HTML vs. Plain-Text Email, Which is Better?

The battle between HTML and plain-text is an issue that a lot of businesses and marketers think about to themselves when it comes to email marketing. There are advantages and disadvantages to both HTML and plain-text emails. HTML can be used to build nice emails, but plain-text gets straight to the point and is more readable.

HTML Explained

HTML emails are visually appealing. They allow businesses to build eye-catching emails by inserting attractive graphics, images, and colors. Depending on how you design your email, you can make the most valuable information, like a call to action or sales message stand out with large fonts and colorful buttons.

However, even though HTML allows businesses to send attractive emails, subscribers might not even see them. For example, if you ever subscribed to Cosmopolitan’s email newsletter, you might notice that images in their HTML email are blocked. You will just see colorful text on a dark background and empty image boxes. There is a tab at the top of the email saying, “This message contains blocked images” and you will have to click on “show images” to see all of the pictures and graphics. I experienced this with both of my Yahoo! Mail and Gmail accounts. Today, Gmail has gotten better with showing images but Yahoo! still blocks them.

Another problem with HTML-only emails is that they are quickly sent to the spam folder. So always keep a plain-text alternative when using HTML so it can be readable to email viewers.

Plain-Text Explained

Plain-text emails are exactly what its name describes, plain-text. When a subscriber opens this email, they will see black text and blue hyperlinks on a white background. Nothing too fancy.

The advantages of plain-text emails are that they are easily readable, and there aren't any blocked images interrupting the viewing experience. By writing concise sentences and leaving a lot of whitespaces, subscribers can quickly skim the email. The biggest benefit of plain-text emails is that you won’t lose messages embedded in the images. For example, you won’t have to deal with the problem of having your 30% off coupon picture blocked.

A problem with plain-text emails is that you can’t track their open rate. If you use MailChimp to send your emails, you most likely read the open rate metric to determine campaign performance. But unlike HTML emails, plain-text emails do not have an “open” or tracker pixel inserted into an image that signals MailChimp that the email has been opened. This is a problem for marketers who want to test and understand the results of their campaigns.

Which Is the Better Choice?

Honestly, it depends on who you are selling to and what you are selling.

HTML emails are very popular with big brands and businesses that need visual storytelling to sell a product like clothing and shoes. However I notice that a lot of professional individuals like solopreneurs, marketers, consultants and authors use plain-text emails because they believe that text, not images, get straight to the point on the issue that they are addressing. If they told information through pictures, they are in jeopardy of losing their core message.

So if you’re deciding whether to use HTML or plain-text, I advise you first to write your content, then decide whether it would be more powerful with images. If you are using HTML, please limit your images and the messages they carry. Invest in multi-part MIME to protect HTML emails.

How to run and read an ROI analysis

Return on investment (ROI). It's one of the most commonly used phrases in the direct marketing lexicon and one of the paramount benchmarks on which success or failure of a campaign is measured.

But as common a concept as ROI is, many direct marketers still don't perform the analysis or, perhaps worse, perform it incorrectly. As a financial analysis, ROI is a measure of a company's net income related to its total asset investment. For direct marketers, that "asset investment" generally is the advertising cost associated with generating the sales that contribute the net income. Depending on the business, it also could include the investment in inventory to sell.

For the purpose of this column, the focus is on advertising dollars as the investment to illustrate the technique.

ROI then is the net profits (the return) related to the advertising dollars spent (the investment). For example, if, after all costs are accounted for, net profits for a campaign are $10,000 and the advertising costs for producing and mailing the piece are $50,000, ROI would be equal to $10,000 divided by $50,000 or 20 percent.

What ROI is not is sales divided by ad spend. This is a common mistake. By focusing on sales as the numerator, none of the pertinent costs are addressed, and the calculation is virtually meaningless from a decision-making standpoint. If, using the numbers above, a company generated $95,000 in sales with its $50,000 investment, this miscalculation would render a 190 percent "ROI." But if costs rise in any key areas such as cost of goods, advertising expenses, fulfillment or overhead, the profits will shrink and a big sales generator may become an investment loser.

Using ROI Analysis
For most mailers, ROI analysis is applicable as a strategy-level analysis as well as a post-mortem analysis.

As a strategic analysis, a pro forma ROI should be evaluated prior to any effort or campaign. Each campaign, when built, typically is forecasted for sales and net profits at the segment level, as well as overall. That campaign P&L becomes the foundation for the ROI analysis, and the results of the analysis should provide insights during the decision-making process for whether a campaign should be executed and to what extent.

