BizIQ Review
As a small business, your digital marketing efforts often require a hyper-local approach. At the very least, your nearby customers have to be able to find you online and hopefully on the first page of search results.
With so many customers now searching for "lawyer near me," "cleaner near me," or similar local queries, there is a growing niche of digital marketing agencies with this specialty. BizIQ is one of the largest.
BizIQ promises to increase your local online presence on search engines through comprehensive marketing packages. The core plans include semi-custom website development, SEO, social media, and review management components.
How do BizIQ’s services stand up against other website builders? Do they support your business with online tools like payment processing? We take a look at what this national company offers for local businesses and whether their plans are worth the investment.
What is BizIQ?
BizIQ is a digital marketing company offering a set of core packages that incorporate website design, SEO, social media, and more into comprehensive plans.
Their aim is to help companies get found online, especially within their local area. So to that end, they specifically work with industries that care about getting found locally, like restaurants, beauty salons, home services, and more.
The company headquarters is in Phoenix, Arizona, but they serve small businesses worldwide, no matter the immediate geographic area.
They have earned several awards and certifications over the years. These include becoming a Meta Business and Google Featured Partner and earning a spot on the Inc. 2020 list of 500 Fastest-Growing Private Companies in America.
What features does BizIQ include?
The focus of the BizIQ model is to help businesses find more customers with packages designed to optimize local SEO.
Many of the features listed below are only available as a part of a larger plan rather than as standalone services. There are few (if any) standalone services, so you could end up paying for services you don’t need or use.
Website design and development
BizIQ builds mobile responsive WordPress websites as a part of more comprehensive marketing packages. They sell their websites as semi-custom designs created from WordPress templates, customized with branded window and image sliders.
Search engine optimization
BizIQ offers both organic SEO and local SEO services. Their strategy incorporates content marketing, backlinks, technical SEO, and local tactics to help small companies gain online visibility.
Directory and citation management
Within their three packages, BizIQ keeps your small business information up to date across online business listings. This includes monthly submissions to data providers and directories and duplicate listing clean-up.
Pay-per-click advertising
BizIQ can provide PPC advertising for Google Ads, Facebook and Instagram Ads, Microsoft Bing Ads, and Youtube Ads. Their packages include ad copy creation, conversion tracking, keyword research, and ad platform account creation, among other components.
Social media marketing
BizIQ offers three social media packages, which include monthly posts, promotional posts, curated content, engagement, and outreach, depending on the plan. Every package covers at least one platform and provides monthly content reports.
Reputation management
As rolled into more comprehensive packages, BizIQ monitors reviews and social media, keeps an eye on mentions, and responds to reviews if required. They also use several tools to ask for positive feedback from your customers.
Copywriting and content marketing
Inside the three main packages, BizIQ includes custom web copy for its WordPress websites and monthly blog posts (including in the Complete Solution package). Their copywriting is optimized, keyword-rich, and includes calls to action.
How much does BizIQ cost?
Interestingly, BizIQ aims to roll everyone into one of three packages. Each package includes a WordPress website, SEO, and other basic digital marketing components. The more expensive the package, the more pages, keywords, and features are included.
Although not entirely clear by the layout of their website, BizIQ doesn't advertise a la carte services like video marketing, reputation and listing management, and content marketing. Instead, these are simply components within their three core plans.
The following information is for the packages and services with prices and features that are clearly laid out on their website.
Website and more
Pay-per-click advertising
Social media
Who is BizIQ best suited for?
BizIQ’s main focus is helping small businesses get more traffic from new customers in their local area. Whether it's a cleaning company serving Butte, Montana, or an insurance agency in Santa Barbara, California, BizIQ offers a hyper-localized approach to digital marketing.
It's not the only digital marketing company offering these services, but it does appear to roll everything into a neat package. This would benefit businesses with little to no online presence. Essentially, BizIQ should be able to build you a website and get you ranking locally.
