We’ve talked a lot about this in previous posts, but gone are the days when marketers could deliver vague top-of-funnel results and call it a day. Any good marketer would be happy with this change since today, technology has made it so that every piece of the pipeline across all channels can be connected, distilled, analyzed, and improved.

That includes the way marketers handle budgets across fiscal years all the way down to even the smallest ad spend. Once upon a time, all marketers could do was a set it, watch closely, and pause quickly when the threshold was reached approach to managing campaigns and budget caps. But what about goals and results? Sure staying within budget is a major goal, but it’s not the only KPI marketers want to hit.

That is where the magic of budget packing and KPI matching comes in. Keep reading to learn more about the huge advances you can make in your campaigns and day-to-day progress with this method, and more importantly, how to do it.

If you’re not already using an automated solution like AdStage’s Budget and KPI Pacing widget ( available in our Report product ) you’re probably staring down a pretty daunting spreadsheet on a regular basis (among many spreadsheet, right?). Maybe you’re keeping track of one campaign on one channel, or multiple campaigns on one channel, or perhaps even trying to match up multiple campaigns across multiple channels. And that’s just the budgeting part of it. Trying to match up every dollar to how close it’s getting you to your KPIs is a whole other slew of tabs. Perhaps you already know some of the benefits of pairing budget and KPI pacing, but adding an automated solution can push everything to the next level.

Never Overspend Again

With automated budget and KPI pacing, there are no surprises since you have always-on software constantly monitoring your campaigns’ performance. You can even set alerts should your budget suddenly start to get close to the threshold. You’ll also never have to stay up all night with your cursor hovered over the “pause” button to make sure you suspend your campaign before it clicks even a cent over a budget.

Make Changes Before It’s Too Late

Related to the point above, the beauty of monitoring pacing is that it gives you a idea of how campaign progress is trending. If 10 days into a 30-day campaign you see that you’re slated to overspend by 40% and your KPIs are way down, you may want to pause the entire campaign and revise the creative and strategy.

Know Where Every Dollar Is Going

Instead of simply watching the money fly out of your ad spend account, pairing budget with KPIs and monitoring pacing ensures you know where each dollar is being spent, and what it’s getting you. Now you can analyze overall progress, see which campaigns are giving you the most bang for your buck, and allocate budget there to maximize your results.

Always-On Views and Reporting For Quick Decision Making

Instead of manually going into your spreadsheet to update numbers and then exporting, an automated solution gives you a quick view of what’s going on in real-time. You can use that info to pat yourself on the back, allocate budget to top-performing, or share with clients or other stakeholders.

Use in Conjunction with the Time Series Widget for Forecasting

Knowing if you are on track is important, but what if you want to see where you might end up if you keep, for example, ad spend at its current rate? Use our Time Series Widget to predict your progress based on previous activity. Simply select a start date that includes data that you want your forecast based on, and an end date for when you want your prediction. And voila! You can see if your current pace will put you way over your goals, or if you have some room to dial things up! If you are at an agency managing accounts for clients, it's a great way to make sure you stay on track to meet your goals.

Delete The Spreadsheet

That almost sounds like it should be a hashtag — #DeleteTheSpreadsheet. An automated solution like AdStage’s Budget and KPI Pacing widget negates the need to for a complicated spreadsheet. The platform saves and calculates everything for you. And even cooler — any custom metrics that you create in any widget are available across all widgets for all channels.

Confidently Own Results

Marketers don’t just own budgets, they own results. Instead of reporting that you spent $20,000 dollars for some sales leads, pairing budget and KPI pacing lets you drill down into the data, even as it’s being accrued for an in-progress campaign.

Here at AdStage, we’re super excited about the solution we’ve created for paid marketers. As we continue building out the Budget and KPI Pacing widget, we see tons of useful applications like forecasting and drill down tables that will help you examine metrics ever closer.

If you’re not already using AdStage to manage and optimize your paid media campaigns, join our 14-day free trial . And read more about AdStage Report and how it can help you design beautiful, branded reports by adding your logo, commentary, and markup. Send it to your clients or teammates with a custom URL.