begins with having an engaging visual language to articulate your brand’s values and voice to consumers. As Birk Creative CEO JinJa Birkenbeuel notes, “Your audience, whether direct customers or visitors, has to be engaged. Customers like to have ‘conversations’ with their preferred brands. The most successful businesses want to share what they know and can find the path to a personal conversation with their customers.” 

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Communicating with your customers effectively requires insights and imagination, and Birk Creative strives to get your audience excited and engaged, offering:

• Audience Research

• Media Buying & Placement

• Custom Content Creation 

• Visual Identity 

• Branding

• Social Media Planning

• Digital Campaigns

• Web Rebranding/Design

• Copywriting

Beyond media buying, through our visual identity, branding and content creation services, we can help you curate your campaign to be not only visible but relatable to different audiences, and tailor your messaging across cultural, age, gender and geographic spectrums. It’s for this expertise that the Illinois Liquor Control Commission (ILCC) tapped us to completely overhaul their website, outreach and branding to more effectively raise awareness on regulating alcohol/tobacco use and reach varying audiences. The ILCC is responsible for outreaching multiple audiences: manufacturers, distributors, retailers and the public at large, but at the time was primarily using printed communications and an outdated website for their awareness.  

Birk Creative worked with the ILCC to redesign a uniquely recognizable branding system, and user-friendly mobile Sharepoint website logo to increase engagement and efficacy with customers. With clearer messaging, a more interactive system and navigable interface, the ILCC was primed to have more intimate and insightful conversations with their customers. Birk Creative educated ILCC on social media usage, tactics and placement to drive their consumer engagement, and developed a digital training video series making it easier for business owners to access information and understand the responsibility and liability with a liquor license. In helping ILCC develop its “Talk It Up!” and “Your Action Matters” PSA campaign, aimed at curbing underage drinking and parental responsibility, Birk Creative’s Media Buying consultation proved essential in getting the message out - targeting youth via social media and parents through traditional media platforms - driving calls to action to spread awareness and save lives. 

Birk Creative also employed its impact-driven strategy in our partnership with the Illinois Public Department of Health (IDPH) in its Zika Awareness Campaign. Similarly to how vital cross-platform media advertising has been for COVID information and awareness - see our Advocate Healthcare We Got You and Estamos Contigo campaigns - the IDPH’s Zika PSAs aimed to stop the spread through educating and engaging the masses. Targeting travelers especially - with a focus on honeymooners and business travelers - Birk Creative worked with IDPH to tailor their campaign for varying audiences, amplify its reach and measure the impact. Through a custom SEO mobile website we designed for advertisements and social media engagement, we created a Zika Tip sheet, informational video campaign, launched their LinkedIn, Instagram and Pinterest channels as well as developed native content for existing social channels. The campaign had hundreds of thousands of impressions through its run and effectively raised awareness about the virus across multiple offline, print and digital platforms. 

Your Media Buy is a blueprint for your business’s marketing reach, answering what, when, why and where to engage your audience. At Birk Creative, a media buy goes far deeper than Google ads and billboards, it’s a detailed strategy starting with extensive research to glean your audience insights, and determine what consume best resonates with them and where. It’s a comprehensive multi-channel plan that ensures every outward appearance of your business aligns with your brand values and leaves lasting impressions. 

From audience research and strategy to media planning and placement, we ensure the success of a client’s campaign through a comprehensive and collaborative approach to best reflect the essence of the company’s values. Contact JinJa Birkenbeuel at hello@birkcreative.com when you need a full-service creative agency to design your media buy strategy. 

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JinJa Birkenbeuel is a writer, podcaster, creative, brand strategist, professional speaker and entrepreneur. Featured in Fast Company, and again in Fast Company as well as Forbes, she is the CEO of Birk Creative and digital coach and trainer for thought leaders, entrepreneurs and small business owners. She loves sharing what she knows with non-celebrity business owners and leaders who are killing it in the marketplace by engaging in vibrant conversations on her podcast platform The Honest Field Guide(tm). Listen in on your favorite podcast platform like Apple, Spotify and Google Podcasts.

About Birk Creative

Birk Creative works with businesses as a plug-and-play brand strategy team or as a complement to existing creative and marketing capabilities. We deliver wraparound services across all advertising and marketing activities: Visual identity, branding, brand messaging, custom content creation, podcast/video/radio production, social media marketing, employee thought leadership training and development, and digital advertising.

Our in-house team and remote network include brand strategists, copywriters, social media marketers, podcast producers, book and publication publishers, graphic designers and web developers, illustrators, media buyers and a 10-person remote team.