But even though BizIQ can drive customers to your website, it doesn't support online sales, conversion, or small business admin operations. Their service packages are missing many of the client engagement, payment processing, and invoicing tools our online world has come to expect.
This means you’ll miss hitting client expectations, or have to piece together a number of disparate inefficient systems. Don’t you want to streamline business operations to save time on the day-to-day?
That is where B12 comes in. We are an all-in-one solution that combines a powerful AI-website builder with a suite of online tools designed to serve your customers and make your life easier.
The B12 Website Builder produces a smart design with a smooth user interface, which has been curated to your specific industry. Layer in online schedulers, secure online payments, and contract signing, and you suddenly have an incredible dashboard to better service your customers and reduce business admin costs.
What are the pros and cons of BizIQ?
How good are BizIQ's pre-built website templates?
In short, BizIQs WordPress templates are outdated. They are cluttered with text and buttons, the design is busy, and there is simply too much copy. Compared with today's standard for design, they don't hold up.
The current best practice for website design is to scale back and simplify. Sleek and straightforward is what most potential customers want to see. They don't want to read large blocks of text filled with fluff content. Instead, they want to see concise, need-to-know information.
So while BizIQ’s WordPress websites are functional, they haven't evolved. From a brand image perspective, these obsolete designs will only serve to date your company and damage your competitive edge.
Does BizIQ offer copywriting, design, or technical support?
Unlike many other companies we reviewed, BizIQ does provide custom web copy and custom content — at least when it's baked into their core packages. Every website they create contains unique copy, which has been optimized for local search.
Unfortunately, beyond what comes rolled into the three core packages (Get Noticed, Big Impact, and Complete Solution), they don't offer standalone copy or design services. At least according to the information available on their website.
If you need help further down the line to update your services or create new web pages, this may not be included in your ongoing monthly rate.
In terms of BizIQ technical support, they seem more available and responsive than other services we've reviewed. Customers can reach them via online chat assistance or a toll-free number. They operate under set office hours, Monday to Friday, 7 am to 4 pm, so outside of those hours, you may struggle to get an answer to your question.
What are some BizIQ alternatives for small businesses?
Is BizIQ too expensive? Technically speaking, because they use WordPress templates for their websites, you could save yourself several thousand dollars and follow the DIY route.
With enough time and a bit of patience, you could create a WordPress website based on one of the thousands of different templates available. Of course, not every small business owner can tackle this, and WordPress has a notoriously challenging learning curve.
Many companies will likely need to purchase additional tools to better serve customers online. That is despite the 20+ features that are rolled into every BizIQ package. Remember, BizIQ doesn't support online sales or customer service. You'll have to pay extra for services like Calendly for scheduling, Stripe for online payments, or HelloSign for contracts.
Instead of piecing together all these disparate tools, why not roll them into an all-in-one website builder?
B12's Website Builder creates optimized, mobile-friendly websites but also integrates some of the internet's best business tools to increase conversions and manage client relationships. You can use the editor at any time to update your website or leverage business tools like email marketing, digital contracts, and online scheduling.
It's a seamless solution, and there are no integration nightmares.
BizIQ review summary
As a digital marketing agency, BizIQ has specialized in optimizing for a hyper-local market. Its services focus on building an online presence for small businesses to make sure they are searchable in their service area.
Much of that boils down to local citation and listing management and websites with lots of language highlighting the geographic area.
But what we have discovered is that BizIQ websites haven't evolved with the times. The designs are outdated and missing many of the helpful online tools customers have come to expect in a digital world. For example, BizIQ doesn't even support online payment processing.
So beyond basic SEO elements that help your local customers find you, BizIQ fails to win those customers over with advanced conversion tactics or then helps those customers with practical online tools.
You need to attract, win, and serve customers as a small business. B12 is a powerful online platform for service providers. Our AI Website Builder creates polished websites with specialized features to help you convert. Then, we make it easy to do business with a suite of tools to serve your customers better.
Build a free site today to see how B12 can help your business grow. No credit card is required.
