5 Ways Media Planning Affects Small Businesses (And Why You Should Care)
If you’ve ever boosted a post and wondered why nothing happened - you’re not alone!
Robert Burns highlighted the unpredictable nature of plans - even the most meticulously thought-out ones - when he famously wrote “The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”
However, whether you’re running a small business, a side hustle or building your brand from the ground up, media planning matters. How purposefully you’re planning however - and how that compares to your competitors - could be the key to standing out and your success.
Dave Chaffey, digital strategist explains in his RACE framework that every customer journey has four stages: Reach, Act, Convert and Engage. Effective media planning supports every one of these steps. So here are five reasons why you should take a closer look at your media planning, get yourself noticed, inspire your tribe to act and keep them coming back for more.
1. It Helps You Stop Wasting Money
Are you randomly placing ads on Facebook, boosting Instagram posts to increase engagement, or dropping flyers around town but wondering why you’re not getting the engagement you expected? Purposeful media planning helps you focus your budget on the platforms and people that actually matter to your business - so you’re not burning cash trying to reach everyone and inspiring no one.
2. It Makes You Visible in the Right Place at the Right Time
You don’t need to be everywhere - refer to point 1. Ask yourself: 'How many of the audience can I reach through different media?', 'On which media (and ad vehicles) should I place ads?', 'Which frequency should I select?' and 'How much money should I spend in each medium?' (Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick 2022)* It should be part of your strategy, not just guesswork so do your research.
3. Timing is Everything
Your content could be life changing, but posted at the wrong time and it just becomes another missed opportunity. Effective planning is about connecting your brand message with precision, the right message, to the right person, at the right time (Katz, 2025)*. So scheduling can be key to your campaign’s success. If your dream customer is scrolling at 7:30am on the train, posting at 2pm could mean you’ve missed them completely, so by knowing your audience’s habits and syncing your content to when they’re most engaged turns timing into your business’s superpower.
4. It Builds Trust
De La Soul told us not to believe the hype, and unfortunately that’s the cynical world we now live in. Seeing something once in a saturated marketplace, and the chances are your audience will just scroll past. Seeing it more than once - with a consistent tone of voice across all platforms and media - will build familiarity and eventually trust. By planning your content and thinking strategically about where it will land gets you seen in the right way. Consistency from start to end is powerful. It’s how small brands build big credibility.
5. It Turns Strategy into Sales
Don’t just hit the enter key on another social media post and hope, it’s not enough. Your media activity needs to align with your goals, target the right audience, and define what their customer journey will look like, and the only way that is going to happen is by analysing the data and picking out trends specific to your business. That’s when the real magic will happen, and you will start to see interest and enquires convert to sales. RACE model activated.
Media planning doesn’t need to be complicated, it does however need to be intentional. So whether you’re a mouse or a man, in the world of business we can all stand on the shoulders of giants if we are strategic in our approach and clear on our desired outcomes.
I work with creatives, bands and bold businesses cut through the chaos and build a media presence that works. So if it all feels like a bit too much, you don’t know where to start and you’re ready to stop guessing and start growing, let’s chat.
Keep an eye out for my next post where I will be breaking down how designers can borrow from the planning process to help make strategic creative design choices.
*Chaffey, D. and Ellis-Chadwick, F. (2022). Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice. 8th ed. Harlow, England: Pearson.
*Katz, H (2025). The Media Handbook: A Complete Guide to Advertising Media Selection, Planning, Research and Buying. 9th ed. Routledge.