If the company's ROI requirement is 25 percent and the pro forma analysis suggests an expected ROI of 50 percent, this may indicate the mailing can go deeper into the housefile or can be mailed to more prospects. It's also important to perform the ROI analysis to establish campaign expectations against which the final results of a campaign can be measured.

As a post-mortem tool, ROI analysis answers the question, "What did we get for our money?" and starts the process of establishing the next effort's strategy. After a campaign is complete, ROI analysis should be performed on as many aspects of a mailing as possible, including version tests, offer tests, individual drops and individual segments. Armed with this information, planning for the next effort starts with an understanding of the effects of various offers and versions on various customer and prospect groups and exactly what those variables generate for every marketing dollar spent.

As a decision-making tool, ROI obviously is valuable. If a company can get more for its money by letting it generate interest in a bank account than it can get by investing in a marketing effort, the money should stay put until either a program that will perform better is found or a way to make the existing program perform better by improving costs, increasing average order values or cutting the advertising expense is discovered.

Calculating ROI
Calculating ROI isn't difficult. It starts with a P&L, which most companies would run as a pro forma prior to a campaign and as a final complete after a campaign is executed. A typical cataloger's P&L groups together the merchandise, fulfillment, advertising and overhead components, so key benchmarks can be used to manage costs.

The P&L provides the necessary information for calculating ROI: earnings before interest and taxes divided by advertising costs. In this example, ROI is $100,489 divided by $533,672 or 19 percent. If this cataloger can get better than 19 percent return on its money by leaving it in the bank, it should. Otherwise, this program is successful, and the ROI baseline should be used to compare other potential programs against it in the future.

A pro forma ROI, run prior to the final go/no go decision for a campaign, can be less detailed but should follow the same general guidelines as the P&L version. The chart above is an example of a pro forma that uses projected data, based on historical mailing performance and established corporate benchmarks for costs, to establish the figures for the ROI calculation. Going into the mailing, the company knows that if, for example, the required return on capital is 30 percent, the campaign in question will dramatically exceed that. From here, adjustments can be made in the plan to perhaps mail deeper or more frequently to "water down" the ROI to a point where sales are maximized and profits are minimized down to the required level of return.

As you can see, ROI analysis isn't difficult to do, it just takes a little time to set up the process to run the calculations. Once set, the findings can be powerful. ROI analysis, run correctly, is as likely to find money left on the table as it is to find pet projects that will never be worth the money.

Comparative & Competitive Advertising

Comparative advertising, also referred to as comparison advertising or competitive advertising, is a common form of marketing that involves making comparisons between different brands or products. Comparative advertising may directly compare two or more brands or products, or it may take the form of an indirect comparison.

Indirect Comparative Advertising

Indirect comparative advertising makes a comparison between one brand or product and other brands or products without specifically naming them. For instance, a commercial alleging that one brand of fabric softener is the best value, is the least expensive, or performs the best, indirectly alleges that all other brands of fabric softener are more expensive or perform worse than the named brand.

Direct Comparative Advertising

In direct comparative advertisements, commercials will specify a competing brand or product by name and allege that brand or product being promoted is in some way superior. This most frequently occurs when an industry is dominated by two primary competitors. For example, commercials directly alleging that Pepsi is superior to Coke, or that Apple computers are better than computers running Microsoft system software, constitute direct comparative advertising. One famous direct-comparison campaign was when Avis admitted that it was No. 2 in car rental companies to Hertz at No. 1, but the Avis ads claimed, "We try harder."

Clarity in Comparative Advertising

In the United States, there are laws dictating the legality of direct comparative advertising. One such law is that if a company uses the trademark or logo of a competing company in an advertisement, consumers must be able to identify the source of the advertisement. If Pepsi used the logo of Coca-Cola in such a way that consumers might believe that the commercial was actually sponsored by Coca-Cola, that would constitute a breach of advertising law for which Coca-Cola could rightfully sue.

Truth in Comparative Advertising

The other primary rule of thumb when determining the legality of direct comparative advertising is that it must be truthful. If Coca-Cola claims that in blind taste tests 9 out of 10 participants chose its products over Pepsi products, it must be able to prove that those tests were actually held. Otherwise, Pepsi could sue Coca-Cola for false advertising. For the same reason, a company should never express an opinion as a fact in direct comparative advertising.

5 Social Media Marketing Tips For Beginners

What is social media marketing?

Social media marketing is the process of building awareness about you, your products or services through the various social media channels.

