Likelihood to Recommend If you have multiple campaigns running at the same time, you need your campaign setups to be quick and easy, or you have multiple users managing campaigns, then MatchCraft Advantage is right for you. It also performs well with both small and large budgets. If you want to do re-targeting but don't want/know how to implement the tag, MatchCraft has built-in features for that. However if you want to run video campaigns and campaigns in specific mobile apps, then for now MatchCraft will not work for you
Read full review Do you currently use Google
AdWords to drive new business for your website? Then you need WordStream. The best scenario where it has helped me is time. I used to spend easily 20 hours a week analyzing data, making minor changes, adjusting budgets, trying to just master Google
AdWords ! But now I'm able to spend maybe 2-3 hours a week on Google
AdWords and put the rest of my attention on other responsibilities. WordStream has mastered making my time more efficient.
Read full review Pros Automated bid adjustments for PPC campaigns. Manual bid strategies can be tedious to manage. MatchCraft's bidding system helps improve click throughs while keeping the click costs pretty low. The report generation features of the platform MatchCraft platform are easy to use and provide actionable data from campaigns. PDF reports require only a few clicks and there is also an interactive dashboard that gives all the key metrics in a graphical format. Both features are customizable. User management is a breeze in the MatchCraft platform. You can add, edit, activate, deactivate, and change the permissions as needed. Read full review Definitely go with a consultant. It amazed me how quickly our consultant was able to understand our business and what we sell. He was the best resource for our newly-digitized marketing team. The negative keywords section was a hugely helpful tool. It saved us from so much unnecessary spend while making it easy to add negatives. How quickly changes implemented were updated on AdWords was amazing. It's live, so no lag and unnecessary spend. Read full review Cons Not all Google/Bing features are available through the MatchCraft platform. Since they are limited to what is available in the API some features like video campaign management and specific app targeting are missing. Customized report scheduling is not yet available for each campaign and the automated reports can only be sent to one email address. Additional recipients have to be sent their's manually. Reports can take a little time to be generated. Not more than 1 minute but it can slow you down if you have multiple reports to send. Read full review While the basic tools are pretty simple to use, the platform is actually pretty expansive and I don't feel like I've taken advantage of it (yet) as much as I could. It does require some training to get up to speed. Support for Display ad campaigns is limited - this is mainly used as a way to optimize Search campaigns. Reporting. I find the reporting setup to be a bit confusing and still rely on other sources for building out reports on our Adwords performance (Adwords itself and Google Analytics). Read full review Likelihood to Renew Affordable, useful, informative, easy to use, continually updating and staying current
Read full review Support Rating I have not had any experience with the customer support team for platform issues, but the account representative checks in with us often and is always available to answer questions. We will usually get on quarterly review calls so that she can share any new updates to the platform and answer questions.
Read full review Alternatives Considered The interface on MatchCraft is much easier to get started with than the native PPC provider interfaces. MatchCraft finds ways of maximizing ROI within current spend target rather than recommending 'increased budget' as the fix for all issues. the reporting dashboard is also easier to use and report generation takes only a few clicks. The main downside is that MatchCraft is limited to what the PPC providers allow through the APIs
Read full review WordStream is a little different from the competition. There are much more expensive solutions that manage the account for you with more features (Kenshoo, Marin, etc) and there are cheaper solutions out there that offer some of the features that WordStream provides; however, if a marketer wants to personally manage an account with some aided help than WordStream provides a great, cost-effective solution
Read full review Return on Investment It has allowed the company to handle a higher volume of campaigns at the same time. Click costs have been reduced across almost all campaigns while click rates have increased. Budget management (under/overspending) has been improved. Read full review I've already noted the time savings that WordStream has provided - at leats 5 hours a week (and I like to think that my time is pretty expensive/worth it). Wordstream has paid for itself already, simply in removing junk from our AdWords account - junk keywords, junk AdWords groups, junk matching. I think we'll find, over more time, that Wordstream will continue to provide outstanding value in dropping our CPA - once Google register sthe lack of junk, our CPC will continue to go down. Read full review ScreenShots