Reach Local....Ever Heard of It?

[Hiredguns]

Hi guys,
I just got a call from a compnany Called ReachLocal.com , I've never heard of them before but what there services offer sounds to good to be true. Basically they take care of ALL your PPC campaigns and take a cut out of the Monthly Budget. Does Overture, Google, Superpages etc..all in one place, and has a system that autobids on every keyword and maximizes those keywords that perform, automically every month. They have all the reports you would neeed, plus they reverse proxy your clients website to include tracking of phone calls (leads) and sales.

Now there pretty new (october) but I'm just wondering if any of you guys out there have heard of them, and better yet haved used them.

Are they any good?

[Carlos Chacón]

Hi guys,
I just got a call from a compnany Called ReachLocal.com , I've never heard of them before but what there services offer sounds to good to be true. Basically they take care of ALL your PPC campaigns and take a cut out of the Monthly Budget. Does Overture, Google, Superpages etc..all in one place, and has a system that autobids on every keyword and maximizes those keywords that perform, automically every month. They have all the reports you would neeed, plus they reverse proxy your clients website to include tracking of phone calls (leads) and sales.

Now there pretty new (october) but I'm just wondering if any of you guys out there have heard of them, and better yet haved used them.

Are they any good?

Hi,
I have no idea about the company that you mention before. In my personal opinion I offer the SEO services for the organic listings, but in the PPC campaigns just inform how to sign up and how they works.
After this, each customer will take care of his own budged. I think that PPC campaigns are not complicated to run on.
;)

[Nacho]

Are they any good?
Sorry, never heard of them. I'll ask around.

Justin Sanger (Chicago (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/member.php?u=2188)) who runs LocalLaunch! (http://www.LocalLaunch.com) and is a regular speaker at Search Engine Strategies focused on local search marketing tactics (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=4471) (and here (http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/001615.html) is a recap of the session by SERoundtable), IMHO, there is no other SEM in our industry that knows more than him about local tactics. What they do in their company is quite amazing. I suggest you try contacting them.

The other thing you don't want to miss out that is growing fast, is a new local search engine called TrueLocal (http://www.truelocal.com/).

Going local with search marketing is a great approach!

[Marcia]

I have no idea, never heard of that company. But my thought is that the average business person is busy enough and doesn't have the time or resources to properly manage a PPC campaign to get the maximum ROI; so unless it's fairly simple and straightforward, it could be a wise investment to have it professionally managed.

I am not a "PPC person" but an SEO one, but I just looked at someone's site for them last week, including their AdWords stats, and just from running their keyword check I could see that they're missing out on some highly lucrative PPC keyword bidding opportunities. Those are the ones to target with seo, but in the interim, PPC is the way to go.

If it weren't lucrative for businesses, then the people who specialize in managing campaigns wouldn't be consistently doing as well as they are. Choosing a provider is a different story altogether.

[andrewgoodman]

Hi,
I have no idea about the company that you mention before. In my personal opinion I offer the SEO services for the organic listings, but in the PPC campaigns just inform how to sign up and how they works.
After this, each customer will take care of his own budged. I think that PPC campaigns are not complicated to run on.
;)

On the contrary, PPC is quite competitive and often quite complicated, depending on your goals and how ambitiously you'd want to track your ROI.

[Hiredguns]

I totally agree with andrew. I thought it was pretty easy to do (at the start), but over time you realize to actually be profitable, you need to put in TONS of tedious, repetitve work.
Multiple the work load times 20 clients and it becomes a nightmare.

From what I heard from these guys (reachlocal), it sounded like they did everything for you for a fraction of a price, but of course, if it sounds to good to be true, it often is.

[stifler12]

Gents:

Sorry for the delay in responding to your post. I work at the firm you mentioned. If you do a google search for us and remember it is one word when you are searching, you will see there are pleanty of articles about us. It really does sound too good to be true, but I can assure you it isnt. We take care of everything and then send out daily reports. It is perfect for a firms that does not like to do all the heavy lifting with the PPC campaigns and wants excellent bidding and keyword optimization. If you would like to jump on a demo sometime, let me know and I'll give you a tour of the platform.

