Google Ads (formerly AdWords) is Google's pay-per-click online advertising program. With Google Ads users set their budget and choose where their ads appear in search listings, and on partner websites. Google Ads uses cost-per-click (CPC) bidding.
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LocaliQ
Score 3.3 out of 10
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LocaliQ from Gannett presents a suite of marketing tools and capabilities designed to encompass all the marketing and online advertising needs of SMBs and local businesses, with email, display advertising, local directory management, SEO business website, and social media marketing. In addition, LocaliQ offers a marketing plan for small business owners who desire a hands-off approach to marketing.
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Pricing
Google Ads
LocaliQ
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Google Ads
LocaliQ
Free Trial
No
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
Optional
Additional Details
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LocaliQ offers both self-serve and premium solutions.
LocaliQ’s free, self-serve experience provides access to Free Website Grader, Free Inbound Call Recorder, Chatbot (free and $9.99/month options available), Scheduling Technology (free and $9.99/month options available), and Listings solutions ($9.99/month and $14.99/month options available).
For LocaliQ's premium solutions, users are partnered with a LocaliQ expert to create the best marketing plan for their businesses that utilizes a full suite of marketing products.
Clients who are selling products such as dresses, clothes, jewelry, beauty products, etc., generally work well. Also, in some cases, it doesn't fetch a good ROAS for very small business owners. If a client is already doing well in SEO, the probability for it to perform well over Google Ads is always enhanced, and if it doesn't have a good organic reach, Google Ads also suffers.
ReachLocal is a trustworthy agency for smaller-scale multifamily buildings that can do the basics of website management, SEO, and advertising on Facebook or Google. I think they provide a solid product but do not get into the nitty-gritty advanced features that create value for clients that want to stick out.
Keyword Research - Google Ads has a handy built in tool that helps determine important keywords to target both for Ads & SEO
Intuitive Analytics Dashboad - Google Ads makes it fairly simple to see and analyze important metrics on how your ads are running week after week
Intuitive Setup - Google Ads makes it easy to figure out how to run ads with little to no training (although training is highly recommended to run effective ads), as their interface is clean and easy to figure out (unlike competing products).
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.
The email content editor could use some additional bells and whistles, it cannot handle some more advanced functions, but for the basics it is more than adequate.
Options for website creation are a bit limited and the turnaround time can be a bit lengthy at times because of the volume they do.
Tracked phone lines can be a bit pricey, but not exorbitant.
I think Google Ads is good for getting your company out there and becoming more visible to potential customers in general. However, for specific product launches, social media advertising might be a better fit. Also, our user base is younger so social media is a better channel for our target audience.
I suspect that Google Ads is not for the novice user. I told my 'Ad Specialist' that I was not the best on computers and apprehensive about my ability to maneuver the website. He told me on more than one occasion that "I work for you...I'm your sherpa...call me any time or send me an email"! The sales and service representatives for Google Ads are very well trained, though not much integrity. Despite that I told my Google Ad Specialist that my website was incomplete the ad was published live anyway! Beware that the 'talk' is good, but it ain't cheap!
We have not yet had an account rep who hasn't tried to bully me or other employees to raise our budgets. At the same time, several years ago, one attempted to help refine our ads and ended up changing the ads to be something we were not affiliated with
Our agency invests heavily in Google Ads (particularly paid search advertising) on behalf of our clients relative to competitors like Microsoft and Yahoo because Google is the top search engine in the world. Google collects the most search data which enables the company to improve its AI to drive better performance for agencies and brands. As such, our paid search and app install campaigns always start with Google. If a client has a large budget, we will allocate media dollars to other search engines, but in some cases, the entire search budget goes to Google because we see the best returns.
While WordPress provides you with the opportunity to build a custom website, it stops there. ThriveHive has a strong small business marketing suite of products that are integrated into a WordPress-based website while also making it easy for the user to make quick and easy edits to existing content. I will say that I find MailChimp's aesthetic and deliverability to be leaps and bounds ahead of ThriveHive, and so I was unable to cut my account with MailChimp. I still use it for large email newsletters while using ThriveHive's email client for shorter, more targeted marketing efforts for segmented lists.
Google Ads is often one of our highest ROI channels, especially when you factor in branded ads.
Depending on the stage your business is in, search ads can be really powerful from an ROI perspective, providing an investment with a very high spend cap.
If you do not manage the campaigns well though, you can quickly spend a lot of money on nothing. So make sure someone is keeping an eye on your account.
I think one of the most important lessons learned so far, is to really have a very clear idea of who your customers/clients are, and who you want them to be.
My website is now in its second iteration. Completely different focus from the 1st iteration. My first website was producing "hits" but not producing leads. The experience gained from this attempt lead to my new website, which is now doing the job that a website is intended to do, creating leads. Often, failure is the stepping stone to success. There is no doubt that the level of clientele that my new website is generating is worth every penny that I have spent with ThriveHive.
Building a successful business takes time, and a good understanding of your customers/clients. The people at ThriveHive are good at helping you figure this out.
