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What Question Do You Need To Ask Media Planners Before You Make a Hire?

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Is your company looking for Media Planners/Buyers to be responsible for planning, buying, and reporting for digital, print, TV, radio, and other verticals? Other responsibilities can include developing and implementing interactive media campaigns and presentations, analyzing media data, and providing strategic direction to senior management, and clients. A Media Planner’s role is highly collaborative as they work with sales teams to create strategic media plans to drive sales, market share, and increase brand visibility. Media Planners are also typically required to establish strong business relationships with clients while negotiating with media representatives.

What to look for in your next Media Planner/Buyer

According to our Senior Account Manager, Meredith Steinmeyer, Media Planners/Buyers need to be able to build media plans first and foremost. Having knowledge of ad serving technology and research tools is a plus as well. In addition, Media Buyers should be familiar with how to negotiate buys. Because data analytics plays a big role in determining what media to buy, and how to move forward with future projects, being “able to navigate analytics” is a non-negotiable skill Steinmeyer says.Our expert recruiters find candidates with “prior experience in integrated media planning or digital media planning” Steinmeyer explains. The reason being, is that today the majority of media is online so knowledge of digital media, including social, mobile, tablet, video, content, SEM and programmatic is imperative.

Every company is different

Depending on your company’s needs, a successful Media Planner/Buyer should have the ability to recommend and implement new ideas and be able to improve account performance. An understanding of customer targeting and the sales/marketing funnel is therefore key. As this role is highly analytical in nature, candidates must have the ability to measure KPIs and performance metrics and communicate results across teams. In order to find out if the candidate you are interviewing is the perfect match for your company, determine how they handle challenging situations and turn positives into negatives. This role is highly integrated and will require a candidate that can navigate internal and external teams and be able to pivot quickly.

What to ask

Meredith suggests prefacing the question with: “ Tell me about your most challenging client you’ve worked with. Now, tell me about a successful campaign you had full ownership of." Then ask:"How did you overcome the challenge and create a successful campaign for them and what qualities do you attribute to your success?” Are you ready to explore 24 Seven’s database of top talent?

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