Multiview A waste of your advertising dollars. Irving, Texas
To any company out there with any sense, do not spend a cent of your advertising budget on Multiview!
So how do you know when you are getting a call from a Multiview sales rep? Easy, they will tell you they are calling on behalf of the Association they are working on. For instance, Hello, this is Ron Burgundy calling on behalf of the American Association of School Administrators.
Their purpose is to get you to advertise in an online buyers guide. Multiview is partnered with hundreds of Associations and they create their online buyers guide. For instance, The buyers guide for the American Association of School Administrators would be vendors who sell their products or services to schools. The end user is the Administrators.
Ok, so lets keep moving here. The sales rep calling you is going to hit you with the same benefit statement no matter what the association. Here it is... "This is the one buyers guide for 13,000 school administrators who spend billions a year." They want to get the thought process in your head that all 13,000 administrators across the country are using the guide and that this is their only online resource. Also, the billions will make you feel like your investment in this thing is worth it.
Do not believe in the benefits statement. Associations are rarely if ever using these buyers guides. The rep will tell you that the guide gets thousands of visitors a month, but this is almost always the number of people who visit the Association website. (Not the buyers guide website) A vast majority companies that were fooled into purchasing advertising in the buyers guides will tell you they did not get any business from this. So they will ask the sales rep to give them the web clicks for that year.
The sales rep will go to a report through a software called TMS. There will be a range of dates for all the webclicks. The webclicks are broken down by how many times a certain heading was searched, robos, and unique clicks. The sales rep will then copy and paste the clicks onto their email. They then will change the dates and clicks in your favor. This is complete deception on their part. However, they are under extreme stress from the n**i management at Multiview, so they are trying whatever they can to get the sale. Just know that the web stats or clicks are always going to be bogus.
If you ask them how they track the amount of hits on their buyers guides or the number of web clicks they will try to change the subject. Reps do not really know the answers to these questions and management will not tell them. Remember the stats are bogus and no one is visiting these buyers guides. They will always try and change the subject and hit you with that benefits statement I mentioned earlier. "This is the one buyers guide for 13,000 school administrators who spend billions a year" Don't be fooled by this! School administrators will be spending billions a year, but not by using their buyers guide.
If a sales rep is currently calling you about advertising in a guide and you might just think I am some ex disgruntled employee. Just go onto the guide and right down the phone number of various companies that are currently advertising in the guide. Call them and ask them if they have got any business from this thing. I am willing to bet they will tell you no business at all.
Lets move on to a few more things. To populate headings, banners, or, product showcases Multiview will add what they call specs. These will be companies that did not purchase in the guide, but what they are using to make the guide look popular. Another deception tool by this bogus outfit. All a rep has to do to create a spec is very simple. They go to your website and copy and paste your logo, contact info, and description in TMS. This will show up on the buyers guide like a company that purchased advertising space. There is no way to tell the difference between a spec and someone who purchased space. If you ask a rep who the specs are they will probably lie about it.
In conclusion, advertising in online buyers guides is a complete waste of your advertising dollars. Almost no one is using these guides. If you keep getting harassed by Multiview employees all day and all week there is one simple solution. Tell them to put you on the Do Not Call List. It is required by law that they take you off the call list. Also, if they are rude or unprofessional please call the association they are calling on behalf of and report them. In prior cases Associations have dropped Multiview for instances like this. I am a disgruntled employee, but for good reason. Multiview is a place of dishonesty and lacks integrity. I could not work for a place like that.