Synthesizing perfect, creative solutions to cater to the client’s ever-changing need—that’s the digital media planning process. If you’re a digital media planner, you get to be an integral part of telling the story revolving around a client’s brand, helping to craft what will be the storyline that reaches so many people. It’s a heady, thrilling prospect!

By ensuring that the concept always reaches the audience, the digital media planner is in charge of the efficacy of the general media solutions for their clients. It’s a great job with dynamic, exciting day-to-day responsibilities. But what about the nitty-gritty things you want to know before you submit an application? We’re here to help with that. Below we’ll discuss the big questions: What is digital media planning? What’s a typical digital media planner salary?

 

Digital Media Planner Job Description - Qualifications, Requirements & Salary Data

Before you can know if digital media planning is right for you, it’s important to know what the job itself entails. Think carefully about your own qualifications, and see if you can determine whether the following sets of criteria, requirements, and expectations align with the things you know about yourself.

 

Digital Media Planner Job Description

Get ready for a lot of research! Being a digital media planner involves going out and researching a lot of different types of media and immersing yourself in the general media landscape so that you can be a go-to expert when clients come to your firm and ask for your help in running a campaign under their brand. Using the data that you find, you optimize marketing strategies to bring the most value to your client—which means calculating the best media strategies to reach the largest audience, while staying true to the values of the client.

As we’re living in a digital age and media is changing faster than the speed of light, successful and competitive Digital Media planners will have to be flexible enough and have enough initiative to ensure that they’re educated about all new types of media before anyone else knows about them. The perfect digital media planner is an expert on all things brands, media, and the data surrounding them.

 

What Do Digital Media Planners Do?

Digital media planners do a whole host of things relating to ensuring that their clients have a cohesive, engaging, and impactful storyline that brings together their brand with the target audience for their deliverable, whether it’s a new product launch, the announcing of a rebrand or staffing change, or some other event that they want to use to educate the public about what they offer.

This involves a whole variety of activities, including:

• Target demographic analysis. If the client wants to reach a certain group of people, it’s up to the digital media planner to understand exactly what the target demographic needs to hear, so that the client can incorporate that factor into their brand.
• Comprehensive knowledge and ongoing research of trends. Whether the client wants to go along with current trends or buck them entirely, it’s the role of the digital media planner to know what those trends are—and be able to suggest strategies to the client based on how those trends impact and influence their target demographic.
• Working Alongside Talent to Create Campaigns. Ultimately, the finished product of the digital media planner is a flawless campaign that celebrates the client’s brand and entices the target demographic—which means successfully working with other media experts to design the perfect deliverable and edit or modify it as needed to keep the client happy with the work of the digital media planning firm. Successful digital media planners need strong personalities themselves, but also the ability to effectively communicate with all sorts of other personalities.

 

What Does a Typical Day Look Like?

Digital media planning jobs feature days that are full of excitement—they’re never quite the same! However, there are some key components that go from one day to the next, which really allows room to hone each of the required skills. Here are a few of the ingredients that would go into a successful day in one of our digital media jobs.

1. Examination of the Brief. The client will send the digital media planner a short list of all of their expectations concerning the next media deliverable. The digital media planner will take some time to sit with the brief, and really immerse themselves in it — so that not only do they get an idea for the basics of what the client is asking for, but so that they can really get into the head of the client and anticipate their every need.
2. Find the Talent. After the brief has been thoroughly examined, it’s time to use past successful networking and put it to the test. The digital media planner will be in charge of calling, emailing, and otherwise contacting the relevant representatives and planning and merging availability. There are always lots of differing campaigns being scheduled — it’s up to the digital media planner to ensure that this one is taking priority.
3. Manage the Brand. As the campaign launches, the digital media planner will be in charge of managing all platforms of media to ensure that the public awareness of the client’s product is at its peak during strategic moments of the campaign — for example, around product release or around pivotal events. Don’t expect this to just be a nine-to-five — sometimes, a campaign requires all hands on deck!
4. Analyze Your Success. As the campaign comes to a close, it’s up to the digital media planner to draw together all the facts and figures to show the client that their work has come through for them. The digital media planner will have access to everything they’ll need to get this done!
5. Forecast the Budget. Part of the planning aspect of being a digital media planner involves ensuring that the client is aware of the budget which will be necessary on a month-to-month basis during the campaign. Therefore, it’s the digital media planner’s job to be aware of what it takes to run a campaign, what similar brands are investing in their launches and images, and be able to communicate all of that strategically and compassionately to the client.

