When to go for a free Listing and when to go for a paid listing for your Company or Products and Services

  Choosing between Paid Listing and Free Listing in Online  directories

A. Most online directories are free for basic features:

B2B or B2C directory listing are generally free, and it would have basic features using which you can create a business profile your company, and could even add few product or service offerings listed.
If you are offering a product or service, which are very unique and there is not much of competition!, a paid listing for your company nor your products/services is generally not required.
But majority of us have, product or service offerings that are not so unique or are perceived as similar to other offerings from many other companies in the market. So, how do you create awareness about your products and company? one easy way is to register your company and products with online directories.
But then, should i go with a paid listing or free listing?

    B. So, it is important to know, when to go for a free Listing and when to go for a paid listing for your Company or Products & Services 

Directories usually offer paid membership in addition to paid memberships, so how do they differentiate between the two? Simple, if a potential customer is looking for business similar to yours, the paid ones are sure to come first in search. Yours will be listed way down, and you may loose out. If you have more demand than supply, you could survive without a paid listing. but, if you are interested in high growth, a paid listing is likely to fetch you more inquiries and business opportunities.

  C. But customer searches for Products/Services and not for your Company!

Why would a customer search and find your company, rather they may be interested in finding products/ services, that you may be offering, so they are more likely to search for product or service in the directories.

Here is why you should opt for directories that offers 'Featured Listing' of your Products/Services.

With such directories, you have better control and you could decide when to go for Paid listing of your company Vs Featured listing of your products/services

  D. Paid listing for my company profile or paid listing for my products and services?

Remember,

1) Paid Company listing for your company is generally expensive compared to Paid listing of Products/Services.

2) Check if Paid  Company listing portals are also offering you the ability to have free unlimited featured (paid) listing of products/services - this will be useful if you many products/services to sell/promote.

3) If you have less than 10 products/services, a paid Featured product/service listing will be work out better than a Paid Company listing

 'Nothing comes free!',  so the moment you start digging more to the features of directories, you will find that, it will ask you to pay right at the time you want to get more value out of the listing.

So it becomes very important to know how to choose the right b2b directory.  Once you decide on registering your firm with an online directory, the next question would be ' How to choose the right directory' - which is well explained in some of my blogs about choosing b2b directories and b2c directories