A consistent theme in our blog posts has centered around media recommendations based on the best way to find and reach your business’s target audience. Here at Sentinel Solutions, we advocate for a data-informed approach that places our client needs first.
Because Sentinel Solutions was born out of a local newspaper that has served our community for more than two centuries, we understand that potential clients may think we might lean toward including The Keene Sentinel in all our media recommendations. But that’s just not the case. We always seek the best media solution that delivers our client’s target audience. Sometimes that includes newspaper recommendations, sometimes not.
We believe it is important for a marketing agency to use a data-informed, agnostic approach to media recommendations because it ensures that decisions are made in the client’s best interests, not biased by preferences, partnerships, history, habit, or assumptions.
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Here’s why the data-informed approach is best:
Client Goals Come First: An agnostic approach focuses on meeting the client’s specific objectives whether that’s brand awareness, lead generation, or conversions. Rather than pushing predefined media channels, this leads to customized strategies that are more effective for clients.
Better Performance Through Objectivity: Using data to drive decisions helps avoid the “we’ve always done it this way” trap. Instead of defaulting to familiar or favored platforms (like always recommending paid social), the agency chooses the best-performing channels based on actual performance data.
More Efficient Media Spend: A data-informed approach ensures that budgets are allocated to what works. This improves return on marketing investment and reduces waste by optimizing channels, placements, and tactics based on performance trends.
Builds Trust and Transparency: Clients are more likely to trust agencies that clearly show why certain media are being recommended. A data-backed, unbiased rationale builds credibility and encourages long-term partnerships.
Adapts to Changing Markets and Behaviors: Media consumption habits change fast. A data-informed, media agnostic agency can pivot quickly, adjusting strategies as platforms evolve or as consumer behavior shifts, rather than sticking to outdated media plans based on past-practice or embedded assumptions.
Supports Testing and Innovation: When no channel is favored by default, there’s more room to test new tactics and discover emerging opportunities including niche platforms or high performing long-tail search keywords that may outperform traditional channels.
To share an example of a data-informed media recommendation process, here at Sentinel Solutions we recently delivered a comprehensive proposal to a client interested in reaching a select target audience. Our media recommendations followed a data-driven strategy:
- Data and insights enabled us to learn who the best prospects are for our client and where those prospects live, work, play, and how they engage with media.
- Data additionally provided what we need to know as to when and how to deliver the best message to that target audience to inspire engagement and activation.
For this client we identified where their target audience was located, including the top zip codes within the target demography and geography that held the highest concentrations of target prospects, including the number of prospects within each zip code and how that zip code indexed against the mean. In this way we ensure the recommended target markets held the highest concentrations of the target audience with each zip code the highest in both audience density and relevance. This ensures the markets are ideal for precision targeting, stronger engagement, and measurable return-on-investment.
Next, we combined index scores with estimated audience counts to identify the life-stage segments most likely to include our target audience. For our client we identified the top four segments based on both scale and alignment with key traits.
Then we analyzed media engagement among our client’s top audience groups, focusing on platforms with index scores above 100. These indicators reveal how our client’s audience media habits differ from the average…Giving us the insights needed to craft targeted strategies that meet them where they’re most active and engaged.
Data informed our recommendations.
These data insights, and this client’s objectives and available budget, led to our recommendation that the client invest in audio and video development and storytelling along with custom multimedia landing pages including basic on-page SEO and website tracking analytics. Our data-informed media recommendations included streaming solutions including audio, connected TV, and YouTube. Our media suggestions further included targeted display advertising, geofencing, targeted social media advertising, search, and website and social media remarketing.
No newspapers. The target audience isn’t reading them.
A data-informed, agnostic media strategy ensures that recommendations are objective, accountable, and results-driven. It’s how Sentinel Solutions and other credible agencies stay effective, adaptive, and client-centric in a rapidly evolving media landscape.
If your agency isn’t using data to support their media recommendations, or always seemingly offering the same solutions, consider one that leverages data to ensure your marketing dollars are being invested as wisely as possible.
Give us a call at 603-352-5896 or email Advertising@SentinelDigitalSolutions.com if we can be of help offering consultative guidance on helping you to identify your target audience and how best to reach them.
We are experts in multimedia marketing and can help you build a compelling campaign that engages your audience and drives sales.
We’re here to help you succeed.
Disclosure: This post was curated with AI assistance.
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