Avoid Paying Lots of Money for Your Advertising...
and Getting Little in Return

After 15 years of serving fertility organizations, we've seen lots of clients paying too much money for their advertising and getting little in return for their dollars.

Watch Out for the Following Types of Organizations Offering Advertising

Here are a couple of fertility industry examples of how to to pay too much money for your advertising:

• Pushy sales people - For many years there was a company that had very aggressive sales people calling into IVF clinics, offering advertising in their national directory. They charged lots of money ($2,000 to $5,000/month).
  
  We talked to over a dozen of IVF clinics that signed up with them and then after a year or two, quit, because they had just not gotten the business to justify that expensive advertising. The company no longer operates a specialized fertility directory.
   
• Lots of pizazz, but little results - As of January 2011, there is a glitzy fertility website that offers banner ads to IVF clinics and fertility product companies. They have lots colorful graphics and charts with colorful statistics. And they charge $1,000 to $8,000 a month for banner ads on their site.
  
  In January 2011, IHR reviewed the traffic that the glitzy website sent to one of our clients. Here are the results for the most recent 30-day period:
   
  • Glitzy website sent 7 click-thrus to the client site
  • IHR sent 248 click-thrus

How to Avoid Paying Too Much Money

1. Look at statistics !! - This is our number one recommendation. One of the major metrics to assess your bang-for-the-buck is click-thrus (the number of clicks-thrus from the advertising site to your website).
    
   • IHR typically charges $.45 to $.95 per click-thru.
      
   • In contrast, here's the math for the IHR client who's been advertising on the glitzy website:
     
      ($1275/month) / (7 click-thrus) = $182 per click-thru - this is a lot of money!
      
2. Avoid feeling pressured by pushy sales people and glitzy websites - Avoid the pressure and look at the stats; don't feel like you have to go with the latest "in" advertising.
    
3. Review what type of Internet advertising works best for your organization - Here are some guidelines:
    
   • Banner Ads - Banner ad advertising is usually best for national branding. If you're a local IVF clinic, this is probably not the best way to spend your money. Banner ads are designed for branding, but they send less click-thru traffic than text ads. Banner ads are ideally suited for fertility products that want a national recognition. Why pay for expensive banner ads, if they are not suited for your organization?
      
   • Text Ads - For the vast majority of fertility organizations that provide services, text ads will serve them best. Local text ads send maximum traffic to advertiser websites.
      
4. Find advertising that offers the most bang-for-the-buck - Here are some recommendations:
    
   • IHR advertising - Of course, we think we offer lots of bang-for-the-buck! But, please do your homework, so you can independently confirm this on your own.
      
   • Google AdWords - With Google AdWords, you only pay for the traffic you get. And you can customize your ads to get highly targeted traffic.
      
   • Inexpensive fertility directories - There are a couple of non-IHR fertility directories that send targeted traffic.
      
   • Optimize your website for search engines - Although you might pay for the labor to optimize your website, if you can get high search engine rankings for your keywords, this is an excellent bang-for-the-buck strategy.