We received an interesting question inquiring as to what was the best way to price listings, banners and more for a directory site.
First, there is no one correct way to price your listings and there's no one standard or uniform equation to pricing out your listings.
In our experience, having dealt with hundreds of clients and also having experience in the publishing industry, your pricing model should be competitive to your market specifically. The price of a diamond level listing on a biotech or pharmaceutical directory where sponsors include multi billion dollar companies like Amgen or Genentech is going to be drastically different than a diamond level listing on a local search site in Billings, Montana (no offense Montana).
Look at the advertisers you're looking to attract and find out where they are advertising.
These are likely your direct or somewhat direct competitors. They've set a market rate for these businesses and established a standard upon which they're used to paying. This is your best guide to determining the right pricing model for your site.
One thing to keep in mind are the differences in print and online competitors. A 1/2 page ad in a print publication that boasts a circulation of 15,000 is drastically different than a 728×89 leaderboard with 15,000 impressions.
Let's say you're working on bringing in a new client and quote them $100 a month for a featured (diamond) listing. At that time, maybe you're getting 10,000 page views a month on your site. $10 CPM isn't that bad. Now let's say 6 months down the road he comes back to you to purchase the advertising — or perhaps even renew his existing contract with you. The price he last saw was $100 a month for 10,000 page views.
Now your site has reached 30,000 page views and you're charging $200. You've tripled the traffic to your site and only doubled the cost of your sponsorship and your CPM is down to $6.66. At the end of the day, you've created a more cost effective advertising vehicle for your sponsor, but him justifying a 2x increase in ad spend from what it was last time can be very difficult, despite the substantial increase in audience size. So what to do in these situations?
Price your ad units at competitive or slightly above competitive lines out of the gate. If you had come in at a $200 price point with 10,000 pageviews ($20CPM), it may be a little steep, but you can ALWAYS have value ads in the deal with your advertiser, such as buy 4 months and get a 5th free to make the cost sting a little less. This way, your sponsorships (listings, banners, etc) maintain their value ($200 a month) and you don't have to worry about constantly increasing your costs to reflect the growth in your site traffic.
Guaranteed impressions – In their print publication, they're sold a circulation number, but this by no means reflects how many people actually read the publication or saw your ad for that matter.
Relevance – Use Analytics information (search terms, time on site) to SHOW your advertiser that people come to your site to FIND businesses like theirs.
Reporting – Provide your advertiser with a detailed report on how many page views their ad got, how long the average visitor stayed on the site, what they were searching for when they came to the site, how many people clicked on their listing, redeemed a deal, etc.
1.) It's all about the listings. While it may be a bit difficult to generate traffic from long tail search terms via business listings, they will eventually be what bring people to your site, what keeps them on your site and what will bring them back in the future.
2.) Quick, easy and relevant back links. Find online publications, websites, blogs, forums and other relevant publications where you can market your site and what it offers. Remember, as much as it is a backlink, it's also an opportunity to share your site with others and tell them what it's all about.
3.) Pump out the unique content. Search engines love fresh content, so feed them what they're looking for. Consistently publishing blog posts, articles or whitepapers is a great way to serve search engines the fresh, unique content they're looking to index and serve up in search results.
4.) Be the authoritative voice of your space. Similar to #3, getting more involved in topics most relevant to your site's subject matter and covering relevant stories through interviews, feature stories, grand openings, conferences, tradeshows or events. If you're running a local search site and a Mario's restaurant opens up in the neighborhood, a feature story about their grand opening and an interview with the owner or Chef are exactly the types of content people look for. In addition to producing unique content, you're also producing content that is likely to get back linked. After all, how likely is Mario to post your article in his 'reviews' section on his website, or share the story on twitter, facebook, etc.
5.) Keep the site up to date. Out of date, inaccurate information can really damage the integrity of your directory. Keep your site up to date is huge to drawing more search traffic in. At the same time, keeping your site up to date gives your site visitors faith in publication. The more they know your site is getting updated, the more often they will visit your site.