has anyone used superpages advertising

emeraldrose

I had a phone call today from the corp. that does superpages and other websites and offered to do avertising including direct mail and listings for so much a month for 12 months. They say they have a guarantee (if i don't make money they don't make money) and that they guarantee 51 opportunities or people calling me, but i'm unsure. i could really use the boost in advertising and if it's a real guarantee then what can i loose, but who knows. so the company is idearc Media LLC anyone ever get a phone call from them or use them? thanks.

Cygnus Studios

emeraldrose wrote:

They say they have a guarantee (if i don't make money they don't make money) and that they guarantee 51 opportunities or people calling me, but i'm unsure.

They guarantee that 51 people will call? In what time period will these 51 people call?
I get calls similar to this all the time. How do you find a service or product? I don't own a phone book and have never used the online yellow pages in my life.
If I wanted to find a local photographer, I would ask friends or google the ones in my area.
Did they tell you that you could pay for this service after getting the minimum 51 calls? That way they would have to put their money where their mouth is.

emeraldrose

Cygnus Studios wrote:

They guarantee that 51 people will call? In what time period will these 51 people call?
I get calls similar to this all the time. How do you find a service or product? I don't own a phone book and have never used the online yellow pages in my life.
If I wanted to find a local photographer, I would ask friends or google the ones in my area.
Did they tell you that you could pay for this service after getting the minimum 51 calls? That way they would have to put their money where their mouth is.

yeah they said I had 30-45 days, but I'm unsure still. They say they're part of lycos and some other websites I was familiar with but can't remember.

Scott_Quier

I would love to see a copy of their written guarantee on this one.

Cygnus Studios

There are so many ways to advertise, and none of them are exactly wrong. May not be the best, and may not get you the best bang for your buck, but people make a darn good living selling ad space.

I would be very leery of anyone guaranteeing a certain number of phone calls or hits to a website. Too many ways to reach this goal outside of legitimate people reviewing your ad.

How would this company prove you received the required 51 calls? How could they prove these 51 people contacted you through their particular service?

If they make the 51 hits based on a link from their many web ads, how would you know if these 51 people were truly interested in your site vs simply clicking the link for the sake of it?

Heck, I get more than 50 people a day viewing my site simply by posting here on Dgrin, and it's free. I don't think that Smugmug would guarantee any hits to a website based on posting, yet it happens all the time. I will probably get 20 based on this thread alone.

The last time I had a yellow page company call me the ad fee was around $500. I could easily reach the local community with newspaper ads, local websites, and community projects and save some money.
Donate 1 free portrait shot as a prize at one of your local charity events and watch the number of hits your website takes.

emeraldrose

Thanks everyone, it's just so confusing trying to do all this yourself you know I know my market, but I don't really know how to reach it in time (seniors). being a new business in a market where there are SOOOO many people trying to prove themselves is harder than i thought it would be

Cygnus Studios

emeraldrose wrote:

Thanks everyone, it's just so confusing trying to do all this yourself you know I know my market, but I don't really know how to reach it in time (seniors). being a new business in a market where there are SOOOO many people trying to prove themselves is harder than i thought it would be

I love your senior rep idea. Provides some incentive. Your contact page doesn't allow viewers to get back easily.

The portrait market seems to be a strange one (at least here). The busiest photographers that I know are all about the packaging. They give a ton of 4x6 proofs with their packages. Don't get me wrong, they charge a small fortune but give a ton of product.

Of course there is every possible scene to be used here in northern Ca so that helps with giving different looks.
You should spend a little time checking what the others in your area give, and then think of what you can offer to get the business. Don't lower rates, but look for alternative shots, products, or services.

I read that you offer the facebook/myspace thing and that should be a good seller if you get it in their head. I don't know if you can advertise on those sites that local readers would see.

One thing that I saw recently was a company offering a raffle of sorts for a free $250 session. One person out of the first 250 people that signed up as friends of their facebook page would be drawn at random for this prize.
Now I don't know how well this is working for them (as I do not facebook) but it seemed like an interesting way to reach their target audience.

Angelo

http://dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=88963&highlight=yellowpages

Photog4Christ

emeraldrose wrote:

I had a phone call today from the corp. that does superpages and other websites and offered to do avertising including direct mail and listings for so much a month for 12 months. They say they have a guarantee (if i don't make money they don't make money) and that they guarantee 51 opportunities or people calling me, but i'm unsure. i could really use the boost in advertising and if it's a real guarantee then what can i loose, but who knows. so the company is idearc Media LLC anyone ever get a phone call from them or use them? thanks.