There’s definitely a lot that goes into being a digital media planner! The days vary, so it’s impossible to precisely foretell what will happen in a given twenty-four-hour period, but those are the general ingredients to a successful day.

 

Digital Media Planner Qualifications

What does it take to be a digital media planner? The successful candidate will have a mixture of hard and soft skills. In this section, we’ll take a look at the typical education requirements of a successful digital media planner as well as the type of skills that will serve a successful digital planner well over the course of their career.

 

Typical Education Requirements

A successful candidate will likely have at least a bachelor’s degree from an accredited institution in the field of market research, business administration, marketing, or in a subject that is generally in the same field as these. A master’s degree in a similar field will be looked upon as a bonus. However, if you’re able to show that you have a significant and successful experience as a digital media planner even with a different history of education, reach out and argue your case—initiative is a strong skill that all digital media planners should have.

 

Preferred Skills

While the successful candidate will likely be skilled in all kinds of unpredictable areas, the digital media planner will be asked to show proficiency in the following areas:

1. Analysis and Comprehension. A lot of the duties that fall on the shoulders of a digital media planner go hand in hand with making sure that the digital media planner is looking at the data coming from a campaign in a way that makes sure that the digital media planner is getting the right information from the campaign and synthesizing it so that the client understands where their investment has been going.
2. The Ability to Work on a Team. As a digital media planner will be helping to put together a campaign, the successful candidate will be working with a lot of different people and personalities under a lot of differing circumstances. The ability to do so naturally will go a long way towards being a successful digital media planner.
3. A Proclivity Towards Working with Numbers. The data side of the digital media planning job is extensive—so being able to make sense of numerical data intuitively as well as being able to manipulate simple data in programs such as Excel will be an essential skillset for the successful candidate to have. Being able to bring this knowledge to a practical area (such as negotiating prices and fixing budgets) is a must, as well.
4. The Ability to Make Quick Decisions. As the digital media planner, the successful candidate will be in charge of making a lot of decisions for the campaigns for their clients. The ability to look at the information and make a good decision quickly and effectively will be a skill that the successful candidate will do daily. Know, also, that the digital media planner is often asked to justify or defend their decisions—so the ability to back up their choices is a skill that this digital media planner should have.
5. Inherent Computing Abilities. This is the digital age! Comprehensive knowledge of how to use computers in general is something that will be looked for. Basic statistics knowledge, use of the more common data and word processors, and an intuitive feel for the utility of the internet are strongly preferred.

 

Digital Media Planner Career Outlook

Now is a great time to become a digital media planner! Because we are living in an Internet age and more and more companies both big and small are realizing how their brand impacts their sales and their bottom lines, the skills of a digital media planner are in hot demand. According to the United States of America Bureau of Statistics, the growth rate for the profession of digital media planners is predicted to grow at an attractive clip — by about 23 percent over the next six years, or through 2026.

Know, then, that successful candidates and productive, hard-working digital media planners will likely have a good job for years to come.

 

Digital Media Planner Salary Expectations

The salary for a digital media planner will be commensurate to the experience, education, and initiative they bring to the role. However, for planning purposes, the median national salary for digital media planners checks in at 46,000 per annum, including benefits packages if applicable. However, as of the last market data, it was found that digital media planners ranking in the lowest percentiles skill- and education-wise earned approximately 35,000 per year, while the cream of the crop took in over 60,000 per year.

In short, the average digital media planning salary can very due to experience and other factors, but is generally speaking very competitive.

 

Find Your Digital Media Planner Job at Digital Media Jobs!

Thanks for taking the time to make sure that the role and responsibility of a digital media planner are right for you! The information contained in this article will be invaluable during job interviews and hiring processes. You can use the information here at Digital Media Jobs to make sure that you can easily and quickly find the digital media planner job that is right for you.

Visit the Job Listings Page to find a great job in your area so you can submit an easy application. Good luck!

 

References:

1. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/media-and-communication/home.htm
2. https://www.jobhero.com/digital-media-planner-job-description/
3. https://www.forwardandthinking.com/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-media-planner/
4. https://serviceplan.blog/en/2017/10/digital-media-planner/
5. https://www.thebalancecareers.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-media-planner-jobs-2316056
6. https://www.prospects.ac.uk/job-profiles/media-planner