Automation for marketing and creative agencies

Where the hours actually go

Ask any agency owner where the time disappears and it is rarely the creative. It is everything around it.

• Pulling campaign data from many platforms into monthly client reports and decks
• Repurposing and scheduling content across channels
• Writing proposals and statements of work
• Tracking jobs, resource and timesheets
• Coordinating multi-market or multi-channel campaign delivery
• Reconciling billing

None of this is the work clients hired you for. It is the tax that sits on top of it. And as your client roster grows, that tax grows with it.

What we'd automate first

We don't arrive with a product to sell you. We sit down with the people who do the work, find the repetitive admin that is eating their week, and build something that fits the way your agency already runs. For most agencies, the early wins look like this:

• Client reports and dashboards. Assembled automatically from your data, in your template, so they are ready to send instead of built by hand every month
• Content repurposing and scheduling. One piece of work shaped for each channel and queued up, without anyone copying, cropping and re-posting by hand
• Proposal and statement-of-work generation. Drafted from your templates in minutes, not pieced together from scratch each time
• Campaign and asset delivery. Briefs, approvals and assets moving to the right people at the right time, with the chasing handled for you
• Pulling performance data into branded reports. Figures flow from your platforms into your layouts without anyone re-keying them, which removes both the time and the typos
• Lead and CRM hygiene. New enquiries captured, tidied and routed, so your pipeline stays clean without manual data entry

What you get

Your team back on creative and strategy. Reports that go out on time, every time, rather than the night before the client call. And the capacity to take on more clients without hiring purely to keep up with account admin.

The real win isn't the hours saved, though you will get those too. It is being able to grow the agency without the account-admin growing at the same rate.

Questions agencies ask

Is my agency too small for this?

Small agencies often get the most out of it, because there is no operations team to absorb the work. When it is a lean team of creatives and account handlers, every hour spent assembling reports is an hour not spent on client work. We scope projects so the cost matches the size of the problem, not the size of the agency.

Will this replace my team?

No. It takes the repetitive admin and reporting off their plate so they can do the creative and strategic work clients pay for. Most agencies we talk to aren't trying to cut people. They are trying to stop talented people leaving because they are buried in reporting and re-keying.

Is my and my clients' data safe?

Your clients trust you with their accounts and their data, so we treat it that way. We build privacy controls in from the start, keep your data inside systems you control, and design every step so you can see what happened and why. You stay in charge of who can see what.

Will it work with the tools we already use?

That is the point. We don't ask you to rip out your reporting, social and project tools and start again. We connect to what you already run so the automation fits around your tools, not the other way around.

Will automated reports look generic or off-brand?

No. Reports are built from your own templates, layouts and voice, so they go out looking like your agency made them, because in every way that matters, you did. The work that disappears is the assembly, not the craft.

How much does it cost, and when does it pay back?

Projects typically start where the pain is sharpest and the payback is quickest, so the first piece earns its keep before you commit to the next. If you want a rough sense of what a single manual process, such as monthly client reporting, is already costing you, our free process cost calculator gives you a number in about a minute.

Is this right for you?

This works well when:

• Client reporting eats days every month
• Your team re-keys campaign data between platforms and decks
• Proposals are pieced together by hand each time
• You turn down work because the team is buried in admin
• You want to scale the client roster without scaling account-management overhead

Industries we work with

Marketing and creative agencies are one of the sectors we focus on. We build similar automation for other owner-led firms whose people are buried in admin:

• Accountancy practices
• Architecture, surveying and planning
• Recruitment agencies
• Renewables, clean-tech and environmental
• Insurance and mortgage brokers

Curious what your manual processes are really costing? Try the process cost calculator. This is one application of our business process automation work; the usual starting point is to map your business first.