AxisIQ for digital marketing agencies

AxisIQ runs a marketing agency's retainers, form-fed client briefs, proposals, deliverable tasks and timesheets, with ad accounts and content one switch away.

AxisIQ gives a digital marketing agency one live workspace for running client accounts: briefs that arrive through a form on your website, proposals priced as retainers or one-off projects, monthly retainers with the hours they include, deliverables as tasks with a client-review step, timesheets that show which retainers are being over-serviced, and GST invoices with the TDS your clients deduct. It starts from the Agencies & Professional Services template, and two platform apps a marketing agency uses most — Web Campaigns and Content Studio — are one switch away in Settings → Apps.

Where a marketing agency's operations break

Most agencies run on retainers, and retainers fail quietly. The scope said twelve social posts, two campaign reports and a monthly review call; by month four the client gets twenty posts, ad-hoc landing pages and a WhatsApp group that expects replies at 10 pm. Nobody is counting, because the hours live in a sheet no one reconciles with the fee.

Briefs are the other leak. A new enquiry comes in through the website, an Instagram DM and a founder's referral, each in a different inbox, and the ones nobody follows up on simply vanish. The proposal that follows is a deck, and the commercial terms in it never reach whoever raises the invoice. Freelance designers, video shoots and stock footage are bought for a client and then forgotten when the invoice goes out.

How the template covers it

• Client brief is the front door. The template ships a published Start a project form — company, contact, what you need, service, budget, ideal start date and the brief itself; once the owner grants public access, embed it on your site with Forms. Every submission becomes a numbered brief (BRF-2026-0001), and a flow opens an Opportunity at the lead stage. Intake form guide.
• Proposal (auto-numbered QTN-) and Proposal line price the pitch, sent as the template's Proposal PDF: a monthly retainer line, a fixed fee for a website or launch campaign, hourly rates, rebillable media or production. Accepting the proposal wins the opportunity, and the won deal opens an Engagement in setup.
• Retainer holds the monthly fee, hours included, the overage rate per hour, the billing day and the renewal date, with a status that shows renewal due before it lapses.
• Task is a deliverable — the October content calendar, a festive campaign creative, a monthly performance report — with an assignee, a due date, priority, and a client review status between in progress and done.
• Timesheet entry records hours by activity, including content, design, campaign management and client meetings, and marks hours on a retainer as covered. Hours against a retainer's included hours is the over-servicing number, and Utilisation % (30 days) sits on the Practice overview dashboard.
• How did we do? is a second ready form: send it at month-end or a campaign wrap, and ratings, likelihood to recommend and comments land as Client feedback records.
• Project expense and Vendor catch freelancers, production houses, media sellers and stock assets, with a rebillable flag so a shoot paid for a client is rebilled on an Invoice line instead of absorbed.

Switching on Web Campaigns and Content Studio

The template leaves both off because it serves every kind of firm — a CA practice has no ad accounts. An agency that runs ads or content for clients turns them on in Settings → Apps.

Web Campaigns connects ad and marketing platforms — Meta, Google Ads, LinkedIn, Reddit, Amazon, Mailchimp and Klaviyo — over OAuth, with the login that already has access to your clients' accounts. Each ad account appears and can be enabled or left out. Campaigns and daily spend, impressions, clicks and conversions (for the platforms whose performance is synced) are mirrored into your workspace every hour, so a cross-client view comes from one place instead of seven dashboards, and spend becomes ordinary SQL in Analytics next to your retainers and invoices. You can pause or resume a campaign or change its budget or dates from AxisIQ, where that platform's API allows it; creating campaigns and ads stays in the ad platforms. Accounts in different currencies are kept apart, not summed.

Content Studio is a headless CMS: markdown documents in buckets where the path is the URL, with SEO fields, tags, draft-and-publish snapshots, AI drafting, and a public delivery API that also generates the sitemap, robots.txt and llms.txt. An agency can run a client's blog or resource centre from it, with the client's site rendering its own design from the API. See Content Studio.

What to ask Ask Axis to add

• "Add a deliverable type field to tasks: social post, reel, blog, landing page, report."
• "On retainers, add the number of posts and reels included each month."
• "When a retainer becomes renewal due, open a task to prepare the renewal proposal."
• "Add a dashboard widget comparing hours logged against hours included for each active retainer this month."
• "Add a report of Meta spend by ad account for the last 30 days."

Ask Axis changes the live workspace under your permissions and asks before anything destructive. See Ask Axis.

One honest limit

AxisIQ does not create ads, audiences or creatives, and it does not post to social channels. Web Campaigns reads and controls campaigns that already exist; publishing a client's Instagram calendar stays in your scheduling tool.

FAQ

What is the best way to manage retainers in a digital marketing agency? Record each retainer's fee, hours included and overage rate, log time against it, and compare the two every month; in AxisIQ that comparison is a dashboard widget over your own records.

Can clients send briefs through a form on our website? Yes. The template's Start a project form can be embedded on your site once public access is granted, and each submission opens a lead in the pipeline.

Can AxisIQ show ad spend across all our clients' Meta and Google Ads accounts? Yes, once Web Campaigns is switched on and the accounts are connected; spend and performance are mirrored hourly and can be reported across accounts.

Can AxisIQ run our clients' blogs? With Content Studio switched on, you write and publish markdown content per client bucket, and their website renders it through the delivery API.

Does AxisIQ schedule social media posts? No. Deliverables are tracked as tasks with client review, but posting stays in your social scheduling tool.

Start with the Agencies & Professional Services template — or see AxisIQ in action. Back to AxisIQ for agencies & professional services.