<div class="gn-article"><div class="gn-hero gn-reveal"> <div class="gn-hero__image"><img src="https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/687a235da6861294eec73166/69089aadcff9873ee7b3fae8_651d7ed385dc81f20e155821_629cee560a081de9969f634b_Event%252520Headers%252520-%252520August%252520and%252520September%252520(2)%252520(1).png" alt=""></div> <div class="gn-hero__head"> <span class="gn-kicker"><span class="dot"></span>Event · Expression</span> <h1 class="gn-title">How To Build A Media Strategy That Can&#39;t Be Missed</h1> <div class="gn-meta"> <strong>The GO Network</strong> <span class="pip"></span> <span>18 August 2022</span> <span class="pip"></span> <span>1 min read</span> </div> </div> </div> <div class="gn-event-meta gn-reveal"><div class="gn-event-meta__block"> <span class="gn-event-meta__label">When</span> <span class="gn-event-meta__value gn-date">Thu, 18 Aug 2022 · 09:00</span> </div><div class="gn-event-meta__block"> <span class="gn-event-meta__label">Where</span> <span class="gn-event-meta__value">Online</span> </div><div class="gn-event-meta__block"> <span class="gn-event-meta__label">Status</span> <span class="gn-event-status gn-event-status--recording">Past · Recording</span> </div></div> <div class="gn-body"> <h2>Building a Media Strategy That Cuts Through: Lessons From Planning, Buying, and Execution</h2> <p>Most agencies advise clients on media strategy daily, yet many find their own approach fragmented: channel decisions made reactively, budgets allocated by habit rather than evidence, and KPIs bolted on after the fact. The GO Network brought together three experienced media practitioners to address this directly. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/katyclarkson/"><strong>Katy Clarkson</strong></a>, Head of Planning at <a href="https://www.december19.co.uk/"><strong>december19</strong></a>, <a href="https://uk.linkedin.com/in/samfentonelstone"><strong>Sam Fenton-Elstone</strong></a>, CEO and Co-founder of <a href="https://aip.media/"><strong>Anything is Possible</strong></a>, and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanjit-pulahi-accountdirector/"><strong>Tanjit Pulahi</strong></a>, Head of Media at <a href="https://crunchdigitalmedia.com/"><strong>Crunch Digital</strong></a>, shared what a rigorous, modern media strategy actually looks like in practice. What follows are the core principles from that session, applicable whether you are building a media offering for clients or developing your agency's own presence.</p> <h2>Start With Goals, Resource, and Honest Capacity</h2> <p>The first failure point in most media strategies is skipping the framing stage. Before any channel selection happens, agencies need a clear-eyed assessment of three things: what success looks like, what resource is genuinely available, and what capacity exists to sustain the work over time.</p> <p>This matters more than it sounds. Many agencies approach media planning by reverse-engineering from a channel they already know or a tactic that worked previously. The result is a strategy built around convenience rather than objectives. The panel emphasised that framing goals properly, including commercial goals, audience goals, and operational constraints, is the only reliable way to prioritise the right channels and tactics for a specific situation.</p> <p>Practical questions to answer before building any strategy include:</p> <ul> <li>What does the business need this media activity to do, and over what timeframe?</li> <li>Who will own execution, and do they have the bandwidth to do it properly?</li> <li>What does realistic investment look like, including production, placement, and management costs?</li> <li>What would success look like at 30, 60, and 90 days, not just at campaign end?</li> </ul> <p>Without answers to these questions, channel selection becomes guesswork. With them, it becomes a structured decision.</p> <h2>Challenge the Misconceptions Before You Build the Plan</h2> <p>Media planning is an area dense with received wisdom that often does not hold up to scrutiny. The panel addressed several common misconceptions that agencies, and their clients, carry into the planning process.</p> <p>One persistent assumption is that digital channels are inherently more measurable and therefore more valuable than traditional media. In practice, multi-channel attribution remains genuinely difficult, and the apparent precision of digital reporting can mask significant gaps in understanding. Traditional media, used correctly, continues to deliver reach and brand-building that purely digital strategies struggle to replicate at scale.</p> <p>Another misconception is that a broader channel mix is always better. Spreading budget thinly across many channels to appear comprehensive often produces weaker results than concentrating resource on fewer channels executed with rigour. The question is not how many channels you use but whether each channel is doing a specific, defined job in the overall plan.</p> <p>The session also pushed back on the idea that creative and media planning can be treated as separate workstreams. The most effective campaigns treat creative ideation and media channel thinking as interdependent from the outset. A piece of creative developed without reference to the media environment it will appear in is rarely optimised for that environment, and vice versa.