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Marin Software

Score9.1 out of 10

64 Reviews and Ratings

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What is Marin Software?

Marin Software is a cloud-based cross-channel advertising campaign management platform which integrates many tools and functions, and it is the name of the company in San Francisco that issues the software. Marin touts cross-display (including mobile-optimized) advertisement retargeting, social marketing management, and many other tools to manage complex marketing and paid-advertising (PPC) efforts. A free trial of this extensive platform is available. Marin Software maintains a client list with many familiar entitities, like GAP, Macy's, Comcast, Symantec, and many agencies as well.

Categories & Use Cases

Reviews

What users are saying about Marin Software.
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Marin Software is expensive and intuitive

Incentivized
Verified User
Manager in Marketing (1001-5000 employees employees)

Pros

  • Clean user interface
  • Great support and sales
  • Algorithms suit more typical accounts

Cons

  • Not as customizable as other platforms
  • Show the secret sauce in the bidding
  • Does not easily integrate with other marketing platforms

Return on Investment

  • It’s expensive, and clients are less likely to sign on if they incur the cost
  • Some clients that want it spend a ton, so you will get larger clients

Alternatives Considered

Kenshoo Search, Adobe Advertising Cloud (formerly Adobe Media Optimizer), Tableau Online and Google Ads (formerly AdWords)

Usability

Marin Software Optimized Review

Incentivized
Vincent MisiewiczView profile
Sr. Search Engine Marketing Analyst in Marketing at Traffic Digital Agency (11-50 employees employees)

Pros

  • The automated bidding features are great and work very well.
  • Automation of tasks such as adding negative keywords or adding long tails via the search terms report saves a ton of time.
  • Being able to make bulk changes across both AdWords and Bing at the same time.

Cons

  • Preferring to make bulk changes with AdWords Editor, it would sometimes not upload correctly, which was frustrating.
  • The reporting features weren't horrible, but I was expecting a little more. It's pretty time consuming to set up initially.
  • A little slow when it comes to integrating new features - seems like it took a very long time to make a transition to final URLs and there was very little support during that time.

Return on Investment

  • The improvements to CPA the bidding has made on the clients' accounts, made them comfortable and confident enough to incrementally keep raising budget from 100K to 400K/month over the course of the year.
  • As an agency, the ROI is great. Being able to automate many of the more time consuming tasks makes it far easier to remain within monthly budgeted hours per client.
  • The support could be a little better, there were instances where tags would break and would compromise the quality of data and it was difficult for us to diagnose the root of the problem.

Alternatives Considered

AdWords, Bing Ads and Google Analytics

Marin is easy to navigate for reporting on larger clients!

Incentivized
Nikita PatelView profile
Media Manager in Marketing at Performics (1001-5000 employees employees)

Pros

  • The overview tab is helpful for overall knowledge and quick updates for spend, ROI, etc.
  • Ability to filter in endless ways.
  • Reporting is easy to customize and can be pulled across clients.
  • Adding dimensions makes your life easier and can be customized per client needs.

Cons

  • We have a lot of issues with syncing data from Omniture with our Marin clients. Often times, data will be missing for certain days.
  • Sitelinks are not the easiest to upload and view in Marin.
  • Better download speeds for reporting would help us get more done in a day.

Return on Investment

  • It has definitely increased employee efficiency because we run on Yahoo Gemini, Bing, and Google. If we had to optimize/report per engine, it would take hours and hours each week.
  • I think it's made optimizations less of a daunting task in my daily routine. I've been able to pinpoint where our ROI suffers and work from there in a matter of minutes.
  • The customer service has gotten better and could still be improved. Our Marin rep used to be horrible at returning messages but once he got support, we were able to implement a ton more pixels and betas.

Probably best if you're managing high volume accounts

Lol LoweView profile
Paid Search Lead in Marketing at toinfinity (11-50 employees employees)

Pros

  • Gives a complete overview across different paid search platforms e.g. it's easy to see how the same ad groups/keywords/ads etc., are working on different platforms.
  • You can create bidding scenarios as a test before rolling them out.

Cons

  • You have to learn to use the platform yourself & there's very little help with this from the customer support team.
  • Account managers are very hands off and refer you back to customer support for everything.
  • Strategic support would be helpful in terms of how to test and implement.

Return on Investment

  • Increased account management efficiency.
  • Given some insight that would have not have been easily available via the direct paid search platforms.

Newbie Review

Incentivized
Danielle White
Media Buyer/Planner at SERINO/COYNE (201-500 employees employees)

Pros

  • Bid Management
  • Automated Reporting

Cons

  • Implementing new technologies

Return on Investment

  • Increased employee efficiency
  • Better bid management and pacing

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