Buyer's Guide Entries for Suppliers
Here we explain all the essential information you need to know to effectively use entries in the RP Photonics Buyer's Guide. We also have a more general article on photonics buyer's guides which discusses the merits and limitations of buyer's guides in general.
The unique feature that separates the RP Photonics Buyer's Guide from other photonics marketing platforms is its intimate connection with the RP Photonics Encyclopedia – an immensely popular, high-quality resource for photonics professionals. Advanced buyer's guide entries based on our advertising package (see below) let your product information appear even in the encyclopedia. It's not just the usual yellow-pages stuff, with bold letters, logo display, etc.!
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Click on the headings to get the details:
Free Basic Entries
As a supplier, basic entries will allow you to create:
- A basic company profile page, containing your contact information and a list of your products. Company profiles can be reached (a) via the general list of suppliers and (b) via the lists of suppliers for specific products.
- Listings for up to 100 products. For each product, a basic product entry (with your contact information and a link to your website) appears in the list of suppliers for that product.
Enhanced Entries with the Advertising Package
The advertising package (in short: ad package) allows you to achieve far better visibility and significantly more traffic to your website:
As you can see, with the ad package a company can acquire thousands of visits from photonics professionals within a year – quite certainly more than you get from any other photonics website. That implies a quite moderate cost per lead, even when interpreting the whole cost of the ad package as cost for lead generation, thus completely ignoring the valuable branding effect.
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Features of the ad package:
(1) Improved display of your products
- You can display an unlimited number of products.
- Each product is presented with a product description and a product image. Those make it far easier for our users to see what you offer, and it motivates them to visit your site if the product description fit their needs.
- The data for each product appear (a) in your company profile, (b) on the page listing suppliers for a specific product, and (c) even in the related encyclopedia article, if there is one. On the page with suppliers for a particular product, suppliers with ad package additionally appear in a separate table above the table with all suppliers (in random order). Your company logo and slogan are also displayed there.
Here is an example from the page with suppliers for laser diodes:
(click here)
See also what appears in the related encyclopedia article – find the logos near the article heading and the detailed information towards the end in the section “Suppliers”.
- Your product description can host several links to specific pages on your website, so that users directly get where you want them. (We regularly check the links in your product descriptions and will report back to you should we find that any are broken.)
- Suppliers with the ad package are listed as an alternative supplier on the profile of other companies offering the sane product without an ad package. On your own profile page, however, there are no such links to other suppliers; your product descriptions are displayed at that place.
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(2) Enhanced company profile
- Your profile can present your company logo, slogan and a company description. The description can be several sentences long and can contain links to specific pages on your website.
- We can display an image (up to 1000 × 800 px) – for example, a photograph of your main building, an exemplary exhibition booth or a collection of products …
- You can also display links to your social media pages (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube) and a quality certificate (e.g. ISO 9001).
- As a manufacturer, you can list your distributors, or as a distributor you can list the companies you represent.
- We will announce your participation in upcoming exhibitions, if you tell us about them.
- You also get far more visibility in the list of all suppliers.
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(3) Advertising banner
The ad package includes a skyscraper banner which can be displayed in the right column of the buyer's guide pages (see the right side of this page as an example – many are our own ads).
Whenever a page of the buyer's guide or the encyclopedia is called, the web server randomly selects one of the banners.
More details of banners …
All banners resulting from ad packages have the same display probability. The total display probability of those banners is limited to 50% for the buyer's guide pages, and to 10% for the encyclopedia pages. At the moment, there are 21 such banners, and each one obtains a 2.4% display probability on buyer's guide pages. With typically well over 20,000 page views per month of buyer's guide pages and well over 200,000 on encyclopedia pages (see the statistics), each banner obtains over 476 views per month on buyer's guide pages and over 952 on encyclopedia pages.
