Amex has millions of small business customers; Clickable has a well-reviewed, automated search platform. The two have joined forces to offer search (and Facebook) marketing to Amex customers:
[Amex] today launched SearchManager, a new product for small business owners that simplifies search engine advertising, an increasingly important way to find new customers and drive sales. SearchManager streamlines the way business owners can manage their online advertising and is powered by Clickable, an award-winning developer of online advertising solutions.
SearchManager provides immediate, single-point access to all major search engines, including Google Adwords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft AdCenter – even Facebook Ads. By eliminating the hassle of multiple logins and interfaces, SearchManager enables business owners to more effectively manage their campaigns, which can help drive greater efficiency and ROI on their advertising investments.
As the graphic above indicates there’s a 30 day free trial. The cost is $49 per month or 5% of the advertiser’s total spend, whichever is greater — according to an online chat I just had with a customer service rep. I asked if there was a minimum spend and a recommended spend.
Here’s the transcript (Amex responses in bold):
Hi, this is Beth, how may I help you? I have questions about search manager
How much does it cost? 49 dollars a month or 5% of your adspend …whichever is greater
Is there a minimum spend? 49 dollars No matter how little you spend
Is there a recommended spend? Should I spend $100 or $1000? Not really…it is very dependent on a variety of factors Industry, geographic location, etc
Will someone help me set up a campaign or do I do it myself? We do have an assist team that can help you but that costs a bit more. If you give me your contact info I can have a specialist call you. They will explain all of the potential costs, and help you to determine the best path for you to take
The sign up process online, interestingly, asks if you’re an agency. In the end it directed me to a customer service number to call. As the chat shows, campaign set up assistance is available. The press release specifies two levels: an “assist” and a “pro” level. Pro is self-service as the name suggests.
I spoke to a rep for the program this morning who turned out to be a Clickable employee. He recognized my name so my little ruse didn’t go that far. We had a nice conversation after that.
There are several questions that arise from the launch, chief among which is how aggressively will Amex push this? Clickable CEO David Kidder previously told me that it would be heavily marketed by Amex.
Several years ago the Intuit-Google deal seemed like a “game changer” for the local market with Intuit’s six million SMB customers. But the implementation was poor and Google (and Intuit) got very little out of the relationship.
Clickable expects this deal to materially benefit the company because of the sheer volume of SMBs that Amex services. Amex has at least as many SMB customers as Intuit. And I will say that there does seem to be a great deal of support around the product, and many will probably take advantage of the free trial.
The Facebook ads component will also appeal to many small businesses:
I was told by the Clickable/Amex rep that there was “a lot of activity” online already and people were signing up for the program. I was his first call however.
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Here’s the Clickable Blog Post.
June 22nd, 2010 at 4:50 pm
It’s interesting that Clickable charges a $129/month minimum through their own site, and just $49 at Amex. The $49 will make the program a lot more palatable to the smallest advertisers.
Perhaps they’ll lower their own pricing as well? The Yahoo-Bing merger is removing part of the hassle that Clickable helped to avoid.
June 22nd, 2010 at 5:15 pm
Clickable has in fact lowered their price as well and the website will be changed accordingly. The technology offers a lot more than just the simplicity of having all of the search engines on one platform so I don’t think the Yahoo-Bing merger should have much of an impact. The bottom line is that I am sure Amex did a ton of research before picking a company to work with so it says a lot for Clickable as a product and as a company.
June 22nd, 2010 at 6:24 pm
At that level ($49) there won’t be many clicks.
June 22nd, 2010 at 7:53 pm
I believe the $49 just pays for Clickable itself – but it’s better than $129. I wouldn’t recommend a business use a platform such as this unless their budget is at least 5x (preferably more like 10x) that fee, or it would make much more sense to just spend the money directly on the search engine.
June 22nd, 2010 at 9:17 pm
I have to wonder if from an agency perspective if the costs for usage would decrease for certain value increments. I.E. if one were to have 1,000-2,000 accounts associated with it (high-level agency) would there be an offering more comparative with other PPC Management Platforms (i.e. 2-3%) ?
June 22nd, 2010 at 11:06 pm
Have no idea . . .
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