Getting Started

When you first sign in, the dashboard shows a card called Finish setting up PRIZM. It lists seven steps, five required and two optional. This post walks through them in order and explains why each one matters. You can work through it in an afternoon, and most of it you only do once.

1. Add your first client

Every plan belongs to a client, so start under Clients and click + New Client. A name is enough to begin. Contact details can come later.

Clients are shared across your workspace. Once one person adds a client, everyone on the team can build plans for it.

2. Set your default margins

Go to Organization Settings → Builder Config. The Tactic Margins section lets you set a default campaign margin and, if you need them, separate margins by tactic.

This step matters more than it looks. Vendors have minimum spends, and PRIZM checks those minimums against your spend after margin comes out. If your margins are wrong, the builder can put a line in the plan that won't clear the vendor's minimum once you actually place the buy.

While you're on this page, look at the two other sections:

• Vendors tells the builder which vendors you'd rather use for a tactic. Preferred vendors rank first. When one can't cover a line, the builder falls back to another vendor.
• Unavailable Tactics blocks tactics your team can't run. Blocked tactics never show up in a generated plan.

3. Tune your tactic catalog

PRIZM ships with a library of tactics and vendors, each with a baseline rate. You probably buy some things it doesn't carry, and you've probably negotiated better rates on others.

• Org Tactics is where you add tactics that aren't in the PRIZM catalog.
• Org Vendors is where you add vendors you buy through that aren't listed.

Rates resolve in a fixed order: the tactic's baseline rate, then the vendor's rate, then your organization's negotiated rate. The most specific one wins, and each line in a plan records which rate it used. Enter a negotiated rate once and every future plan picks it up. Plans you've already built keep the rates they were made with.

4. Build your first media plan

Click Create Plan in the sidebar. You'll get three ways to start:

• New Media Plan starts from a blank questionnaire.
• New Media Plan From Template starts from answers you saved earlier.
• New Media Plan From Existing copies a plan you've already built.

For your first plan, choose the blank one. The questionnaire has five steps, and they cover about what a client kickoff call covers.

1. Campaign Basics. Client, campaign name, flight dates, industry, budget, and margin. The flight dates decide which months the budget is spread across.
2. Campaign Goals. Your primary goal and the KPI you'll be judged on, plus an optional second goal. If the goal is conversion, add a conversion rate and value.
3. Demographics. Age, income, geography, and the other audience details that shape which tactics fit.
4. Logistics. Tracking method, which DSPs you have access to, and whether to plan vendors now. If the buy isn't settled yet, turn vendors off. You can assign them from the plan later.
5. Review. Check your answers, then click Create Plan.

PRIZM then runs your answers through its algorithm. First it filters out tactics you can't run, based on your creative assets, platform access, and audience data. Then it scores what's left on fit with your industry, funnel stage, goal, audience, and timing. Finally it balances the mix so awareness, engagement, and conversion are all covered. You get a draft with tactics, rates, and monthly spend already filled in.

5. Work the draft, then finalize it

The draft is meant to be edited. Treat it like a first pass from a capable planner who doesn't know everything you know about this client.

From the plan page you can:

• Add or remove tactics.
• Open a tactic to adjust its dates or override its budget for a given month.
• Set up audiences and geographies, and assign each geography to an audience.
• Assign vendors, if you skipped them in the questionnaire. Auto-assign fills in every line it can, and you can change any of them afterward.

When the plan looks right, click Review & Finalize. PRIZM runs a set of checks and marks each one as pass, warn, or fail, and it shows your effective budget, target versus actual margin, and net profit. Warnings are worth reading, but they won't stop you. Failures will, so fix those first, then click Finalize.

A finalized plan moves from Drafts to Active.

6. Export and hand it off

Open the Export menu on any plan.

• Plan data (CSV) has one row per line, month, audience, and market. It's ready for a trafficking sheet or a pivot table, and you can download it from a draft too.
• Proposal (PDF) is the client-facing deck, with charts drawn from the plan itself.
• Internal proposal (PDF) is the same deck with margin included. It's marked in red so nobody sends it to a client by mistake.
• Graphics (PNG) are the individual charts, for dropping into your own decks.

PDFs and graphics need a finalized plan. You can start editing the proposal copy while the plan is still a draft, though. PRIZM writes a first version of the copy, and you can rewrite any block of it.

Once a plan goes out, use Update Status to track where it stands: submitted, active, sent back for revision, or closed. If the client asks for changes, click Create New Version instead of editing the original. The version you presented stays exactly as it was, and new versions don't count against your monthly plan allowance.

Optional: save a template and invite your team

These two steps aren't required, but they're where PRIZM starts saving you real time.

Save as Template stores a plan's questionnaire answers. The next plan for that client, or for another client in the same industry, starts with those answers filled in. You can clear any field on a template that should be answered fresh each time.

Organization Settings → Users is where you invite the rest of your planners. They'll get an email invite and join your workspace with your clients, rates, and templates already in place. Then everyone on the team builds plans from the same setup instead of their own copy of last year's spreadsheet.

If you get stuck, email [email protected].