There are two types of business owners in this world: those who love to negotiate and those who don’t.

We’ve worked with both over the years, and find that even excellent negotiators often make big mistakes with their advertising. You might enjoy rolling up your sleeves and arm wrestling sales reps over pricing, but there’s more to it than that. You need to know how to gather and analyze data about media usage among your customers; you have to work with media partners and get the best placements at the lowest costs; and you must plan an efficient campaign that reaches your goals within budget.

Anyone can pressure an unskilled salesperson into dropping rates, but it takes experience and industry knowledge to put a professional media strategy together. Media buyers are essential part of every agency team, and they offer numerous benefits to our clients.

Knowing how to work within a budget

Regardless of how much you are planning to spend, experienced media buyers know how to look at the budget as a whole and make the most of it. They know the strengths and weaknesses of different advertising partners, including rates, audiences, and opportunities for added-value. A good media buyer also knows how to schedule “flights” that maximize the impact you get in your budget.

better resources, information, and relationships

The biggest difference between an experienced media buyer and an entrepreneur who handles his or her own advertising is that media buyers have deep connections in the advertising industry. They have access to resources and relationships that allow them to deliver results clients cannot achieve on their own.

knowledge of media landscape

One of the most overwhelming aspects of advertising—at least for most businesses—is how complex it is. Media buying isn’t just about placing ads on TV and radio anymore. It includes investing in strategies that help you reach people on digital platforms, including social media, search engines and email. Advertising is getting more complicated, increasing the need for industry experts who stay current with emerging media and best practices.

professional grade tools

As advertising gets more intricate, media buyers also have to adopt new tools to manage campaigns. Many professionals who buy advertising for a living use tech and software that analyzes different ad buying options, helping them to make the smartest, most effective decisions possible.

saves you time

Managing a media buy takes a lot of time and attention, and finding an employee with the skill and experience to do it right is not easy. Sure, your marketing director can babysit your advertising, fitting it in with all the other tasks he or she juggles, but the results will not be the same. Investing in an advertising partner that offers media buying can enhance your results while removing the headache of hiring new personnel.

Media buying is a full-time job, not a task on the to-do list. No matter how much business owners and marketers might like supervising their own ad plans, trying to do it themselves as a bad idea. They lack the expertise to analyze the market, place the right buys, and monitor the campaign for discrepancies. If you want to push your ad campaigns to their greatest potential, it’s worth talking to an advertising agency that offers buying services and seeing how they might complement your internal team.