SW

[stifler12]

http://www.clickz.com/news/article.php/3511151

http://www.clickz.com/news/print.php/3511151

[wiltonbiz]

I have not had a chance to look at the products offered by the company under discussion, so I have no intent to critique them personally. However, one should be cautious in this area, and make sure that if you hand off a PPC campaign to a manager, especially one who guarantees a fixed price per click, that you know which property every single click runs on. Here is a link to an excellent article by Clickz Expert Justin Sanger, from a few days ago:
http://www.clickz.com/experts/search/local_search/article.php/3514366

In it, Sanger warns against using "packagers" or "aggregators" whose bait is some form of guaranteed click price, and talks about clicks on G and Y and the like, but is hiding the fact that most of the clicks run on poor quality properties.

I quote from Sanger:

"Guaranteed click fulfillment providers must position a structured, constant click package on volatile Google and Yahoo! PPC platforms, where both bidding and search volume are in constant flux. Such an environment isn't well suited for advertising products based on predictability and stability."

and
"Many of these networks serve millions upon millions of clicks per month. Never mind that these networks are loose configurations of obscure search properties, numbering in the hundreds. In other words, never mind the quality of the clicks generated behind the veil of simplified Google and Yahoo! products."

Again, I have no idea if this is what the company being discussed offers. I am simply saying to make sure, if you let someone else run the show, you know where every click comes from.
WiltonBiz

PS: Stifler12 -- you may wish to reconsider addressing forum groups as "gents." Who knows? You may be talking to a woman...

[stifler12]

My name is Nathan Hanks, I am at ReachLocal (I am using Seth's password to login). The company is not only very legit, but I want to make a few quick comments.

1) We offer our services through partner agencies. This means that some of the REALLY BIG ad agencies, directional marketing companies, etc. that you think are offering PPC services are "powered by ReachLocal." We are like the ultimate PPC back office solution - and now are offering this to small firms.

2) We handle all campaigns for some of the nations largest auto, home improvement, and travel companies. These companies use us because they want to run a "localized" campaign across many Geos (imagine Mercedes Benz USA running a separate campaign for each dealership in its local geographic area). We run thousands of campaigns --- totally automated from order entry through optimization.

3) Reverse Proxy (as HG mentioned) allows us to do all of our reporting, including phone tracking. HG... it also allows us to match keywords/search engines to conversions (calls, e-mail, submissions, etc) through unique URL's - WITHOUT HAVING TO TOUCH THE ADVERTISERS SITE OR PHONE SYSTEM. You need to look at this.. we have filed numerous patents on this.

4) As As Andrew metioned, campaigns are not only complex (I will not get into this here but lets say that figuring which search engines and which keywords generate OFFLINE sales is a science) but are tedious as well. Imagine a company serving 25 cities and the manpower it requires to handle their PPC. We make this easy and scalable. If you want the hardcore scoop on this, sit in on a demo (you can arrange through seth at sethw@reachlocal.com). We done daily at 10:00 Central.

I do not know who HiredGuns is, but his remarks are accurate. So are Andrew's. Nacho brings up Justin Sanger. He is a sharp guy indeed. We all know him at ReachLocal. I think he would give us good marks and has seen our platform firsthand (I think). Justin is one of the top brains in search and has a company that does PPC. So we are all trying to solve the same problem (simplifying the search space as observed by HiredGuns and Andrew).

Thanks for the interest. I would not go out and solicit here as that is not cool. But I figured since you were talking about my company I could respond.

Good posts.

Nathan

[wiltonbiz]

Following up on this discussion of the packaged approach offered by Reach Local, I see on the video on the RL website the following comment:

Reach Local distributes your ads to all the most popular search engines so that you do not have to figure out which ones work best for your business and budget

My question: can an advertiser choose to be on certain search engines, but not on others? Can I choose just Google, for example? If not, is there any guarantee whether the clicks will be on one engine versus another? Does the reporting include a breakdown of which search engines and websites the ads appear on?

Thanks,
WiltonBiz

[stifler12]

Wilton:
The advertiser can choose to be on certain search engines and not others, they can choose just Google if that is the only one you want. When an account is set up initially it automatically tells you what search engine(s) the campaign will be published on. The distribution depends on budget and of course click inventory. The reporting tool does not give a breakdown by specific search engine. However, the reporting gives a breakdown of information for ROI purposes such as contact forms, orders, phone calls, email, spend, budget....ect.

Thanks,
Seth