Advertising and marketing teams use a variety of tools to submit and collect new orders. Some companies (especially larger ones) rely on popular CRM platforms for this. Smaller companies, like boutique marketing agencies, often handle order management through more basic solutions like Google Forms or email threads.
These patched-together systems aren't made specifically for order management, which leads to inefficiencies that bog down execution. So companies who want to optimize their ad operations workflow are looking to order management systems.
By using an advertising order management system(OMS) you can streamline your ad sales process, from managing multiple rate cards based on peak seasons to building a product catalog that matches your agency's services and pricing.
But most advertising order management systems(OMS) don't seamlessly integrate with your workflow management platform or your reporting and analytics tool which means they're only built for the first part of an order's lifecycle.
This can lead to more manual work for your team as now the different parts of your business are using disparate platforms (that often can't integrate with each other) to process orders. The more manual work your team has to do for each order, the harder it is to grow your advertising revenue streams and increase profits.
So when you're looking for a new OMS, you're going to reap the most benefits from a tool that incorporates workflow management and reporting, and analytics into your order management system.
It's better to use a marketing operations platform with an order management system built in. That way not only do you get an OMS, but your OMS is connected to the other key parts of your marketing operations, including:
- A workflow management platform: Once the order is submitted, it's taken over by the ad ops team who then will work on creating the order. This means reaching out to the client to flesh out order details and then managing internal players (designers, developers, strategists, etc).
- A customizable data analysis tool: After your order is developed and launched, you want to track its performance. If your OMS doesn't have an analytics feature that means you're now using yet another tool (with separate logins and yet another user interface).
- A reporting tool: Finally, whether we're talking about internal or external stakeholders, you need a way to build visually engaging reports and send them out to the right recipients.
By connecting these key operational tools into a single platform like TapClicks, you can optimize your process and workflows significantly. This not only helps your business grow but also helps you maximize profits from your advertising revenue by requiring less labor per order.
Below, we discuss how our order management system works, and how we've incorporated it into our platform to integrate with the rest of your marketing operations.
If you're ready to connect your advertising order management system with the rest of your marketing operations, try our free 14-day trial.
TapOrders: How the TapClicks Advertising Order Management SystemWorks
TapOrders lets you streamline your order management process by enabling a seamless transfer of orders from your sales team to your ad ops team.
Here's how it works in practice.
From your TapClicks dashboard, click on Orders, and then Create New Order.
Here your sales team fills out the information the ad ops needs to start working on the order.
Most of our clients tailor their order forms to focus on capturing big picture information, such as budget, dates, and demographics. (When the order is received by their ad op steam, the ad ops team can reach out to the new client and flesh out the exact line items for the campaign.)
This removes friction in the sales workflow and lets sales teams do what they do best (close leads and move them down the funnel) while giving the ad ops team the information they need to reach out and build a campaign for the new or existing client.
Note: TapClicks is used by large media companies, brands, and digital marketing agencies to capture various types of marketing orders. And the level of customization we offer our customers is unparalleled. You can change the details of the order form in whatever way you need to match your internal processes.
After your sales team creates the order, your ad operation team takes over the order and uses the info submitted to start work on executing the order.
Integrate Your CRM with TapClicks
Some companies (especially larger companies with a robust sales team) may already be using a CRM system like Salesforce that they don't want to leave. However, these companies are still searching for an OMS because they need a better way to take the information captured in Salesforce and distribute it to their ad ops team.
With TapClicks, you can easily integrate with CRM platforms like Salesforce.
Now when an order is submitted by your team via your company's CRM tool, it's pushed directly to TapClicks for your ad ops to take over, which we cover next.
Connecting Your Order Management System with Your Ad Operations
Once an order is submitted, it's viewable in the Open Order tab.
On this screen, your team can quickly see the following:
- Salesperson who submitted the order.
- Campaign start date and end date.
- Order status.
- Client name and sales region.
If your business is responsible for multiple regions, your employees can select which region they want to view on the orders screen to weed out any unnecessary orders.
Usually, you don't want your advertising sales team to spend a lot of time building out an order. That isn't their skill set, and you'd rather them be following up with and closing new leads.
But you want the handoff between the sales team and ad ops team to be seamless so the customer doesn't feel a shift in culture or attention when they start working with your ads op team.
With TapClicks, the customer info is easily stored and can be referenced by the ad ops team. As part of TapWorkflow, our workflow management tool, when they click on the order number, they're taken to a high-level overview of where the task is currently sitting within your company's internal process.
This gives your ad ops team the information needed to reach out to the client and start conversations with them on what their digital media order needs to accomplish.
Plus, to replace the number of platforms your team needs to communicate with each other, you can take advantage of TapWorkflow's messaging feature, which lets your team leave comments on the right-hand side of the order details page.
Automating Ad Order Managementwith TapWorkflow
Your workflowapproval process can be customized to match your company's internal structure. For example, an order can be submitted by your ad sales teamand then automatically routed to your ad opsteam.