The ultimate goal of any social media marketing campaign is to drive traffic to a website, increase the visibility of a product, gain more social media followers or find more customers.

The most popular social media networks today are: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, YouTube, Instagram and Linkedin.

Why is social media marketing important?

Social Media marketing is important because:

It’s the fastest way to spread the word about a new product, service or news item – A tweet can go rival in minutes and spread a message around the Word faster than TV or other traditional media

It’s a trend – Millions of people spend a good amount of their time on social media networks so if you ‘need them’ you know where to find them

It’s the new marketing – Back in the old days, marketers found out that many people spend time in their cars driving so they thought of the billboards on the roads. Today people are spending time on social media so as a marketer you have to start thinking this way too.

It’s the new influencer – Recent studies show that social media is becoming a great sales channel and more and more companies are stating that they get customers from Facebook or Twitter.

Social Media Marketing tips for beginners

How can you take advantage of social media? How can beginners build a proper social media presence fast?

1. Decide which social media platform(s) to use

As a beginner to social media you have to choose one or two social media platforms and concentrate on those rather than trying to work on all platforms at the same time. This is a mistake that many beginners do and at the end they quit without having any benefit.

A nice way to find out which platform is best suited to your niche is to find the influencers and analyse where they have success.

For example, find out the leaders in your niche and check out the number of Facebook fans, twitter followers, Google+ followers, Pinterest followers etc.

If they have 100,000 Facebook fans but only 1000 twitter followers then this is a good indication that FB is more suitable for your niche than twitter.

It is also a sign that you are more likely to have success with FB than twitter, so you can use your time more efficiently and engage more on FB rather than any other platform.

2. Optimize your social media profiles

Once you decide which social media tools you will use (at least for the beginning), the next step is to optimise your profiles on those sites. By optimizing your profiles you increase your chances of getting more followers and it is also a good way to boost your SEO efforts.

Some general rules that apply to all sites are:

Use a real photo, showing your face – avoid using animals, places or anything that is not real. Social media is about connecting people and if you want to have a trusted profile you need to get out of your cage and put your face on the web!

Write a good description about yourself or your company – What is your background or expertise? What are you proud off? Mention this is your profile.

Give an indication to users what type of info you will share – Although this is not necessary, I like to read in profiles what kind of info to expect from the particular person.  For example in my twitter profile I wrote: “..tweeting SEO, social media, internet marketing tips and advice”.

Include a link to your website (where applicable) – On Facebook include a link in the ‘About section’, on Twitter and Pinterest in the ‘Web site Section’, on Google+ in the ‘Contributor to’ section. In other words, do use your social media profiles for SEO purposes as well.

I suggest you read SEO boost your social media profiles article which includes more examples and instructions on what you have to do to each social media site for more exposure.

3. Connect your website or blog with your social media pages

After you have your social media profiles ready the next step is to connect your website with your social media pages. There is a certain procedure to follow for each platform and it is very important that you do it correctly.

A correct binding between the two means that search engines and social media websites know which website corresponds to which social media page.

For example, when I created the Google+ page for reliablesoft.net, Google+ did not know that this was the official page of the site until I have added the publisher verification code on my site.

4. Add social media buttons on your website

Besides connecting your website with the respective business pages on social media, you also need to add social media buttons on your website so that readers can easily share your content.

Depending on the platform there are many ways and plugins to do that, I suggest you search Google using “how to add social media buttons to xxxxxx” – replace xxxxx with the platform your website is based.

For example, if you are using wordpress search google for “how to add social media buttons to wordpress”.

As a general rule of thumb, keep the buttons above the fold to increase exposure and have in mind that larger buttons get more clicks than smaller buttons.

5. Find and follow the influencers in your niche

So far we have selected the most appropriate social media tools for our niche, optimized our social media profiles, connected our website with the social media pages and added the buttons on our pages for more interaction.

The next obvious step is to find people to follow but most importantly to gradually build our tribe of followers.

I would say that there are 5 basic steps to follow to get more followers and these are described in points 6-10 below.

Before getting into that, you should first find and follow the influencers in your niche.

It is almost certain that they will not follow you back because you have a new account with no followers but doing so is important for 3 reasons:

Social media platforms will use this information to make suggestions on who to follow so by following popular people in your niche is like telling them that you are also in that niche.

 When you follow popular people who are likely to get followed by others as well. A trick many people use is to follow the followers of a popular person because they know that some will follow them back as well.

