Our Medical Clinic entered into a contract with the citysearch online advertising directory. We were promised great traffic as citysearch would 'open up' our listings to all the search engines, franchised sites, etc. As we determined our budget to be $300 per month, we were assured that just enough traffic would make our phones ring, but not exceed our budget at $0.30 per click-thru. Mind you, the term is click-thru. What is painfully ironic and raised our eyebrows was the fact that traffic reports are easily generated by citysearch, and we noticed that any given day we could track 8 clicks or 80 clicks, and the phone/email responses never increased. What was disheartening is the fact that two of our three 'listings' counted exactly the same number of clicks on the exact same day. IE - Our ADHD listing tracked 721 clicks for the month, and so did our listing for Smoking cessation (?). We found it very ironic that the exact same number of people in Dallas were researching ADHD and Smoking cessation at the same time - not to mention, our billing was identical for the two listings at the same day/time. We have successfully cancelled our contract and have been invoiced for set-up fees, etc., but do not have to pay for the duration of our 'contract'. After doing some research, we still have not found an actual Sales Manager or central office in Dallas. We feel that the citysearch reps might not be privvy to what they are actual selling (?), or product knowledge just isnt there. None of our questions have ever been answered with any accountability or true product knowledge. We received one (1) email off of the listings - from a nurse looking for a job.
Think about ot - if you have ever looked at 'work-from-home' job ad's, you might recall anonymous jobs that pay people to 'review' ads online... Hmmm. Last example... On Monday 9/1/08 our ADHD listing tracked 8 clicks. Then on Tuesday 9/2/08 the same listing tracked 122 clicks. Thats a huge increase in people with ADHD symptoms - and no increase in call volume.
No value in clicks - dont pay for clicks
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