Don't waste your money. Advertising in the YP is not going to bring you the results you are looking for. You will probably get a bunch of "tire kickers".

I speak from experience. I did an ad once in the YP. I did it because I had (at the time) an Internet based phone number. If you have a phone number provided by the phone company, they will give you a complimentary listing. Since I had an Internet provided phone number, I wouldn't get a listing in the phone book. I'm never going to do that (advertise in the YP) again.


You're not going to reach your target market.

emeraldrose

Cygnus Studios wrote:

I love your senior rep idea. Provides some incentive. Your contact page doesn't allow viewers to get back easily.

The portrait market seems to be a strange one (at least here). The busiest photographers that I know are all about the packaging. They give a ton of 4x6 proofs with their packages. Don't get me wrong, they charge a small fortune but give a ton of product.

Of course there is every possible scene to be used here in northern Ca so that helps with giving different looks.
You should spend a little time checking what the others in your area give, and then think of what you can offer to get the business. Don't lower rates, but look for alternative shots, products, or services.

I read that you offer the facebook/myspace thing and that should be a good seller if you get it in their head. I don't know if you can advertise on those sites that local readers would see.

One thing that I saw recently was a company offering a raffle of sorts for a free $250 session. One person out of the first 250 people that signed up as friends of their facebook page would be drawn at random for this prize.
Now I don't know how well this is working for them (as I do not facebook) but it seemed like an interesting way to reach their target audience.

Thanks that was a lot of great feedback and ideas. I may try the raffle thing and maybe even add if somebody refers somebody they get an extra name in the drawing or something. I do have an ad on facebook that gets 'seen' by about 8000 people a day. I capped my budget at $2.00 a day since I can't afford very much, but it's gotten my about 6-8 clicks to my facebook page per day. It's kinda confusing though because it's not a normal facebook page so i can't go to their pages (my new fans) and get to their friends to send stuff along if you know what i mean.

emeraldrose

Photog4Christ wrote:

Don't waste your money. Advertising in the YP is not going to bring you the results you are looking for. You will probably get a bunch of "tire kickers".

I speak from experience. I did an ad once in the YP. I did it because I had (at the time) an Internet based phone number. If you have a phone number provided by the phone company, they will give you a complimentary listing. Since I had an Internet provided phone number, I wouldn't get a listing in the phone book. I'm never going to do that (advertise in the YP) again.


You're not going to reach your target market.

it's superpages and lycos not yp, does that make a difference? I'm all about google for my search stuff, so not sure. I know on google I've gone from page 24 to 23 last time I checked lol

eta: just looked for the heck of it and I'm now at 22 lol, guess not to bad for only putting my site on there a couple weeks ago.

Cygnus Studios

emeraldrose wrote:

it's superpages and lycos not yp, does that make a difference?

Same basic thing. You can choose to follow the advice in this and other threads about staying away from such forms of advertising, or you can choose to pay them and find out why most of us feel it is not worth it.

emeraldrose

Cygnus Studios wrote:

Same basic thing. You can choose to follow the advice in this and other threads about staying away from such forms of advertising, or you can choose to pay them and find out why most of us feel it is not worth it.

sorry, no need to be rude, just wanted to make sure we're all on the same page since someone in the other thread said they liked superpages

Cygnus Studios

emeraldrose wrote:

sorry, no need to be rude, just wanted to make sure we're all on the same page since someone in the other thread said they liked superpages

I wasn't trying to be rude, I apologize if it came across that way.

emeraldrose

Cygnus Studios wrote:

I wasn't trying to be rude, I apologize if it came across that way.

thank you and I do appreciate everyone's advice, just like to make sure I've gotten all my arguments questions answered before i make choices.

bob swanson

I've had Super Pages for about a year now and am generally listed in the top 5 of the first page. Doesn't really do much good. It cost me $ 40.50 per month and will cancel when the opportunity comes up. I have found it impossible to change mistakes on the site (wrong phone, email, etc.) but I can add new stuff. This is just confusing to perspective customers. Gooood luck.

emeraldrose wrote:

thank you and I do appreciate everyone's advice, just like to make sure I've gotten all my arguments questions answered before i make choices.