They will most probably share important and useful information about the niche so you have a chance to learn something new and re-share that with your followers.

Six steps to a successful site sale

These six rules—and four anti-rules—can help you develop and sell your own web properties, to generate a strong and reliable sideline income in addition to your main online venture. Despite the comfort of steady and recurring passive income, it’s often the case that you need short-term cash to fund other websites or advertising projects. In that case, be sure to put these six tips for selling your website into action.

1. Understand your website’s long-term value in advance

The average sales price of a successful website tends to range from six to ten times its profit on a monthly basis. While this can sound fairly hefty—particularly for a website that generates several thousand dollars monthly—it’s really a fraction of the type of value assigned to offline businesses.

Think about Facebook’s current valuation—the ludicrously high $50 billion. Does this reflect the website’s current earnings? No. While the website is profitable by all accounts, it’s far from those levels of profitability. The valuation reflects the website’s long-term value—something that can be applied to your own websites too.

So instead of thinking in terms of short-term revenue for your website and monthly profit, think in terms of your website’s potential for revenue growth over time. If you’re trying to sell a site that’s a real social media hit, for example, or a website with a growing search presence, use this potential as an indicator of its value and price it accordingly.

2. Know your audience, and know how to sell a website

The biggest mistake I see being applied to website sales is one that’s repeated in almost all aspects of online marketing: using the same tactics for very different audiences. Just as you’d use different sales tactics to sell a car than you would to sell a bag of candy, you need to use different tactics to sell different types of websites.

Know your audience, and understand how they’re going to respond to your website auction. On one of the bigger marketplaces like Flippa, it’s important to remember that people value revenue data or profit information above anything else. For an independent website investor, information about your website’s potential for growth may be more important.

3. Research successful website sales before listing your own

When asked about how he acquires new skills quickly, productivity guru (and now fitness author) Tim Ferriss explained that it’s best to look at people who have achieved massive success in a short amount of time. It’s a philosophy that can be applied to everything from online marketing to selling your own websites, and it always produces good results.

Instead of going with your gut when deciding on how to present your website for sale, look at other websites that have achieved high sales prices in the past. What information do they disclose? Which sales tactics and pitches do they use to frame the auction? By reverse-engineering sales information from successful website auctions, you can vastly improve the results of your own.

4. Take steps to optimize profits before making a listing.

There’s nothing worse than seeing a website for sale that’s barely been optimized. From blogs that lack even the most basic advertising to affiliate websites that reek of poor conversion testing, if an online property hasn’t been optimized, it’s never going to reach its true value at sale. If your site is on the market without any profit optimization, you’re making a huge (and potentially costly) error.

Test different advertising networks, different ad creatives, and different affiliate offers on your site before you put it up for auction. Test different ad placement, different monetization methods, and a lengthy list of different lead capture strategies. Unoptimized (or poorly optimized) websites can be great deals for buyers, but they’re never a good option for you as the seller.

I’ve optimized many of the ugly websites I’ve sold to increase profits by as much as 415% before making a sale. Small changes, particularly to the wording surrounding your call-to-action text or ad placement, can make a huge difference in the amount of income that your website generates.

5. Use a popular outlet that attracts the right audience

There are hundreds of auction sites out there that allow you to list your website, but only a select few are worth your time. The most popular is Flippa, which, despite its reputation for occasional shady websites, is actually the best option out there. I’ve sold two websites on Flippa for mid four-figure sums recently, one of which achieved an ROI of over four hundred percent.

Don’t, however, confuse a large audience with a good audience. If you own a website in a specific niche, for example, it’s almost always better to appeal to others in your niche directly instead of an all-purpose outlet like Flippa. As I said in step two, it’s important to know the type of people you’re marketing to, not just the amount of potential buyers that you have access to.

6. Minimize “fluff” statistics, and focus on the substance

“Fluff” statistics are, to me, information that’s impressive when explained in an auction, yet utterly meaningless when it comes to your website’s ability to generate income or influence change. The types of statistics I’m talking about are total pageview information—generally information that has no tie to real profitability—or data about how much traffic your website generates in total.

Instead of offering this type of information to potential bidders, highlight your website’s strengths and offer real data to buyers. Talk about how many unique visitors your website gets, your biggest traffic sources, and the value of a visitor to your website. “Fluff” statistics are only worth mentioning in one situation: your website is overvalued and you’re desperate to complete the sale quickly.

6 Top Professional Website Builders for Small Businesses

Building your website is a priority, but what if you can’t afford to bring in an independent website designer? There are plenty of options you can find from a free builders list to take advantage of today.

