Likelihood to Recommend 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.
Read full review If you have a business with more than 20 locally serving locations you know how important local searches are. RIO SEO will help syndicate your information and their robust toolkit will help those types of businesses be successful online. Their all in one dashboard lets the user control every location without having to log in to multiple dashboards to make a change in Google, then Bing, then Yelp, etc.
Read full review Pros 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). Read full review Their software is really amazing and does the job well and in a routine manner. Their support staff is beyond amazing, hands down the best support I've gotten from any company in any industry. The proactively find issues and bring them to our attention so we can work with our clients on getting results. The renewal process is painless and they help us with reporting to build a case for renewal and retaining the client. Read full review Cons If you don't know what you're doing, it will be a costly mistake. You need to target ads, and it is difficult the first time to do that. There isn't a feature to run an add for a couple set date spans, just hours you want to run them or a single date span. Read full review The dashboard could be a bit more user-friendly. It takes some training to get used to. Keys/legends in the sidebar and in exports to help explain what different sections are for the "laymen" that aren't in this industry 24/7. Having a "suggested changes" like what Moz.com/local has in their backend for photos/additional categories. Something that can help the user be more proactive rather than "here's where you're at" a "here's what you can do to improve" would help. Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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.
Read full review Usability 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!
Read full review Support Rating 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
Read full review Online Training Daily use with advanced account structures. Familiarity with reporting/api and complex setups.
Read full review Alternatives Considered 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.
Read full review RIO SEO is heads, shoulders, the entire body, ahead of Local Market Launch. We used Local Market Launch before RIO and it was one of the worst years of my life. The support was non-existent, their syndication was lackluster and they messed up our contracts enough times to frustrate us and the clients. I cannot express in enough words my disdain for that service and how much of a refreshing change it was to work with a company like RIO that cared as much about our client success as we did.
Read full review Return on Investment 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. Read full review They have helped us retain several big clients over the years which in turn has helped bring in several other clients. Their tools allow us, a small boutique agency, to operate like a big agency. Our local listing clients have been much happier with our switch to RIO which has allowed us to focus on other areas for them instead of just the syndication. Read full review ScreenShots