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Looking for an extremely good SEM company

Emilie Benn

Green Pea
May 13, 2014
7
1
First Name
Emilie
I have been using Showroom Logic for a long time - and I never had any issues with them. Then came along Haystack offering a new solution with their integration with vAuto - which seemed at the time a completely great thing. So I told Showroom Logic that would pause their service and see if Haystack can perform better with their "Newest greatest solution.."- fast forward 60 days later , Haystack is way under delivering in performance - high CPC, high cost per VDP, and nowhere to be seen the integration with vAuto...So we go back live with Showroom and suddenly it is a mess... I have ads running for certain models under other models keywords, Google pulling out the account for more than 3 days and showroom is not aware .., negative keywords that shouldn't be negative keywords... We asked them to audit the account to make sure everything is set perfectly ... now 2 weeks later nothing is done - I have multiple phone calls and email conversation with my account manager but I am thinking that at this point they are under staffed to resolved any issues. So being competent in adwords I decided to take care of all of this myself and manually make all the changes in the adword account- well showroom logic automated system erased all my work and now it is back to a mess.
Does anyone have a recommedation of an extremely good SEM company that would give the dealership access and admin right to the adword account or am I at the point to just manage our PPC in-house ?
 
I have been using Showroom Logic for a long time - and I never had any issues with them. Then came along Haystack offering a new solution with their integration with vAuto - which seemed at the time a completely great thing. So I told Showroom Logic that would pause their service and see if Haystack can perform better with their "Newest greatest solution.."- fast forward 60 days later , Haystack is way under delivering in performance - high CPC, high cost per VDP, and nowhere to be seen the integration with vAuto...So we go back live with Showroom and suddenly it is a mess... I have ads running for certain models under other models keywords, Google pulling out the account for more than 3 days and showroom is not aware .., negative keywords that shouldn't be negative keywords... We asked them to audit the account to make sure everything is set perfectly ... now 2 weeks later nothing is done - I have multiple phone calls and email conversation with my account manager but I am thinking that at this point they are under staffed to resolved any issues. So being competent in adwords I decided to take care of all of this myself and manually make all the changes in the adword account- well showroom logic automated system erased all my work and now it is back to a mess.
Does anyone have a recommedation of an extremely good SEM company that would give the dealership access and admin right to the adword account or am I at the point to just manage our PPC in-house ?

I had a very similar experience with Showroom Logic. My problem that never seemed to get fixed revolved around me paying for referrals that were way outside my market. We would squeeze the radius down, and once again that radius would grow again. After the third time we had this conversation, I paused all campaigns, changed the password, and terminated service with Showroom Logic.

On a positive note, I felt that Showroom Logic was a very professional and organized company in terms of scheduled reviews and reporting. My account manager was a good guy that tried hard. Ultimately I believe that the radius kept growing because I was way under budget within my immediate market. I called Google and they did an account audit. They found a lot of common IP clicks and such. They ended up giving us a pretty substantial refund...which I appreciated.
 
I had a very similar experience with Showroom Logic. My problem that never seemed to get fixed revolved around me paying for referrals that were way outside my market. We would squeeze the radius down, and once again that radius would grow again. After the third time we had this conversation, I paused all campaigns, changed the password, and terminated service with Showroom Logic.

On a positive note, I felt that Showroom Logic was a very professional and organized company in terms of scheduled reviews and reporting. My account manager was a good guy that tried hard. Ultimately I believe that the radius kept growing because I was way under budget within my immediate market. I called Google and they did an account audit. They found a lot of common IP clicks and such. They ended up giving us a pretty substantial refund...which I appreciated.

I can confirm the search radius expanding because you were under budget, but the reason may surprise you. You may or may not know that the search radius (geo-targeting) must be manually changed by the admin. Basically that means that Showroom Logic saw you were pacing to come in under budget and expanded the search radius intentionally to ensure you would spend your budget. I am guessing they wanted you to spend more (your full monthly budget) if they were commission-based as opposed to a flat fee retainer. We usually recommend a 20-25 mile radius and then sit down with a new dealer and see if there are any key areas the dealer pulls from outside of said radius and if there are any areas we should exclude in the radius. Of course there are exceptions to this, but, this would be how we as an agency handle a new client's search radius.

Out of curiosity, what is/was your desired search radius?
 
I support Showroom Logic wholeheartedly and that's a rare thing for me to do :)

We have used their services at many rooftops for almost 4 years now. We've had our ups and downs, but they've consistently delivered when I needed them to. They did adjust the radius to hit targets sometimes, but we also learned that some of these customers from outside the original radius also resulted in leads/store visits so I became less concerned with it.

Their new reporting system is also very slick and I like the insight I get. We have all the conversion and phone number tracking working with them - 2 features that I also take full advantage of and place quite a bit of value in.

I've had experience with 3 or 4 other companies but I have simply found the most success with inventory-based SEM through Showroom Logic.
 
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