Agency Analytics vs. Cision Communications Cloud

Agency Analytics has made marketing procedure effective, where all the approaches have been brought in a single dashboard, for easy functionality. Also, the back link tracking or monitoring has been efficiently handled by the application. The SEO procedure from Agency Analytics perfects the ranking of what we market and we secure more audiences. Finally, the competitive analysis from Agency Analytics captures the exact information concerning the opponents and the services or products they offer.

Incentivized

For a small start-up, the cost-benefit to add lift to press releases [and] particular milestone accomplishments is definitely there with the Cision [Communications] Cloud. Much of what we do, by necessity, is done internally without the benefit of outsourced press folks, so the Cision [Communications] Cloud ease of use and reporting is very important.

Incentivized

• Beautiful platform. Easy to use and view.
• Transparent for us with clients as we can add our clients to give them live access to the dashboard.
• Loads of integrations!
• The company quickly adds new integrations and takes feedback seriously, often making changes from it within the same quarter.

Incentivized

• Influencer research: I am able to quickly find the right reporter or editor for my pitch because Cision lets me know what they write about, their communications preferences, past articles, etc.
• Distribution: I appreciate a template to help streamline my pitch and press release distribution that allows me to send my news to a targeted list of contacts without having to send individual emails. I can send out communications with just a few steps, in just a few minutes.
• News search: I use Cision to scan for news and monitor for mentions of my clients. I also use this feature to keep tabs on topics and key terms of interest to me and my clients to stay ahead of emerging trends and stay on top of emerging discussions in my clients' industries.

Incentivized

• Would like to see the stars feature to bring keywords to the top of the report have 1 click to remove all stars that were checked off previously.
• Would love to have a feature to track how clients are ranking for keywords; currently only shows the # of keywords ranking in the top 10 positions of Google but doesn't show the actual keywords for each competitor.
• Would extremely love to see a feature where the keywords can be viewed/filtered by position; for example page 1 of Google only, page 2 of Google only.
• Would love to see a keyword tool to check keyword rankings or search volume for specific keywords; similar to Google's keyword planner.

Incentivized

• The social component could be upgraded to more accurately collect metrics on ephemeral content.
• Social listening is done in a completely different program than the media monitoring - combining the two would make report creation much easier and allow for a fuller picture of an incident across traditional and social media on the built-in dashboard section.
• Social listening only tracks Twitter. Public Facebook comments would be key in seeing a fuller picture of how an incident or campaign is playing out on social media.

Incentivized

For all of the reasons I had mentioned before, I haven't found a product that surpasses what they offer. I will maintain renewing with them for a few years and then reexamine the market to see if any new competitors arise. Until then, I have no reason to leave them for someone else.

The flexibility and customization of Cision Communications Cloud (TrendKite)* is among its most important features. Changing the dashboards, using keywords in the saved searches to pull out the best stories and the integration with marketing automation tools gives me confidence that I will able to continue using this tool well into the future. The future implementation and integration of the media contact database will complete the suite, making list management and email marketing programs much smoother. *This review was written before Cision acquired TrendKite. TrendKite is now part of Cision Communications Cloud.

Incentivized

Easily accessible 24/7.

Incentivized

Generally, Cision performs well day to day, but it's got some annoying bugs that slow down usage/require user workarounds which is inefficient. More seriously, a few months ago, as a result of a major system upgrade, certain critical functionality was not working and I was unable to use the service for more than a day when I had time-sensitive work to execute

They are always on top/ahead of the curve. There has never been a time where I haven't had the platform work professionally when I needed it. They stand behind a top-quality product. It's easy to support something when they put hard work into development and maintenance.

Incentivized

For Cision TrendKite in particilar, support always responded, but it was sometimes slow. For some of our booleans and search queries, we would need help refining and excluding terms/phrases that weren't relevant to our client or campaign. This sometimes took 1-2 days just to get a response back, which sometimes was too late when a last-minute report was due. This was only with the support staff, not necessarily our customer success manager or sales rep.

Incentivized

The online training sessions available for the Cision Communications Cloud are helpful and informative. There's more than one option - initially, I signed up for the live webinar classes on basic functions and that is what I recommend other new users do as well. If I have specific questions or something I want to learn more about, I can search the online database and find article or online training videos to get the information I need.

Incentivized

There is no implementation at the customer's end so this doesn't really apply to my instance of Cision (possibly to all instances of it).

The software has a very professional format, which gives it an edge over other competitors. Agency Analytics also facilitates the black-link management for SEO purposes, which is again a good thing. My customers have seen the dashboard of Agency Analytics and because the depth of information is so powerful and impactful, it convinced them to hire us as their marketing team. Agency Analytics also comes up with substantial SEO and other competitive analysis solutions that make it more preferable for the end-users.

Incentivized

I found Cision [Communications Cloud] to be much more simple to use, and it offers the ability to track [a] wider array of media placements without additional fees attached to it. Now that it has incorporated TVEyes, it can offer print, online, radio, and TV tracking nationwide. This is [crucial] because very often your institution or company could be referenced in a variety of ways, nationally or briefly, on local TV/radio, and you would have no way of knowing about it.

Incentivized

Easy to use, but still room for improvement.

Incentivized

• It's a selling point. A major client saw that we were giving access to AA to her, and LOVED it.
• We can identify issues and solve for them before we lose clients
• It's an integral part of our sales process. We gain clients by being able to visually show the impact we've had on other similar businesses

Incentivized

• It seems as though media pickups have overall been down this year, perhaps related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Cision Communications Cloud has enabled us to develop numerous localized media lists for press releases, especially on grant recipients. These localized press releases have generated the best pickups that go beyond our KPIs (key performance indicators).
• The ability to save media lists provide a great starting point for developing future lists. The "talking about" helps to see what media contacts are talking about, and whether they might potentially be interested in our news release.

Incentivized