Critical Mention vs. LocaliQ vs. OutboundEngine

Critical Mention is great for schools/businesses/etc. that want to know when they are in the news. Sometimes a brand's reputation can suffer greatly if you are not aware of an issue that was posted by a competitor or media outlet If you are not in the news a lot, there is no need for this product.

Incentivized

The forms of online marketing continues to grow and LocaliQ's associates have the relevant skills to keep up with this and recommend what is suited for our business. Geo fencing is another area that makes a lot of sense as people use their phones more and more for accessing the web. Through LocaliQ we can pinpoint physicial places where we can market to a group that matches our target audience.

Incentivized

OutboundEngine does a referral campaign and I've been able to close a couple of deals based on getting in touch with people who engage with this campaign and state they could use my services in the next 6 months. This is a great follow up tool for those you may or may not know are going to be needing your services.

Incentivized

• Critical Mention's customer service is excellent. Any time we've had a challenge finding a clip or anything, they are on top of it and go above and beyond to make sure we have what we are looking for quickly.
• The ability to create tailored clips of each mention and quickly share them is unparalleled.
• The reporting feature is fantastic. It makes it very simple to pull detailed reports and share them with interested parties.

Incentivized

• ThriveHive is a smaller marketing team dedicated to helping small to medium sized businesses perfect their marketing messages. ThriveHive is particularity good at understanding how Google, and other search engines work, and have been instrumental in helping my company to grow and evolve.
• With ThriveHive, you get a dedicated coach who is matched to your type of business. This experience with similar businesses gives your coach a better understanding of your business and the challenges your company faces.
• My coach is very good at responding to my needs within 1 to 2 business days. Email contacts are fluent and as often as I need, to discuss ideas or questions. I can only speak of my relationship with my coach, and I am very pleased.
• I feel that ThriveHive makes every effort to take excellent care of their clients, and makes you feel like you are their most important customer. I definitely believe that this is one of ThriveHives' greatest assets.

Incentivized

• The content that they generate to send to our clients is relevant and the clients want to engage with us. It makes us appear more professional and consistent, even though we are a smaller company.
• It helps us stay in touch with clients and helps us stay top of mind. We are able to generate more new business leads if we are in consistent contact with current, former, and potential clients.
• Their customer service and support is outstanding. All my questions were answered and I went into the program feeling confident and knowledgeable.

• I believe the one frustration I have with searching in general that if the closed captioning is not correct on the broadcast end Critical Mention will miss that data. Which is not a Critical Mention issue and does overcome depending on the search. Also, it would be great if you wanted to capture a complete 30 minutes newscast, it could be done by using the search. The clips need to be about to handle 30-minute programs.
• One nagging issue when using Critical Mention is that it does not save e-mail addresses when sending a report and this requires a waste of time having to type in e-mails that should be able to be pulled from the customers' contacts.
• Also, it would be great if you wanted to capture a complete 30 minutes newscast, it could be done by using the search. The clips need to be able to handle 30-minute programs.

Incentivized

• LocaliQ could improve how it tracks and reports on customer journeys across those channels to provide a clearer view of ROI.
• The pricing structure is not fully transparent, making it hard to understand the true costs associated with campaigns. Breaking down the fees associated with LocaliQ would make budgeting easier.
• LocaliQ is able to provide basic ad creative, but there tends to be a disconnect between our brand voice and what is expected with creative. It would be nice to be able to get all design work within LocaliQ rather than have to use and outside designer all the time.

Incentivized

• I do not like the use of drawings to attract new customers, and they have ignored my requests to eliminate that for my personal emails.
• I do not like it when a competitor in my immediate market has the same posts. It cheapens the service or makes it appear that I am simply sharing another's post.

Incentivized

I gave this a 5 only because I do not make the decisions to renew. When I used this at my previous company, I also recommended to the decision maker to renew this tool as it was a crucial piece to the overall client objective

Incentivized

The biggest issue is poor ROI. The second biggest issue is rigid customer service process, lack of a sense of urgency, and inability to reach out to upper management with issues.

It's great for quickly looking up a specific clip, but this platform makes it difficult to select and accurately report on a high volume of clips

Incentivized

Overall usability pretty good. If we would have gotten better return on our advertising dollar I would have continued with them - their dashboard was very easy to use and the recaps they provided were helpful. They try to put data in bite-sized pieces for the client that are understandable (unlike google's reporting page itself which can be a bit difficult to understand at times). Their team was friendly, semi-responsive, and provided explanations when requested

Incentivized

Overall, OutboundEngine is very user friendly. It is simple to set up and explore, and if there are any issues or questions, the customer service team and account managers are always available to help. They are very knowledgeable and were able to explain everything in detail to me. The program is easy to navigate and helps me stay organized, and an uncomplicated and straightforward solution was exactly what I was looking for

I haven't had to contact Outbound Engine because I haven't had any application errors or unplanned outages. I basically have had such a trouble free experience with them that I haven't had to call. Everything is automated and I get a notice to review every isse. I suppose if I personalized the newsletter a bit more and added some of my own articles, I would need to contact them, (which I should really start to do) but so far things have been so on point, I haven't felt the need.

Incentivized

Look, Critical Mention follows up on an or phone call immediately or in the AM the following business day. I have called them after hours and get a live person to work through any issues that may have come up. Support seems to be job one with Critical Mention.

Incentivized

The customer service was excellent! Everyone I spoke to was kind and knowledgeable. My account manager was easily reachable. Setup of the OutboundEngine program was explained really thoroughly, and we knew how we could best use the product to meet the needs of our clients and get our online and social media presence off the ground.

Critical Mention implementation was easy and fast. Their support and training were awesome.

Incentivized

Burrelles is confusing and outdated. Critical Mention works on the side of the account team and understands our needs better. I was able to share hundreds of outlets that I wanted to be included in my online search and Critical Mention added all of them in less than a day I was seeing better results in my searches. The possibilities with Burrelles seem limited while Critical Mention's online monitoring service really lets me craft reports the way I want to

Incentivized

I have investigated national services like American Eagle and also small market locally owned business like Red Shoes. Each year, I look into at least one other service provider to evaluate our service value. So far, no other company has come close to providing an all around service

Incentivized

I selected it for the ability to have an automated system do 3 things all at once, social media posts, emails and the instant communication with the chat box. I have never seen a chat come through that lead to a helpful client touchpoint. I have never used another product but have since begun to weigh some of the less expensive options.

Incentivized

There is always the challenge with practices that have multiple locations, trying to target a geographical zone that is sometimes to wide. But we have successfully navigated this issue when needed to target those who need the most added volume.

Incentivized

• Every week the department I am a part does dozens of searches on Critical Mention. We use it as our primary search engine for all things broadcast.
• One negative aspect is that we do not know where Critical Mention gets their audience viewing numbers from so we just have to take it as their word.
• Another negative aspect is that we are limited on the amount of time that one clip can be so we have to share several clips of the same show with our clients.

Incentivized

• It's hard to quantify but I know I've had at least 5 to 10 new clients in the last 6 months come from efforts related to my website
• Not having to work on my website myself also helped free up my time, I don't need to worry!
• Customer service is good, the team doesn't wait till there is a problem, they schedule check ins regularly

Incentivized

• One client identified how one article I sent that he read saved him from having to replace his entire AC system.
• One client actually thought I was sending this to him personally because I valued him
• One of the above transacted with me twice for over $3M in sales

Incentivized