From there, your ad opsteam can reach out to the new client, finalize order details, and then push the task along to creative to build out the ad.
TapWorkflow uses workflow automation to cut down on the time it takes to finish an order. The moment someone finishes their task, TapWorkflow takes the order out of their queue and moves it along to the next responsible party.
Your team can see what work has been done on an order, any relevant communication, and where in the approval process the order is currently sitting.
Launching an Order from withinTapClicks
TapClicks has begun to roll out a new feature: launching campaigns directly to ad networks from within their TapClicks dashboard.
We're working on taking the entire lifecycle of an order and letting you manage it, from order creation to launch and measurement, from within one platform.
Currently, our integrations work with a handful of platforms, such as Google Ads and Google Ads Manager (or through Zapier via our configurable webhook). However, we will be expanding this service to other advertising platforms, such as Instagram and Facebook.
Another way to reduce the amount of manual tasks required by your marketers is to use Automate by AdStage.
Automate by AdStage is a TapClicks company that lets you pause and re-activate PPC campaigns based on key metrics for optimization. This helps your PPC campaigns remain as profitable as possible (especially during peak times when the cost per click is increasing).
This brings us to the next features, our order management system integrates with reporting and analytics.
Note: We can also integrate with any billing and invoicing system you currently use to ensure the two systems are connected and working together.
Integrating Order Management with Reporting and Analytics
What we've covered above are the efficiencies of combining your order management system with a workflow management platform. By using the same tool to submit the order that your team uses to build the order, you cut down on the manual work required by both parties.
(Plus, by using TapWorkflow, you can heavily automate the workflow process of handing off tasks as your team builds an order.)
There's a similar opportunity for digital advertising teams when it comes to managing their reporting and analytics.
Most OMS systems are completely separate from your reporting and analytics tools. This creates more swivel-chair work than necessary. Without a tool that houses both your OMS and your reporting and analytics, you're forced to scan over multiple monitors and dashboards to try and understand what changes you need to make in ongoing campaigns.
Let's look at how TapClicks connects your OMS with your reporting and analytics tools.
Centralize Your Data Sets into One Customizable Dashboard
TapClicks customers can use highly customizable reporting dashboard templates in TapAnalytics.
This reporting dashboard can pull in real-time data from over 250 different marketing and ad tech platforms. (We have live API integrations with leading ad platforms like AmazonAds and Google Ads, programmatic tools,and more.)
This data is pulled in and organized by TapClicks so your team doesn't need to map the data (the way they would have to when using Excel).
Data can be organized into widgets which are easily created and modified.
There are several benefits of having your analytics tool housed in the same marketing operations platform.
For example, you can set up alerts for specific metrics. Let's say you want to monitor the return on ad spend of a specific campaign. You can set an alert so that if the cost of the ad crosses a specific threshold, then a notification goes out to your marketing team who can then take a closer look at and optimize the current advertising campaign.
They can then easily cross-reference the cost of the ad, with the overall strategy as outlined in the history of the order.
Easily Create and Send Recurring White-Label Reports
Finally, it only makes sense to connect your reporting tool with the rest of your marketing operations which is what we did with TapReports.
With TapReports, you can take the data we discussed above and send one-off or recurring reports. Automating your reporting helps reduce the time your advertising business is going to spend on creating and sending out reports (by hundreds of hours per month for some of our customers).
These reports can be sent to internal or external stakeholders, and in various file types (PDF, PPT, CSV, etc.).
Finally, you can also set custom permissions to let your clients log into a client-friendly version of your advertising dashboard. Here your clients can see the data that's relevant to them, such as impressions click-through rate or overall return on ad spend.
Note: Our reports are white-label which means you can customize them to match your agency's brand or your client's brand.
Integrating Advertising Order Management with the Rest of Your Marketing Operations
An advertising order management system can help streamline your order management. But most order management systems exist separately from the rest of your business needs.
With TapClicks, we've created the functionality you need to order, execute, and measure digital ads in a single marketing ecosystem.
Our platform gives you access to four key aspects of your marketing operations:
- TapOrders: TapOrders lets you create order forms that your sales team can fill out when closing a lead. When an order is submitted, it goes directly to your ad ops team.
- TapWorkflow: In TapWorkflow, your ad ops team takes over, handling contact management with the new clients, and then working with creative and developers to turn an order into a ready-to-launch campaign.
- TapAnalytics: After your order is launched, you can track performance in TapAnalytics. Our customizable dashboard lets you pull in the data you need to evaluate performance.
- TapReports: Whether you're using internal or external reports, you can set up recurring reports with TapReports or quickly build ad hoc reports.
Your company can reap the benefits of one or two of these tools such as using TapOrders and TapWorkflow to streamline communication between your sales team and ad ops team or of all four, creating a full-service experience in one platform.
If you're ready to connect your advertising order management system with the rest of your marketing operations, try our free 14-day trial.