Banners are graphics with the following characteristics:
- width: 234 px, height 500 to 600 px
- animated GIFs are allowed, as long as the animation is not too distracting (to be determined by RP Photonics)
- HTML link connected to the banner: URL can be freely determined by the advertiser
Our additional service: we produce your banner graphics from your inputs. For example, you may send us an image and some text which we will place on the image, together with your company logo. We can also cut off superfluous margins, rescale images etc. It may thus be sufficient to send us materials from other areas which we adapt to meet the above described characteristics.
It is also possible to obtain additional such banners, possibly with higher display probability and for a limited time; see our page on advertising banners for details.
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(4) White paper or video promotion
One white paper or video promotion is included in the ad package. We place a preview in the corresponding encyclopedia article, so that it is seen by exactly those people who have an interest in the specific topic!
(5) Company news
You can occasionally publish your news on our company news page – for example, if you won a prize or expand your facilities.
(6) Website statistics
RP Photonics provides substantial statistical data to customers with an ad package. Such customers obtain a website link, containing a secret password, with which they can access the statistical information at any time. The data are regularly updated on the beginning of each month.
The provided statistical data include at least the following:
- Traffic by pages: number of page views and referrals to the supplier's website – for the company profile, for each supplier page for a product of the supplier, and for each encyclopedia article in which an ad of the supplier appears. These data are the sums from the beginning of the current advertising period to the previous month.
- Traffic by months: number of page views and referrals by month for up to 36 months (possibly even beyond the beginning of the advertising). The information includes data for the company profile and sums for all supplier pages and for all encyclopedia articles.
We are happy to demonstrate to our customers how much our website is used, and how much value is added in the form of branding and lead generation..
We strongly encourage you also to check the statistics of your own web server, so that you can find out how much traffic you get from as compared with other websites – for example, from other buyer's guides.
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What is the Cost of the Ad Package?
The cost per year:
- basic price: 2,400 € (2,750 USD)
- add 75 € (90 USD) for each product up to 50
- add 50 € (60 USD) for each further product (beyond 50)
Examples:
- 3,900 € (4,550 USD) for 20 products
- 6,150 € (7,250 USD) for 50 products
- 8,650 € (10,250 USD) for 100 products
For a trial, we also offer shorter subscription periods lasting 3 or 6 months and costing just 25% or 50% of the amount of one year, respectively. That way, you get a low-risk test. Thereafter, you can decide on the further 12 months based on the obtained statistical data and your overall impression of the benefits.
Special Discount because of the Coronavirus Crisis:
Because of the challenges which the coronavirus crisis currently creates for many companies, we offer a special discount:
- For new ad package customers: 25% discount on up to 6 months of the ad package.
- For existing ad package customers: For the next prolongation of the ad package, we will deduct 25% of the cost for 6 months – even if the crisis will be over by then.
By the way, our traffic data are hardly affected by the crisis – our traffic is better than e.g. a year ago.
Startup Discount
We have also introduced a startup discount of 25%, which can be combined with the above mentioned discount due to the corona virus crisis.
After the advertising period (normally one year), we will ask you whether you want to prolong your advertising. There will be no automatic renewal – we always ask for your explicit consent.
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Decide Based on Data!
If you are not yet advertising in the RP Photonics Buyer's Guide, we suggest the following:
- Try it out either for 6 or even only 3 months.
- Thereafter, make your final decision based on the statistical data and your overall impression.
We also warmly recommend that you check your referral traffic, ideally comparing referral data for different digital advertising portals.
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How to Get Started?
The process is pretty simple:
- Find the profile page of your company, starting from the list of all suppliers. (If your company is not registered yet, use the registration form for new suppliers to create your profile.)
- In the profile, click on the button “Edit profile data” (near the contact information).
- Finally, just fill out the registration form.
We also offer a page describing the details of the required data, with helpful recommendations.
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See also the terms and conditions of the RP Photonics Buyer's Guide and the frequently asked questions.
Videos
Marketing people who do not know our website well yet can have an easy introduction with our video showing the website within about 8 minutes:
Furthermore, you may want to watch a video demonstrating RP Photonics marketing solutions:
(back to the buyer's guide main page)