</p> <h2>Activating a Multi-Channel Strategy: What Good Execution Looks Like</h2> <p>Building a coherent strategy on paper is one challenge. Activating it across multiple channels without losing discipline is another. The panel outlined the key considerations that separate effective multi-channel execution from campaigns that simply run on several platforms simultaneously without a connecting logic.</p> <p>The foundations of strong execution include:</p> <ul> <li><strong>Channel sequencing:</strong> Understanding which channels should work at which stage of the customer journey, and how they pass the audience through from awareness to consideration to action.</li> <li><strong>Consistent measurement frameworks:</strong> Agreeing KPIs per channel that connect back to overall campaign objectives, rather than reporting each channel in isolation against its own default metrics.</li> <li><strong>Clear ownership:</strong> Defining who is responsible for each channel's performance, and how learnings are shared across the wider team during the campaign, not just at the debrief.</li> <li><strong>Built-in review points:</strong> Scheduling structured mid-campaign reviews to identify what is working, what is underperforming, and where budget reallocation makes sense before the campaign ends.</li> </ul> <p>The distinction between campaigns that are merely active and campaigns that are genuinely managed in-flight is significant. Agencies that build review cadences into their delivery model consistently outperform those that set campaigns live and optimise only at the end.</p> <h2>Knowing When to Scale: The Snowball Effect</h2> <p>One of the most practically useful parts of the session focused on the question of when to increase investment. The panel described what they called the snowball effect: the point at which a media strategy has enough data, proof of performance, and operational confidence to justify scaled investment rather than continued testing at low levels.</p> <p>Agencies frequently advise clients to scale too early, before the underlying strategy has been validated, or too late, when momentum has been lost. The indicators that a strategy is ready to scale include stable and improving cost-per-result metrics, creative assets that have been tested and identified as strong performers, and operational capacity to manage increased volume without quality declining.</p> <p>External support, whether a specialist media buying partner or additional headcount, should be brought in as a scaling enabler rather than as a fix for a strategy that is not yet working. Scaling a flawed strategy faster rarely improves it.</p> <p>The clearest practical takeaway from the session is straightforward: treat media strategy as a discipline with its own rigour, not as a channel checklist. The agencies consistently producing effective media work are those that invest time in the framing, challenge assumptions before committing budget, and manage execution with the same attention they give to creative output.</p> </div></div> <aside class="gn-related gn-reveal" data-auto="related-reading"> <div class="gn-related__label">Related reading</div> <ul class="gn-related__list"> <li class="gn-related__item"> <a href="/articles/traditional-or-digital-pr-finding-a-strategy-that-works-for-you" class="gn-related__link"> <span class="gn-related__category">Expression</span> <span class="gn-related__title">&#39;Traditional&#39; or &#39;Digital&#39; PR - Finding a Strategy that Works for you</span> <span class="gn-related__excerpt">Agency PR experts break down ROI framing, channel selection, and how to integrate traditional and digital PR into a single, measurable campa</span> </a> </li> <li class="gn-related__item"> <a href="/articles/round-up-how-to-get-more-from-your-creative-strategy" class="gn-related__link"> <span class="gn-related__category">Expression</span> <span class="gn-related__title">Round-up: How to Get More from your Creative Strategy</span> <span class="gn-related__excerpt">Agency experts share how to align creative campaigns with business goals, break down silos, and prove ROI on every activation.</span> </a> </li> <li class="gn-related__item"> <a href="/articles/round-up-the-fundamentals-of-a-great-cross-channel-inbound-campaign" class="gn-related__link"> <span class="gn-related__category">Expression</span> <span class="gn-related__title">Round-up: The Fundamentals of a Great Cross-Channel Inbound Campaign</span> <span class="gn-related__excerpt">Four agency experts share the checklist covering consistent creative, SEO, targeting, and KPIs to build a high-converting cross-channel inbo</span> </a> </li> <li class="gn-related__item"> <a href="/articles/investing-in-pr-finding-a-measurable-strategy-for-your-business" class="gn-related__link"> <span class="gn-related__category">Expression</span> <span class="gn-related__title">Investing in PR - Finding a Measurable Strategy for your Business</span> <span class="gn-related__excerpt">Experts from Whiteoaks, PR Agency One, and Impression break down how to measure PR ROI, fix common misconceptions, and make the case for sma</span> </a> </li> </ul> </aside>