Has anyone heard about "Vocus Marketing Suite"?

[Elchanan]

Has anyone heard about "Vocus Marketing Suite"?

One of my clients sent me an offer he got from Vocus

http://www.vocus.com/blog/video-the-one-minute-vocus-marketing-suite-tour/

The price ranges from $1995/year up to $3500/year.

[jgower]

They tried to sell it to us...let's see:

• "custom facebook page" = worthless
• Social analytics = get through SEOmoz
• Easily post to social = a multitude of free services

I'm not sure how it integrates with their press releases or if you get anything I'm missing/they didn't mention...anyway, unless I'm missing something it's not worth much at all.  I probably wouldn't even try it if it were free.

Edit: I did find one thing: Publicity Alerts tell you when a journalist is looking for expertise or atestimonial from someone like you. You can then respond, introducingyourself as a source for their story to potentially earn bigpublicity. You can also get your own story in front of journalists bysending them an easy online news release about your business...that may be useful if anyone's using it.

Also, it says "Our online news releases don’t just grab journalists’ attention. They getyou in front of customers on the search engines they use every day. Themore you publish, the more visible you can become on Google or Bing,where people are looking for businesses like yours."...do they give you free press releases?

[icecarats]

Unless I miss my guess the press release/journalist stuff is probably just signing up for HARO.

[SEODinosaur]

Vocus is very useful. I have been using their services to post PRweb Press releases for quite sometime now. The only thing is you need to come up with creative marketing strategies for example:

http://www.prweb.com/releases/A_Prom_To_Remember/2012/prweb9557741.htm

In this PR I had everyone that attended the event link to a syndicated version on our site, these are all local sites and now we rank well locally

Here is another example of a good Press Release:

http://www.prweb.com/releases/MacbookDecals/Contest/prweb9555256.htm

In this Press Release we offer 3 free decals for a simple like (we got a good amount of like from this). We are now #5 for macbook decals, we were on the 3rd page before this release

The Press Releases themselves include links and get distributed to many syndicating reputable sites. I love the use of PR's through Vocus.

With the PR plan we got from them we are able to sell PRs to our customers as well. This is a Win-Win in my experience : )

[AdamThompson]

I just got a demo of their software. The price I got was 6-10K per year. They appear to have some nice features, but for us I don't think it's worth the price. We've already got most of the features they offer via free, low cost, or internally developed solutions.

[Elchanan]

Adam, can you tell us more about "free, low cost, or internally developed solutions"?

Thanks!

[AdamThompson]

Sure. Here goes. Of course, keep in mind that for more enterprise/corporate situations, the options we use may not be as good of solutions. I think that for their target market, Vocus probably works very well, I just think it's not for us at that price point.

Based on the demo I saw, here are the main features included and how we fulfill them:

• Listening Platform - Google Alerts for super basic stuff. We use a platform one of our clients has, and there are other platforms available for low cost.
• PR Distribution - On the rare occasion we need mass coverage, we just pay the per release cost. Most of the time, it's individual outreach that gets us the best results anyway.
• Facebook Apps - Some of these might be of use, but not the custom page one. We custom design Facebook pages. I think Wildfire has some free ones.
• Press Requests - They are just offering a slightly premium version of HARO, which you can use for free.
• Recommendation Engine - I currently don't use any platform that automatically recommends people to connect with. You can use FollowerWonk, Twitter search, etc for this, though.
• Sharing Options - TweetDeck, browser toolbars, and a host of other applications are available to make sharing easy and even schedule posts.
• Reporting Dashboard - We use SEOmoz features, Google Analytics, etc to do the reporting we need.

[greenergrassmarketing]

I think you are forgetting about the press DATABASE that they offer. While their press requests database might just be a "slightly upgraded version of HARO" (I'd argue that it's way better since fewer people have access to it = higher chance of successful pitch.). You also have unlimited access to their database of reporters/bloggers/etc that you can find and pitch based on their beat, pitching preference (i.e. email, phone, social) and their publication. It's an easy and effective way to find large numbers of names and emails that you would otherwise spend hours/days/weeks searching for.

[scrubcouture]

When my website was young I signed up for a pilot program offered by PRWeb/Vocus, the press releases helped immensely with traffic and my link profile. With the latest algo update and me seeing a 70% drop in organic traffic, I'm focusing on content again and contacted them for another press release package. They kept trying to sell me the whole suite and like others didn't find it enticing because of other tools I already use for SMM. I received a follow up call and explained my current traffic situation and I'm not sure if it's the end of the month, or something to do with their fiscal year or perhaps because I was a past customer but they made me an offer I couldn't refuse dropping thousands off the price. Again I was only interested in the press releases but I'm getting them well under the per advanced release cost and all the other features now as well.

[printkeg]

I am in the middle of negotiating with Vocus and think I will tell them I only want access to the PR Web press releases too. All of the other stuff just seems like "fluff" that can be accessed from many other places for a fraction of the cost.