I began using Smart Reach Digital in October of 2015. After meeting with their local sales rep Zach on several occasions I felt I could trust them to take over my Google pay per click campaign as well as doing display ads for my business. I was running my own very succesful pay per click campaign up until that point but Zach assured me that he could get me the same results for less money, allowing me to spend the rest of my internet budget on their display ads, which he promised me were very effective.
We got off to a very slow start. The Smartreach Digital art department submitted several designs for my display ads but I had to keep rejecting them because they quite honestly looked like a 10 year old had put them together. I was capable of doing a better job myself. In fact, their local designer asked me if I wouldnt mind doing just that. I began working on the art when I realized...wait a second....this is their job, this is what I am paying Smartreach Digital to do. I run a business and I am way too consumed to have the time to do this, especially since I am not on their payroll. I kicked the design process back to them and they must have reassigned it to a different department because the results they came back with were much more professional.
So in Oct I shut my own pay per click campaign down and allowed Smartreach Digital to roll out theirs. To make a long story short, their campaign underperformed by such a signifigant margin VS mine, that my internet sales leads dropped almost 30 to 40% over the next 3 months. I noticed a signifigant decrease in website traffic as well. Not only was the pay per click campaign not performing, their display ads did absolutely nothing for me. They were a complete waste of money.
At the time I was willing to chalk it up to the winter and the holidays since my business normally slows down a bit during that time. I figured I would let things ride a bit since I had established a report with my sales person and he always came across as if he actually cared about my business. So I figured I would give them the benefit of the doubt.
The thing that concerned me the most however was the fact that I could never find my own ad, I never saw it displayed on Google. When I brought this fact up to them and expressed my concern over why I could never find my own ad, their PPC manager sent an email back chastising me like a school boy, trying to explain to me that by constantly searching for my own ad would ruin their click through rate numbers.
At this point I realized that these people are used to dealing with people that have absolutely no clue how internet advertising works. In fact, that is the only way Smart Reach Digital stays in business. If their customers had any real understanding of how this stuff works, I cannot imagine anyone would ever use them.
I took the time out of my schedule to explain to their PPC manager that I am not an idiot, I do not search for my own ad by just using Google. Your previous search history and cookies skew the search result anyways and will not give you an accurate understanding of how your ad is performing. I log into my own PPC account and use the Google Adwords Preview Tool provided by google just for the purposes. Of course Google understands that people want to gauge the performance and the appearance of their ad so they provide this tool to give you accurate results.
Furthermore, my keywords in my target area recieve usually over 1000 impressions a day. That means that over 1000 people within the geographic area we target view the Google search results for my ads. Certainly me searching 2 or 3 times a day was not going to impact my CTR numbers even if i was simply using Google to search.
Lastly, it was during one of these searches that I discovered a brand new competitor had popped up in my area. So doing these routine searches not only informs me of what my existing competitors are doing but it tells me if any new ones arise. I politley asked their adwords manager to allow me to run my business and worry about running my campaign.
Over the next few weeks we argued back and forth about how my campaign was not performing and my newly discovered competitor was killing my all over payper click. I was not running a small campaign, I was spending $4000 a month with this company. Maybe that is not a lot of money to Smartreach Digital, but I am a small business owner. To me $4000 is a lot of money. Considering the fact that their ads did NOTHING for me, I would have rather rented a Lambourghini for 6 months. At least I would have got something out of that.
The wasted $4000 a month was not my real loss though. It was the loss of revenue from my underperforming ad set that really hurt.
Finally, after much back and forth and a complete inability from them to get my ads performing, I told Zach to shut my campaign down and I will run my own pay per click campaign again. With 20 minutes of that email I had my own ad set running again and my ads were displayed all over the front page search results for Google. Over the next week I tracked my campaign and never did my ad not display,.....24 hours a day. Not only that, my internet leads for that week improved almost 40% over what I was getting on a weekly basis using Smartreach Digital. My performance metrics based on Google Analytics were outstanding.
A week later I was contacted by Zach asking if he could schedule a meeting between myself, him and his boss Kim from out of town. Being that I liked Zach personally I agreed. I did however send him the results of my campaign and how much better it was performing than theirs was....basically telling him that I didnt see any way I would be going back with them. He then responded telling me to shut my ad campaign off because theirs was still running and they didnt want Google to see a conflict. I told him that there was no way I was shutting my ad set down considering the spike in performance I had just seen and to please shut my ads from Smartreach Digital down like I had asked. Zach responded that we had a 30 day written termination policy and they were going to make me stick to it.
So let me get this straight......Smartreach Digital has already WASTED $22,000 of my money, lost me untold amounts of revenue.....but now they want to skin me for the last $4000 they can get out of me? All while still trying to win my business back? Unbelievable.....wow.
Being a business owner, I understand a contract is a contract. So I told them I would pay them the remaining $4000 like I had agreed, but to still please shut their ads off......they never showed up anyways. I explained that I would rather pay double to cost to run my ads VS running their campaign for free anyways. I also understand as a business owner that you can shear a sheep many times, you can only skin it once. Customer service and reputation management means you have to understand your clients needs and sometimes to preserve you reputation, being petty can do more damage in the long run.
So in closing, Smartreach Digital is interested in one thing and one thing only....your money. The campain they ran for me was costly and completely inaffective. Then when I called them to the carpet over it they became petty and demanded that I stick out the rest of my crappy agreeement with them just to take me for whatever they could. Smartreach Digital does not care about their customers....period.