To give you an insight into some of the options available, this guide is going to show you some of the top picks that you should consider. With 77 percent believing a poor website is a weakness, you need the right builder.

Which of these top professional website builders will you use for your small business website today?

1. Website Builder.

The Website Builder platform will help you to build a professional website in just three steps. Despite the simplicity of this platform, there are thousands of templates to choose from. And you don’t have to stick with the templates available. Every template is freely open to editing, so you can do what you like with it and make a completely unique website.

There are both SEO and integration tools that come with it, so you can cover all the requirements of a modern website. You can also use the free domain name option, but in general it’s always better to use a paid domain name so it’s truly unique.

2. Wix.

Wix is one of the most well-known website platforms in the world. Other than WordPress, this is one of the best free website builders available. You can create practically anything using Wix, but it tends to work best with fashion and apparel websites.

What makes Wix stand out are the SEO link building tools that come with your free website. It’s easy to rank high when you’re using Wix. To get started all you need to do is begin embedding the various Wix templates as and when you please. Connect the media widgets and you instantly have a professional looking website at your disposal.

3. Weebly.

Weebly is another one of the more well-known website builders on this list. It’s ideal for practically any type of business because there’s a website template for practically any niche. Take advantage of the simple drag and drop system when creating your website and you can have something that even a professional designer would be proud of.

Weebly automatically comes with mobile friendly designs, along with compatibility with multiple browsers. One feature that you get with Weebly that you don’t get with other website builders is a personalized domain name.

4. Sitey.

Sitey comes with the drag and drop system that makes building a website to your specifications so easy. Every template has mobile responsiveness built in, as well as being compatible to Google’s best practices.

Primarily, this is a network that sticks to using plugins and extensions to make up the bulk of its functionality. The customer service available is another plus point for Sitey. It’s available 24/7 and is well-known for being one of the most helpful customer service departments of all the options on this list.

5. IM Creator.

IM Creator uses something called "Stripes," which are pre-customizable. This website builder is one of the easiest builders to use because you can have a professional website up and running in a matter of minutes.

All the templates provided by IM Creator are retina ready, which means they are programmed to be used immediately with a live audience. All these designs can be placed onto websites that utilize hundreds of pages.

With IM Creator you don’t have to worry about hosting because you automatically gain access to guaranteed unlimited hosting and bandwidth.

6. Jimdo.

If you need an ecommerce builder, Jimdo is an option that you should seriously consider. Create an online shop without all the issues associated with making your shopping cart work by downloading one of the dedicated ecommerce themes presented by Jimdo.

It even caters to heavyweight ecommerce stores. You can check all the various options and features to make sure you have the functionality you need. While this is a free website builder, you do have a paid option available, which comes with a ton of additional features. However, the free version is more than capable of fulfilling your needs.

Finding the right website builder for you requires some thought. Consider what your site needs to thrive and the features you need to create the platform you want.

The right website builder for you is out there. You just need to search for it.

Why A White Label Solution Is Easier Than Building Your Own

As an entrepreneur with a business problem, your first instinct may be to try do-it-yourself solutions. After all, that’s what entrepreneurship is all about, right?

Not always. In many cases, building a customized solution from scratch in an attempt to meet the exact specifications of your business can be a setup for failure. That’s because building your own solution can lead you to:

·         Reinvent the wheel, making mistakes that others before you have already made and mastered

·         Dramatically slow down your time to market, as you try to troubleshoot and increase your learning curve outside your core competency

·         Spend too much money developing tools and solutions that already exist in other formats

·         Miss out on resources and expertise in the specific space where you need a focused solution

These pitfalls can be easily avoided simply if you opt for a white label solution, rather than building one yourself. “White label” refers to a fully supported product or service that’s made by one company but sold by another. White label products and services are purchased by the latter company without branding. That way, the reseller can customize the product with their own brand, logo and identity, allowing customers to associate the product with the reseller. Meanwhile, the manufacturer can focus on finding cost-effective ways to make the product, without concern for the product’s marketing.

White label solutions work well for everything from cereal to tickets. Grocery stores sell cereal and other products with their own brand name at a discount to other brands. Similarly, ticket resellers can manage their ticket inventory more efficiently through a white label solution. This also increases distribution so that fans have more choice in where they can purchase tickets.

