LocaliQ vs. OutboundEngine

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.

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

• 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.

• 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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

• 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.

Incentivized

• It has provided a consistent email message to my clients
• It has provided a consistent social media presence for my past clients
• It has helped me obtain and correlate customer reviews
• Unfortunately I cannot say that I have any direct information that a sale was generated directly as a result of OutboundEngine. I feel that it has but I have no measurable proof of this

Incentivized