Frequently Asked Questions

 

Frequently Asked Questions

Why Publish Our Own Guide?

Let’s face it: advertising is expensive. Many industries, such as the real estate industry, rely heavily on continual, up-to-date advertising as market conditions and inventory change. The costs of this type of advertising are substantial and ongoing. And even new advertising outlets such as the web do not replace traditional printed materials for all buyers.

In the case of real estate, one or more guides are typically published in the market, produced and distributed on a frequent basis. Often the only other option is newspaper advertising, which can be even more expensive. Even worse, the “shotgun” approach of distribution doesn’t make best use of advertising dollars—publishers often sell based on large quantities, not effective marketing for you.

Guide aXcess applications, such as the Saginaw Real Estate Guide in the mid-Michigan area, help organizations utilize the technology and production capabilities of TBF Graphics and TBF Digital to own and manage their own publication and keep their costs down. In some cases, membership service organizations such as REALTORs may be able to provide their membership better facilities and service. In other cases, cost savings might be passed along directly to the advertisers.

In any case, organizations benefit by having ownership and control of their own publication, to target their own market. Each and every dollar of advertising spent provides maximum benefit in targeting your intended audience.

 

How Does Guide aXcess Keep Costs Down?

Any organization investigating the possibility of publishing a guide will quickly find out how much time, money, and expertise is necessary to be successful. Usually, the sum of these costs makes this cost prohibitive.

The key to the Guide aXcess solution is our web-based application for ordering, designing and placing ads in your publication. This element alone drastically reduces one of the biggest costs associated with publication—the hiring and continuing costs of graphic design staff, hardware and software. The online application is easy enough for anyone with a small amount of web-browsing experience to use, without needing to be a graphic artist. We take the tasks that advertisers are doing anyway—uploading pictures, writing copy, laying out pages—and have them do it directly online instead.

However, the online component is only a part of the solution. We help you identify production and distribution goals and take care of the entire process for you, so you can concentrate on your core business. Our decades of experience in printing, distribution and document management work for you to get the most out of your advertising.

 

Is Guide aXcess Right for Us?

The Guide aXcess solution is optimized for publications that occur frequently, have pages grouped by advertiser, and have ads that follow a small number of simple patterns. As an example, the Saginaw Real Estate Guide is mostly made up of ads with a picture, a title, body copy and up to six footers.

Though simple, a large number of options are available for color and size to allow each advertiser to give their own distinct look to their ads—again, via an easy-to-use web application.

Included in our Guide aXcess services are custom design services to intermix these ads with professionally designed “stock graphics”. This helps keep your publication looking sharp and professional, and less like a newspaper classifieds section—while keeping the ease of use and control in laying out pages.

If your publication does not meet these criteria, or has special requirements, we can also customize our application to handle many situations.

 

What Will Our Per-Page Cost Be?

The per-page cost of your publication will be based on a large number of variables, including number of pages, number of drop locations, paper, colors, etc. In fact, this will even change from issue to issue. While we can estimate this cost for you from our cost estimator, we approach each solution on an individual basis to provide the closest approximation to what you can expect.

We realize that the eventual cost per page is often the key factor in the decision to seriously consider publication at all. To address this, we recommend determining, as closely as possible, answers to the following questions:

  • How many advertisers (companies) you expect to have in your publication?
  • How many total pages do you expect to have?
  • Will your publication (or any part of it) be in color?
  • Do you want the cover to be a different paper than the inside? For instance, a popular option is to have a full-color, glossy cover while the inside might be newsprint and black-and-white.
  • What is the going rate for similar advertising in your market?
  • What geographic area would you like to cover with your distribution?
  • How many locations would you estimate you’d like to see your publication reach?
  • How many books do you think you would need?

The answers to these questions will allow us to begin putting together your custom solution.

 

Why Won’t Our Cost-Per-Page Stay the Same Each Issue?

Because you own the publication, TBF Digital’s role is strictly as a vendor. As such, we provide our print, software, and distribution services on an issue-by-issue basis as we would any other project, and all profit associated with the sale of ad space in your publication belongs to your organization.

In the four years since the inception of our Guide aXcess solution, we have gained valuable experience in assisting publishers with setting pricing and policies to accommodate the fluctuations in per-page cost that will occur as the number of pages or quantity changes in your publication.

While any new venture contains an element of risk, we work with you prior to launch to help ensure a successful and profitable publication.