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I'd like to hear from people who use or have used Vocus. What are your thoughts on the service, do you think it's fairly priced, what did it help you achieve in your business?, etc.
I met with a Vocus rep yesterday and I was very impressed by the live demo. I'm going to present it to my boss as a money saver (it would automate a process that we currently use man-hours on; I think the savings in that ALONE will pay for Vocus each year) and efficiency builder. In addition to the cost savings, I'd also like to present some general business feedback on the service.
I'd appreciate any stories, anecdotes, etc. people would like to share.
Vocus is great, but is costly, in my opinion. If you like Vocus, be sure to take a look at Cision's product before you make a recommendation. It has the same features and it is considerably less expensive.
The customer service that Vocus provides is second to none. I used Bacon's before; Vocus provides a very similar product, but it's the responsiveness of the Vocus staff that makes me a huge fan.
Vocus does indeed have good analytics, and Cision offers comparable measurement tools. For us, it came down to price and functionality. I got 90% of Vocus' overall functionality with Cision, for about half the price. Additionally with Cision we have a direct line to all our Bacon's clips, which are automatically dropped into the system for us each day. The clips cover print, online, and broadcast. And it has the same kinds of research and project tracking tools as Vocus. We just got the Cision product at the beginning of this year and we get so many hits that we are a bit behind in building our quarterly reports. But I am confident that the analytics will helpus pinpoint areas that need more of our attention to build better relationships with the media and better coverage of our company.
I just signed up in fact--I was using Burelle's for news clipping and Cision for media lists. And I am eating about a half year subscription fee for cision in making the switch--nbut o matter. The economics of the enws cliping service where there is NO PER CLIP FEE sold me. And there is esentially unlimited keywords so we can monitor our client and all competitors without getting dinged the per-clip fee traditionally charged by Burelle's. Having it all in one is the compelling selling point to me. I am due to get onramped this week--can't wait. Will let you know my thoguhts.
Thanks for your input katsacks and Hilewoman. I'd love to hear more from either of you. I am going to request a demo from Cision to see the difference. We currently ALSO use VMS for broadcast clipping, and we have a team member who does manual news clipping of four major papers daily. This costs about 15 hours a week of her labor. I'm figuring the labor costs alone will pay for the yearly subscirption to Vocus.
I will have to check with my Vocus rep to see if they do broadcast clipping. I don't recall that being covered, but will ask him.
Sounds like a great idea. We also used to use VMS but they got expensive. Cheaper to get our broadcast through Cision, and again, it loads right into the system. We are spending more time managing our clips, as we found out we had a lot more media hits than we were aware of. But the added time is worthwhile to help us really slice and dice the infomration and plan media strategy to address particular markets or issues. - Deb H
Vocus was one of the companies we reviewed several years ago when initiating our online newsroom We opted for TEKgroup due to cost, design flexibility, and emergency communications support (dark site). Have been happy with the decision.
I am also looking for a media monitoring service. We currently use ewatch through PR Newswire. I haven't been very impressed with it. It looks like most of you would recommend Cison over Vocus. Is that correct?
First the disclosure – I currently specialize in a product that competes with Vocus in some areas, Factiva Insight from Dow Jones. However, in my previous life I was a decision maker on contracts with vendors like Factiva, Lexis-Nexis, eWatch, Critical Mention, and Burrelles/VMS, and I worked as a partner with clients who used Cision (then Bacon’s) and Vocus.
The best advice I can give is to first prioritize your needs for analytics/media measurement, media monitoring, or media management (CRM/media list building). Most vendors in this space overlap in these services, but most are also clear leaders in only one or two of these features, not all three. Vocus is an excellent tool for media list building and journalist management, from all I have heard. But if your priority is analytics or monitoring, you might consider some content companies with analysis capabilities, as you’re likely to get more comprehensive content at a lower cost (software companies or those with web-only content usually license print content at higher fees). Leaders in this area that offer print and broadcast content, in addition to web, include Cision, Burrelles/PRTrak, and of course, Factiva Insight from Dow Jones. Hope this helps!
Outside of my Cision sales rep being the nicest person ever, there is no comparison. Vocus wins hands down. I used Vocus at my last job to track all of my agencies world wide and it was fabulous. I came into work in the morning, went straight to Vocus to read the latest and greatest in my industry, share company news with my execs and track everything that was being pitched. I could give my VP a report at the drop of a dime and adjust pitching that wasn't sticking, follow-up on reporters, and look at my dashboards and clippings from one system.
