Am I Being Advised Correctly For Online Listings

One of the things I love about my company is saving clients money on their advertising costs from un-needed advertising sold by large media companies.

This week alone I have managed to save a new client I have just taken on over £35K, YES £35,000.00 that is a staggering amount of money that just one client has been paying for online listings with a major online directory company that they don’t even need, and below I’m going to explain why.

Now the client I am talking about has been advertising with a major online directory company for many years and back in the day when the print directories and local papers etc were massively popular the client did actually get a good ROI which is fantastic and absolutely nothing wrong with that.

As we are all aware, the internet has superseded the print directories and local papers etc, and this market place has diminished. The problem that then arises for this major company as a business is how they still manage to maintain customers revenue spend as people spend less money in printed adverts.

The natural process is obviously to switch customers spend to online products such as online listings, more advanced websites, SEO programmes and Google Adwords and I am in total agreement with this, if the cost is right and suits the client’s specific needs.

So over the past few years, my client has been slowly migrating his spend from printed advertising to digital and buying premium listings with a guaranteed position. These listings guarantee my client position 1 and appears at the top of this major online directory companies website for his specific heading/ service in the areas that he covers when consumers look at this particular site, which is great.

Now, this is where the problem for my client has started, first of all, his internet knowledge isn’t that great so naturally takes the advice of one of there specialist/ sales rep. As I have worked within in this type of industry for 15 years, i know that there are many sales rep’s that completely have there customers needs and best interests at heart. But i am also aware that there are many sales rep’s that have their sales targets and own needs and interests at heart before the customer.

So my client has 2 locations one in Sittingbourne and one in Maidstone, Sittingbourne being the main showroom and Maidstone being a satellite office with no staff just a shop front for brand awareness. Now baring in mind that my client comes up at the top of this particular online directory companies website for all relevant searches for his specific industry in all the areas that he covers the sales rep has convinced my client that it is beneficial for him to duplicate his listings and coverage and repeat the same process for his Maidstone branch. But all premium listings guaranteeing a top 3 position are taken and would need to buy separate listings which are purchased at individual prices per town area, e.g. Maidstone, Sittingbourne, Chatham, Rochester etc. This would mean that my client would appear 1st and 4th when someone is searching for what he does.

Now in a competitive industry, this can be an effective form of advertising and have seen success in this being used, again if the costings for the strategy are right. In a fairly niche market which my client is in, this strategy is not worth doing and would personally advise a client to use this additional revenue elsewhere to cover a larger area of the internet to generate more customers.

Now the cost of number 1 position in all headings and areas cost £618 Inc VAT per month (still a lot of money for a medium size business!!!!) The cost of the 4th position in all headings and areas, are you ready for this……. £2880.00 Inc VAT per month that’s £34,600.00 per year (WOW!!!!!)

So to put this into perspective, the sales rep has convinced my client that its beneficial to his business to spend nearly five times as much money to appear 4th as it costs him for the number 1 spot!!!!!. Is this really good advice?

For me, this is absolutely staggering and do not believe for one minute that this particular sales rep has his clients needs and best interests at heart at all, and is putting his sales targets and commision first!!!! and as you can imagine these additional listings are now being cancelled off.

This is just one client out of hundreds of thousands of clients across the UK that is potentially being lead and convinced to spend their money in this way, while companies go through the migration of printed advertising to internet revenues.

If you feel that you are spending far too much money on your advertising listings, printed advertising or any other online provider, please feel free to contact us here at Big Fish Social Media. We will investigate your current advertising programmes and come back to you with our professional expert advice.