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Media Planning

Maximize Your Marketing Budget. Magnify Your Reach.

Our expert Media Planning, Negotiation, and Buying services ensure your message reaches the right travelers, at the right time, for the right price—delivering better results and a higher return on your investment.

Your marketing budget is one of your most significant investments. But in today's complex and fragmented media landscape, are you sure it's working as hard as it could be? Getting the best results isn't just about spending more; it's about spending smarter, with a data-driven plan and expert negotiation.

At nxtConcepts, we act as your dedicated media strategy and buying department. We are experts in the travel and tourism market, and we leverage that knowledge to build integrated media plans that connect with your ideal guests. We handle all the research, negotiation, and management, saving you time, eliminating wasted spend, and stretching every dollar to achieve your most important goal: putting heads in beds and attracting more visitors.

Our Proven Process: Plan. Act. Report. Adapt.

We provide an end-to-end service designed to deliver better results with less hassle.

  1. Plan: A Blueprint for Success We start with a deep dive into your goals, seasonality, and ideal guest profiles. Our experienced staff develops a rationalized plan that recommends the most effective 'marketing mix' to reach your audience and achieve your objectives.

  2. Act: Maximizing Your Buying Power We fight for your budget as if it were our own. When implementing the plan, we leverage our long-standing industry relationships to negotiate competitive rates from media suppliers. We handle all the complex trafficking and management to ensure your campaigns launch flawlessly.

  3. Report: Clarity on Your ROI We invest in top-tier reporting and analysis software. This allows us to provide clear, comprehensive reports that go beyond impressions to show you how your media spend is influencing website traffic, driving revenue, and contributing to your bottom line.

  4. Adapt: Optimizing for the Future We believe marketing should never be a "set it and forget it" strategy. We use performance data and customer feedback to optimize your campaigns in real time. This dynamic methodology allows us to respond to market influences, ensuring your campaigns are always competitive and adaptive.

An Integrated Media Mix to Capture Every Traveler

We build a holistic media plan that leverages the right channels to reach travelers at every stage of their journey. Our expertise covers the full media spectrum, with strategies specifically designed for destinations:

Streaming & Digital

We use top-tier platforms like Hulu, Roku & Spotify combined with powerful Paid Search (Google Ads), Social Media Ads, and Programmatic Display to capture active planners. This integrated digital approach allows us to build powerful "surround sound" campaigns that starts with streaming TV, then immediately capture that intent with hyper-targeted digital, ensuring we are present at both the moment of inspiration and the moment of decision.

TV & Cable Advertising

We use TV to create awe and drive desire for your destination. Our approach combines the broad brand-building reach of major broadcast networks (ABC, NBC, CBS) with the laser-focused targeting of cable channels (like Food Network, ESPN, or Travel Channel) to connect with specific lifestyle and demographic groups.

Radio & Audio Advertising

We create top-of-mind awareness and influence travelers on the go. Our disciplined, "by-the-book" buying process utilizes a layered strategy, combining multiple stations and formats to ensure your message blankets your target market and repeatedly connects with your audience in their cars—a critical touchpoint for drive-in visitors.

Out-of-Home (OOH) Ads

A critical component for influencing visitors en route. We strategically select and place your message on key highways and thoroughfares, transforming billboards from simple signs into powerful, directional beacons that guide travelers to your front door. The creative is always bold, simple, and memorable.

Print Media

We identify and place your brand in niche travel magazines, lifestyle publications, and key newspaper travel sections that speak directly to your ideal guest. These publications allow you to tell a deeper story and reach an affluent, discerning audience in a moment of relaxed inspiration, creating powerful brand validation that enhances the performance of your digital campaigns.

    The nxtConcepts Advantage: Your Unfair Edge

    For Ski & Winter Resorts

    • Deep Industry Fluency: We understand your world. We know the importance of drive markets, booking windows, and seasonal demand curves. We know when to launch a campaign for early-bird season pass sales or last-minute winter getaways.

    For Beach Resorts

    • Significant Cost Savings: Our buying power and negotiation expertise mean we secure better rates and added value (like bonus spots and premium placements) that you can't get on your own.

    For DMOs & CVBs

    • Unbiased, Strategic Recommendations: We are media agnostic. Our only goal is to build the most effective plan for you, using the channels that will best deliver on your objectives and generate tangible results.

      Good to Know

      Frequently Asked Questions

      Frequently Asked Questions about Media Planning, Negotiation & Buying Services

      Why should we use an agency for media buying instead of contacting media outlets directly?

      While you can certainly contact vendors directly, partnering with an agency provides three distinct advantages that lead to a better return on your investment:

      1. Strategic Planning: We provide an objective, high-level strategy to ensure you're investing in the right media mix to reach your goals, not just buying ads from the sales rep who calls you most often.

      2. Negotiating Power: We purchase media in high volumes for multiple clients. This gives us significant leverage to negotiate lower rates, premium placements, and "added value" extras (like bonus commercials or digital ad-ons) that are not typically offered to individual advertisers.

      3. Efficiency & Time Savings: We save your team dozens of hours each month by managing all the vendor communication, contracts, creative trafficking, and invoice reconciliation. We streamline the entire complex process, allowing you to focus on your destination.

      How does your agency save us money? Is it just about getting a lower ad rate?

      Securing lower ad rates is a key part of it, but the true savings are much broader. We save you money in three ways:

      • Better Rates & Added Value: Our buying power and relationships secure better pricing and no-cost extras that stretch your budget further.

      • Eliminating Wasted Spend: This is the most significant savings. Our strategic planning process ensures your budget is focused only on the channels and audiences that will deliver a return. We cut out the wasteful spending on ineffective legacy media buys.

      • Reduced Administrative Overhead: By handling the entire buying and management process, we save your team countless hours of work, which is a direct saving on staff time and resources.

      How do we know your media recommendations are unbiased and truly the best for our destination?

      Our guiding principle is to be media neutral. Our success is 100% tied to your success and the results we generate.  Unlike most media buying organizations, nxtConcepts believes you should only pay for work performed. That means we don’t pick media channels based on who gives the best commissions.  

      Our recommendations are based solely on data, extensive research into your target audience, and our decades of experience in what works for the travel and tourism industry. We choose media channels based on their proven ability to deliver on your specific Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), not on our commission structure. We view ourselves as dedicated stewards of your marketing budget, and that responsibility is our highest priority.

      It's easy to track a digital ad click. How do you measure the effectiveness of our print, radio, or billboard advertising?

      While offline media attribution isn't as simple as a click, we use a variety of proven methods to measure its impact:

      • Unique Offer Codes: We'll use a specific promo code for a print or radio ad (e.g., "Use code RADIO25 at checkout").

      • Vanity URLs: We create a unique, easy-to-remember URL for a campaign (e.g., "YourResort.com/Summer") that is only used in that specific ad.

      • Dedicated Tracking Phone Numbers: We can assign a unique phone number to an ad to track all the calls it generates.

      • Correlation Analysis: We analyze for spikes in direct website traffic and branded searches on Google that directly correlate with the timing of your broadcast, print, or out-of-home campaigns.

      We have a limited budget. Is this service only for destinations with large marketing spends?

      Not at all. In fact, a smart, focused strategy is even more critical when you're working with a limited budget. We excel at identifying the one or two channels that will provide the highest possible return for your specific goals. Our priority is to concentrate your resources for maximum impact, rather than spreading a smaller budget too thin across too many channels. We create custom plans that are right-sized for your objectives.