Managing and Monitoring a Marketing Budget

The Guests

Dominic Albano is a Senior Software Engineer and Tyler Juhola is a Senior Account Executive at Shape Integrated Software, a PPC budget monitoring platform, recently acquired by NinjaCat, that helps clients take control of their digital advertising spend. Dominic is a mechanical engineer turned software engineer with decades of experience in the space, and Tyler is a former PPC analyst who now focuses on business development and they’re here today to talk about managing and monitoring marketing budgets.

The Interview

One of the most critical factors underpinning marketing and digital advertising is the budget. From ROI, to ROAS, to CAC, CTRs and CLV, the ways marketers retroactively measure the effectiveness and efficiency of their budgets are legion, but the ways in which they monitor and manage the real-time impacts, are few.

This is why Dominic & Tyler were present during the founding of Shape, the PPC budget monitoring software that was born out of the fire of over or underspent budgets, and the heated conversations between agency and client that typically follow such calamities.

“Our founding team came from the digital marketing agency space,” explains Tyler. “We had tried a number of products that helped with campaign monitoring, but we had trouble tracking all the engagements and conversions in a centralized space, and then turning those data points into an ROAS dashboard that we could share with clients. Seeing that there was a product-market gap in this area, Shape was created to help track spend and scale an agency’s client list.”

Both Dominic and Tyler agree that budget monitoring is an aspect of advertising that doesn’t require a ton of experience, but does require vigilance and consistency, which is where software like Shape can help marketers focus on the fun stuff, like ad creation and segmentation.

“Trust is really the key element to the agency/client relationship,” explains Dominic. “With all the new ad platforms coming online, the network effects of these interrelationships have to be tracked and paced. When an ad budget is overspent or not met, that trust can be broken.”

When asked how proper monitoring and tracking of a marketing budget can help in securing a larger budget, both Dominic and Tyler stressed the significance of trust and establishing an understanding of the importance of testing.

“It’s really a matter of initially spending the agreed amount on ads, tracking effectiveness, and then using those data points to optimize the strategy and budget.” says Tyler.

Dominic expands on how budget monitoring, and pacing of campaigns, can help find more opportunities for ad dollars.

“This is why so many advertisers are focusing on pacing lately. Advertisers want to keep their ads in front of an audience, and proper monitoring makes this possible.”

To learn how marketing budget monitoring can massively reduce man hours, how Shape empowers agencies to scale their business models and take on more clients, and how Tyler and Dominic approach a breakfast buffet, listen to the show at the links provided above and below.

The Links

Shape.io
Shape Blog
Dominic on LinkedIn
Tyler on LinkedIn

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