The Relevance of Photonics Buyer's Guides for Users and Advertisers

You have various options to clarify that:

• You may search for media data published on their websites. If clear traffic numbers are not available or are very hard to find, you should become rather skeptical. But even if you find them, can you believe them? In fact, I have found very misleading or even totally inflated data even on relatively prestigious websites. (For example, many do not tell you the traffic on their buyer's guide, but only on their website as a whole – even though that has little relevance.) Therefore, you definitely need to use other criteria.

• Fortunately, you can measure yourself what is most relevant: the amount of referral traffic which a certain website brings to your own one. That you can get from your server statistics – if necessary, with a little help from some IT person in your company. It is only that this may work only after engaging as an advertiser, but why not try the good looking places for some limited time and then decide on the prolongation of your entries based on the obtained statistical data? If you are responsible for the product marketing, such kind of work is your job!

• Try to look at such resources with the perspective of a user: would you use a certain website for finding suppliers? If it is inconvenient, has a cluttered page design, a painfully slow server response and/or presents competitors which you know not to be suppliers for a certain product, the users will probably also not like it. You may also ask technical people in your company about their opinion.

• In principle, you can also look where others advertise, but I warn you not to rely on others to be more diligent: in fact, many continuously waste advertising money on resources which do not deliver any real value, because they never checked the results.

I already mentioned the important criteria of referral traffic. If a good buyer's guide can send a lot of professionals to your website, the chances are that some of them will end up purchasing your products. Therefore, advertisements in such resources can be considered as effective means for lead generation.

However, do not forget that lead generation is not everything. You also want your company to be well known as a supplier – you want to build up a brand, consisting of your company name, the company logo and a certain image, including aspects like being well known, considered as serious and reliable, offering products of certain types etc. For that purpose, it is important to repeatedly show up on various channels, particularly where photonics professionals spend substantial time – and most importantly when they are searching for products. Even though your company will often not win the competition, it is essential to be repeatedly seen, so that your company is recognized as a relevant part of this world.

Some companies offering very special products cannot rely on general advertisements only, but must personally approach certain people and companies whom they have identified as potential buyers. That can be an absolutely reasonable approach, but don't make the mistake to believe that branding is then not relevant for you.

For example, imagine that you have a young startup company and hope to convince some people that they should try using your lasers for their particular application. This is clearly not easy – as a new supplier in the field, you will be seen with skeptical eyes. It is particularly difficult if they have not seen you at other places. If you have no reasonable presence in the most relevant buyer's guide, the risk is high that you are not recognized as a serious supplier. Keep in mind that you do not only have to convince people of the qualities of your new product; you also need to be seen as a company which has the courage and power to seriously enter the market.

Of course, small companies and particularly startups do not have the resources to engage everywhere. However, they need to at least create and maintain a good presence at the most important places. That is not just nice to have if you have some left-over resources, but essential for your survival. If you really cannot afford e.g. a couple of thousand USD per year for advanced entries in the best buyer's guide, you should probably think about closing down the company due to a lack of chances.

Another example is a company in a later stage which may be acquired by some big company. Again, what matters in the negotiations is not only hard data e.g. concerning your turnover, but also the visibility of your brand. If you inappropriately save some money in brand building, you may later lose a big multiple of that.

By the way, print advertisements essentially support your branding, while normally not being particularly effective for lead generation. They can still be very valuable without having a directly measurable effect. It is just not so easy to judge their value and to use them effectively.

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