‘Innovation’ is the only constant term in today’s digital marketing era. With the ever growing needs and demands of this industry, Ad Agencies across the globe are discovering various ways and means to make the process of delivering value to the customer easier. Ever wondered if there could be an easier way to manage & organize all the money you spend across various platforms for various brands? Yes, you’re right! An ad spent invoicing software that ad agencies are in utmost need of. Well, there is.
Apart from the social media management that ad agencies handle, setting up and running ad campaigns takes up the most amount of time and effort. We all know why! Right from setting up campaigns, deciding the budget allocation to tracking the amount spent across channels, the entire process becomes cumbersome when there are multiple brands to manage.
Say you are an ad agency expert and you manage the ad accounts of 5 brands. Your daily task list would look somewhat like – Generate Google AdWords report, check Facebook Ads Manager, track leads from Google Display Network campaign, social media spends and management, monitor Twitter analytics etc for all the five brands. Agree? Now think how much time you spend to track and organize the amounts spent in an excel sheet across the channels mentioned above. Okay, let’s not even get there.
How an ad spent invoicing software looks like
This is exactly where ad agencies need an ad spent invoicing software. The Ad Agency Billing Software will bridge this gap to be able to effectively organize ad spend data at one place.
How will a invoicing software be helpful to ad agencies?
At the end of every month, ad agencies generate reports from every channel separately to calculate the amount spent in order to process invoices to the clients. Invoicing process for each brand requires the dedicated finance or accounts team to look at multiple excel sheets maintained for multiple channels in order to calculate the total spend.
Also, there could be chances that we miss out on recording a few transactions amongst so many of them on a daily basis.
An ad spent invoicing software eases the process by accurately pulling ad spend data from multiple platforms and generates custom invoices based on the fixed monthly budget or a specified percentage of the ad spend.
Wondering how this would work if you use other software such as Zoho or Quickbook? This smart ad spent invoicing software shall send data to your respective accounts on these tools too, leaving you with no reason to not opt for this.
What all platforms or channels does the ad spent invoicing software pull data from?
The invoicing software solution makes ad campaign management easier as it tracks ad spend data from all the platforms such as Facebook Ad Manager or Optimizer, Google AdWords, Twitter Analytics and other social media channels. It’s a one-stop-solution for all you ad agencies out there!
Now, if you were to pick between manual input vs an automated tool what would you choose? We got the answer and you’re welcome!
Remember that as you are growing as a company, the number of brands coming on board will only keep increasing; thereby demanding a hassle-free and convenient way of organizing ad spends.
Ad spend invoicing challenges faced by an agency
We approached a renowned digital advertising agency based out of Miami to understand their current ad spend invoicing method. This agency is serving 30 brands which are large and small in size, and are into various verticals such as Retail, B2B, Manufacturing, Ecommerce, and more.
The agency specializes in offering services in Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing, Web Designing and more! It maintains an in-house team of digital marketing experts,who use technology to meet their brand’s goals. They have an in-house team of over 60 full-time marketers. Has the depth and breadth to manage complex, multi-front campaigns that deliver continuously improving results.
Bill who hold the position of Senior Account Manager is responsible for managing these 30 brands. He is handling them through his team of 5 Account Executives. 7 years at this agency has given him ample knowledge of the all the processes.
His team comprises of Alice (handles 7 brands), Sally (5), Bret (4), Stacey (9), and Megan (5). These executives manage Facebook, Adwords, Local Listing sites, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Bing accounts for these brands.
Every month end they are generating reports of spend data through excel. This is tedious, time consuming of skilled resources, and requires manual intervention. This report is then spent to their finance department, so that brands receive their monthly invoice on time.
Cost of not having an invoicing software
Cost of skilled resources is $50/hr as per Miami employment research reports. The labour law of US restricts individuals to work only for 8 hrs per day. These above executives take around 30hrs as a whole for all the 30 brands. Therefore cost incurred is around $1500, just to generate an excel report manually.
That’s absurd(slapstick) isn’t it?
Looking into the gravity of the situation & the cost of resources , just to prepare an excel report, Bill one day came out with a eye-opening thought of why not go for ad spend invoicing software solution? Which later proved to be a lightning bolt for the agency.
Note: All the names used in this case study is hypothetical as we don’t encourage disclosure of any names.
Key take away
This software is not a must for agencies with few niche brands. But is relevant for agencies that are handling more than 10 ad spend accounts or more than 10 brands.
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