If you’re still not sure whether a white label solution is for you, consider these points:

1.      It’s quick and easy to brand. White label solutions can offer advantages if you’re trying to think of ways to add new features to your business. White label solutions are generally fully integrated and ready-made, which makes branding very easy. As the reseller, you’ll be free from concerns about needing to spend time and money on research or development. You can add your own branding and identity, and get back to business.

2.     It keeps your customers happier. Your customers have an end goal, and using a white label solution can give them a clear and simple path to reaching it. The extra months (or even years) that it takes to develop your own solution can force customers elsewhere for solutions. You can avoid this with a prepackaged solution that meets their needs immediately.

3.     It saves you time and money. Developing a solution from scratch takes a large amount of financial and human capital resources — not to mention time. While a custom solution may seem at the outset to be the best alternative, you may quickly find that the effort derails internal business processes and busts budgets. Even if you think you can build it yourself, it’s important to factor in time for marketing. Remember the time it takes for architecture, design, building, and testing the solution. If you require a fast deployment, cutting corners in any of these steps can leave you even further behind. When time is of the essence and you need to be speedy, investing in an existing solution may be more cost-effective in the end.

4.     It allows you to focus on your business’s core competency. In many cases, the solutions that companies hope to build themselves fall far outside of their areas of expertise. It’s not smart to stretch your resources to do something that doesn’t fit within your core competencies. Be sure to look closely at the solution you need and compare it to your available resources to help you decide whether a white label solution would help you reach your goals more efficiently. Prepackaged solutions provide an opportunity to trust the experts in the specific space you are focused on, and avoid making the same mistakes that others have made before you.

In short, white label solutions can help you utilize your business’s unique branding to offer a product or service without investing in infrastructure or technology creation around the solution. The result: You can focus on building your brand and selling your services while simplifying the conversion path for your customers.

Yext Details

Yext Pricing

With all of this being said, one of the main drawbacks of Yext is price.

Yext costs a pretty penny. As a local business, you’re looking at between $500-$1,000 to buy directly from Yext. And that’s per year. And that’s not the only problem with Yext (more on those below).

For those of you that don’t just have that kind of cash to throw around or want something better, we have a different solution for you.

Before we get to that solution though, let’s cover everything Yext offers and the benefits, as well as some drawbacks to lay a good groundwork.

Yext Benefits

Yext has some pretty awesome benefits that I think any subjective individual would admit to. Among those being:

Submission and 55 live listings for your local business within a quick time frame (72 hours)

One central dashboard to make name, address, phone or other local business changes

Keep your listings “fresh”

 – I’ve been told by a few people now that Yext actually doesn’t offer this to the regular consumer anymore. It’s only a part of their “Enterprise” package. Can’t be confirmed or denied at this point.

“Enhanced Listings” with photos, specials, etc.

Review monitoring

Local listing analytics

Yext Problems

While all of these features are pretty cool for the most part, Yext has 2 major drawbacks: price and reversion.

Yext costs a minimum of $500. That wouldn’t be so bad except that you have to pay Yext every year and $500 a year starts to add up fast. They also auto renew, so if you order through them, watch out for that.

Yext also will revert your listings back to their old status if you cancel with them. Meaning those 55 listings will either be gone (if Yext created them in the first place) or will revert back to their old listing information if you lapse your agreement with them from year to year. Basically, you’re renting your listings.

So, you’re more or less locked into a lifetime agreement with them from here on out until the end of your business if you want to keep those listings.

Are you planning on keeping your business for 10+ years? Sure you are. Then you need to be prepared to shell out $5,000+ over the lifetime of your business to Yext.

But what about Yext’s features? Aren’t they worth it?

Yext’s features just don’t really add up in the grand scheme of things in light of the drawbacks of cost and the reversion of your listings.

Before we examine Yext’s features even closer, let me remind you of the main benefit of Yext.

As a local business, you want to have profiles on local search directories and Yext obviously helps with this. But you don’t necessarily want to have profiles on local search directories for the sake of getting traffic from these local search directories. Why? Because unless it’s one of Bing, Facebook, Yelp, or Yellowpages, consumers won’t be searching on these local search directories. They’ll be searching on Google instead because these other local search directories simply aren’t popular enough to have local customers searching on them. Have you ever heard of 2findlocal.com or showmelocal.com? Yeah, neither have your customers.

The main benefit of local search directory profiles is to rank you higher on Google, the most searched “local search directory”. Google scans all of these local search directories and the more you have a profile on, the higher you will rank on Google (Local SEO).

Again, just to hammer it home: Ranking higher on Google is the main benefit of Yext.