SmartReach Digital Reviews
I began using Smart Reach Digital in October of 2015. After meeting with their local sales rep Zach on several occasions I felt I could trust them to take over my Google pay per click campaign as well as doing display ads for my business. I was running my own very succesful pay per click campaign up until that point but Zach assured me that he could get me the same results for less money, allowing me to spend the rest of my internet budget on their display ads, which he promised me were very effective.
We got off to a very slow start. The Smartreach Digital art department submitted several designs for my display ads but I had to keep rejecting them because they quite honestly looked like a 10 year old had put them together. I was capable of doing a better job myself. In fact, their local designer asked me if I wouldnt mind doing just that. I began working on the art when I realized...wait a second....this is their job, this is what I am paying Smartreach Digital to do. I run a business and I am way too consumed to have the time to do this, especially since I am not on their payroll. I kicked the design process back to them and they must have reassigned it to a different department because the results they came back with were much more professional.
So in Oct I shut my own pay per click campaign down and allowed Smartreach Digital to roll out theirs. To make a long story short, their campaign underperformed by such a signifigant margin VS mine, that my internet sales leads dropped almost 30 to 40% over the next 3 months. I noticed a signifigant decrease in website traffic as well. Not only was the pay per click campaign not performing, their display ads did absolutely nothing for me. They were a complete waste of money.
At the time I was willing to chalk it up to the winter and the holidays since my business normally slows down a bit during that time. I figured I would let things ride a bit since I had established a report with my sales person and he always came across as if he actually cared about my business. So I figured I would give them the benefit of the doubt.
The thing that concerned me the most however was the fact that I could never find my own ad, I never saw it displayed on Google. When I brought this fact up to them and expressed my concern over why I could never find my own ad, their PPC manager sent an email back chastising me like a school boy, trying to explain to me that by constantly searching for my own ad would ruin their click through rate numbers.
At this point I realized that these people are used to dealing with people that have absolutely no clue how internet advertising works. In fact, that is the only way Smart Reach Digital stays in business. If their customers had any real understanding of how this stuff works, I cannot imagine anyone would ever use them.
I took the time out of my schedule to explain to their PPC manager that I am not an idiot, I do not search for my own ad by just using Google. Your previous search history and cookies skew the search result anyways and will not give you an accurate understanding of how your ad is performing. I log into my own PPC account and use the Google Adwords Preview Tool provided by google just for the purposes. Of course Google understands that people want to gauge the performance and the appearance of their ad so they provide this tool to give you accurate results.
Furthermore, my keywords in my target area recieve usually over 1000 impressions a day. That means that over 1000 people within the geographic area we target view the Google search results for my ads. Certainly me searching 2 or 3 times a day was not going to impact my CTR numbers even if i was simply using Google to search.
Lastly, it was during one of these searches that I discovered a brand new competitor had popped up in my area. So doing these routine searches not only informs me of what my existing competitors are doing but it tells me if any new ones arise. I politley asked their adwords manager to allow me to run my business and worry about running my campaign.
Over the next few weeks we argued back and forth about how my campaign was not performing and my newly discovered competitor was killing my all over payper click. I was not running a small campaign, I was spending $4000 a month with this company. Maybe that is not a lot of money to Smartreach Digital, but I am a small business owner. To me $4000 is a lot of money. Considering the fact that their ads did NOTHING for me, I would have rather rented a Lambourghini for 6 months. At least I would have got something out of that.
The wasted $4000 a month was not my real loss though. It was the loss of revenue from my underperforming ad set that really hurt.
Finally, after much back and forth and a complete inability from them to get my ads performing, I told Zach to shut my campaign down and I will run my own pay per click campaign again. With 20 minutes of that email I had my own ad set running again and my ads were displayed all over the front page search results for Google. Over the next week I tracked my campaign and never did my ad not display,.....24 hours a day. Not only that, my internet leads for that week improved almost 40% over what I was getting on a weekly basis using Smartreach Digital. My performance metrics based on Google Analytics were outstanding.
A week later I was contacted by Zach asking if he could schedule a meeting between myself, him and his boss Kim from out of town. Being that I liked Zach personally I agreed. I did however send him the results of my campaign and how much better it was performing than theirs was....basically telling him that I didnt see any way I would be going back with them. He then responded telling me to shut my ad campaign off because theirs was still running and they didnt want Google to see a conflict. I told him that there was no way I was shutting my ad set down considering the spike in performance I had just seen and to please shut my ads from Smartreach Digital down like I had asked. Zach responded that we had a 30 day written termination policy and they were going to make me stick to it.
So let me get this straight......Smartreach Digital has already WASTED $22,000 of my money, lost me untold amounts of revenue.....but now they want to skin me for the last $4000 they can get out of me? All while still trying to win my business back? Unbelievable.....wow.
Being a business owner, I understand a contract is a contract. So I told them I would pay them the remaining $4000 like I had agreed, but to still please shut their ads off......they never showed up anyways. I explained that I would rather pay double to cost to run my ads VS running their campaign for free anyways. I also understand as a business owner that you can shear a sheep many times, you can only skin it once. Customer service and reputation management means you have to understand your clients needs and sometimes to preserve you reputation, being petty can do more damage in the long run.
So in closing, Smartreach Digital is interested in one thing and one thing only....your money. The campain they ran for me was costly and completely inaffective. Then when I called them to the carpet over it they became petty and demanded that I stick out the rest of my crappy agreeement with them just to take me for whatever they could. Smartreach Digital does not care about their customers....period.