3 Simple Ways to Maximize Your Digital Ad Spend

Thanks to advancements in digital marketing, it’s never been easier for startups to instantly reach customers and fuel rapid growth. Online advertising platforms like Google, Facebook, and Instagram have become vital to building brand awareness, generating web traffic, and boosting sales.

However, as your company’s ad expenditures increase (often exponentially), credit can prove to be restrictive and spend management more strenuous. The good news is there are steps you can take now to avoid future operational headaches and squeeze every drop of value out of your marketing budget.

Here are our top three tips for optimizing your digital ad spend and making it work for your business.

1. Proactively set up a beneficial payment structure.

For most startups, digital ad campaigns are simple to launch with a credit card. However, once your company hits a certain level of spending, ad platforms such as Facebook and Google may move your account to monthly invoicing.

This approach locks you into their terms (typically 30 days) and their monthly credit limit (with few or zero options to request a higher amount). When paying by invoice, you also miss out on opportunities to maximize rewards like cash back.

Instead of waiting to be invoiced by digital ad platforms, you can proactively set up your payment structure to accommodate increased campaign spending. With modern corporate cards, you can automate vendor payments and leverage more flexible terms to optimize your cash flow or enjoy lucrative rewards—the choice is yours.

For instance, the Rho Card, powered by the Rho platform, gives you the option to earn meaningful cash back with a one-day settle or increase your float by extending payment terms up to 60 days (monthly statement period + 30 days to pay).

You may be asking, “What if the ad platform tries to move me to invoicing?” In our experience, most vendors will accept credit cards if you push back—especially when you’re a high-spending customer.

2. Make sure your credit limit isn’t a limitation.

When your company outgrows the credit limit on your current card, you run the risk of having your digital ads paused until the balance is paid down (which can end up being a weekly or even daily chore). Facing an inadequate credit limit, your team may turn to juggling multiple cards. Sometimes, even this inefficient approach doesn’t provide enough spending leeway for the monthly digital marketing budget.

The problem is that traditional card providers employ a rigid, overly conservative underwriting process and are typically slow to adjust your credit limit to your company’s growth.

Rho’s holistic underwriting process enables us to offer a credit limit that’s reflective of where your company is today—and, more importantly, where you’re heading next. With a high, scalable credit limit, you can use the Rho Card to consolidate your digital ad spend under one account, without worrying about your campaigns coming to a screeching halt.

3. Achieve more visibility and control over your ad spend.

As vital as digital advertising is to your growth, managing campaign expenses and budgets can become a burden on your finance team. If they’re not keeping an eye on spending thresholds, they’re sifting through monthly credit card statements to find specific transactions among hundreds of purchases. What if there was a way to simplify and automate this process?

With the Rho Card, you can assign individual cards to different recurring ad channels, such as Google or Facebook, providing instant clarity into spending per platform. You can also tie that card to a specific budget, such as “Paid Marketing”, to automatically allocate card transactions to that budget. To safely control spend, you may customize rules and restrictions for each card that align with the needs of your specific campaigns and vendors. Finally, all transactions flow into a single, integrated banking platform that syncs to your accounting software for simple reconciliation, auditing, and budgeting.

The sky’s the limit.

A card with a high credit limit and innovative features such as flexible credit terms can be an indispensable tool for maintaining consistent digital ad operations, optimizing cash flow, and reaping the rewards of cash back—all of which deliver a greater ROI on your marketing investment.

To find out what type of corporate card and credit limit your company really deserves, talk to our Rho specialists about applying for the Rho Card.

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