At my new job they have Cision. It is the most cumbersome system ever, not nearly as intuitive as Vocus or visually appealing for that matter. My VP of marketing saw the Vocus demo and it wasn't even a question for him, we are switching systems mid year. Why would you settle for 90 percent of functionality. It is that other 10 percent that can make or break your day. The fact that I can set up my view to be whatever is relevant to me, check what is going on with competitors, the industry, view my clips, track my analysts, monitor my agencies - all from one system is fabulous.
It is easier to manage the results sets from Vocus, and their support is outstanding. They import your existing media lists, help train everyone on the system.
Cision promises that their system will catch-up, but frankly, I would rather be ahead of the curve.
We use Vocus at our agency as a “360 degree” PR platform for contacts, monitoring, analysis, reporting and a couple other things. It has automated some of our processes, made others easier, and cut down on time spent on “manual labour” overall, which has been helpful.
Among other things, I do particularly like Vocus for the flexibility and customizability of its analytics engine. For example, we have a number of clients who want very specialized measurements and we run a bunch of customized reports based on user-defined fields for them. If analytics and reporting are a priority for you, definitely take a look at Vocus.
From an agency perspective, I also like that different accounts can be kept separate in different “data groups”. So everything from media monitoring to media lists to activities/projects to reporting can be accessed depending on which account you work on. Or we can get an overall view across accounts. It definitely helps to get people better organized and be more informed.
I am not a big fan of sweeping statements like “vendor x is good at this” or “vendor y is good at that”, and the same goes for price comparisons. The fact is that there are a number of great tools with different pricing options out there, and the truth is that it all depends on how you plan to use these tools. One person’s “90% functionality” is another person’s “30% functionality”, depending on what you are looking for with the system you choose.
I thought we were pretty advanced in our use of Vocus until I went to the last user conference where I saw a presentation by somebody who leads a PR department at a global corporation and managed to integrate their 14 PR agencies onto one Vocus system to get a single view of all PR activities and results. That is very impressive but completely different from what we do with Vocus. We manage about 50 clients through the system. And all that won’t be of interest to, say, the PR manager of a small startup firm.
Whatever your requirements are, it is important to talk to these vendors, get a demo, look at the functionality and roadmap, and ask a lot of questions (especially about pricing – read the fine print), so you get a good understanding of what they can and cannot deliver. And compare.
For example, when we made our decision, we were looking for the most flexible PR platform, not just a monitoring solution. I know other firms who use monitoring tools from one vendor, and analytics/reporting tools from another vendor. They like the “best of breed” approach. We like the platform idea, and Vocus works really well for us.
It is also very helpful to talk to other users but, again, keep in mind that their needs may be different. Ask the vendors to give you client references that are at least vaguely similar to what you are doing. For example, if you are with a small agency, ask for small agency references. If you are a corp comm. department within a global company, ask for a similar corp reference.
I don’t think there is one vendor that is right for everyone. It is great that there is a lot of competition in the market because it keeps all of the vendors on their toes and makes for better products and service.
And while evaluating technology, functionality, content and pricing is critical, don’t forget to also take a good look at the people you’ll be dealing with.
When we made the decision to go with Vocus, one of the competitors we were looking at (and who shall remain nameless) actually sent an email to half the agency saying that we are making a mistake. They said that the Vocus sales team will try to dazzle people with a PowerPoint presentation and then can’t deliver. Ironically, a year after we had started with Vocus (and things were going fine), the same competitor invited me to a demo of their newest version, and when I arrived it turned out that the demo was actually just a PowerPoint presentation and not ready for prime time yet...
All of the products mentioned above are the same products we've been reviewing. Our final conclusion is that Vocus and Cision both do what we're looking for, but Vocus is more seamless in how their different functions operate. I don't know first hand, but I've been told that Cision, when they were Bacon's, purchased a number of companies that performed the various functions they wanted to offer, however the cross-functionality is lacking. Vocus considers themselves a software company that sells media analysis...Cision is a media analysis company that sells software. The difference is in the code and how the various functions interact...now if I can just find the money in my budget to purchase Vocus....
