There are limited advertising platforms out there meant to help local businesses reach their local military community. MyBaseGuide is one that hopes to enter the conversation with its product and feature set aimed at getting local businesses in front of potential customers in their area. In this saturated market of driving leads online, does MyBaseGuide deliver on its promise?
If you’re a business that’s looking to work with the local military community and haven’t taken advantage of digital advertising yet, or you’re trying to get more out of your digital ads, then you’re going to want to know if MyBaseGuide advertising is right for you, or if you’re better off looking elsewhere for your digital advertising needs.
MyBaseGuide Overview
MyBaseGuide is a resource and relocation guide for U.S. military members and their families. In recent years, the guide remains a Department of Defense contractor, but has transitioned the original print guide into a digital portal that provides local businesses with technology to optimize and customize ads and their distribution. It’s a tool that aims to get local businesses in front of customers in their area with the intention of driving more leads and ultimately getting more sales, appointments, consultations, etc.
MilitaryAdvertising takes a look at the key features of MyBaseGuide and what it offers small business customers in our MyBaseGuide Reviews pros and cons analysis
Pros
Several of our marketing industry professionals on staff have initiated their own MyBaseGuide reviews, and we bring you their overall takeaways here.
- MyBaseGuide is the most popular military relocation guide available with over 245k monthly visitors (According to SimilarWeb)
- Holds official contracts with many of the largest and most prestigious military installations in the world (Fort Bragg, West Point, JBLE)
- No complicated marketing skills necessary – MyBaseGuide uses simple and easy-to-understand language for all its features
- Detailed reporting system accessed through an intuitive dashboard
- Access to friendly, helpful customer service
- Works directly with the military audience and their $1.2 trillion in spending power
- Official Department of Defense contractor since 1956
Cons
- For marketing to the Military community only
- Not the only digital advertising platform in town
- Locks you into a monthly contract
- Only has contracts with major bases, missing official agreements with some smaller bases around the world
MyBaseGuide Reviews and Detailed Analysis
Signing up with MyBaseGuide gets you access to a nice variety of advertising features:
- Display ads
- Ad retargeting
- GPS ads
- Connected TV
- Email marketing
- Customizable business page
- Featured placement with your local military base
- MyBaseGuide’s own military trusted business badge
The number of advertising assets you can choose from is a big perk. Using the backend customization features, you can practically make your own ads for each of them depending on your own needs. That gives your business’s lead gen strategy a nice bonus over other tools like AdRoll, for instance.
MyBaseGuide has been the base guide partner of the Department of Defense for a number of decades, so you’re getting some nice longevity and stability there.
What MyBaseGuide Advertising Lacks
The biggest limitation of MyBaseGuide is that it’s focused solely on the military audience. Of course, it’s an enormous economic sector representing millions of people with huge salaries (MyBaseGuide says that military families make more than the average U.S. family), but it’s still just one segment of the overall market. If your business exists outside of the borders of a military base, then this likely isn’t the platform for you. But if you’re one of many businesses across the U.S. with a base next door, then this could be a great way to increase your revenue by catering to a totally new market.
There’s also no free trial, as far as we can see. This limits your ability to try out the offerings before you commit to what could be a lengthy contract of 6 or 12 months.
Overall Impressions of MyBaseGuide
Our MyBaseGuide reviews suggest that this could be a solid advertising platform for small businesses who operate in an area with an active military base or Department of Defense installation, like the Pentagon, Quantico, etc. As a business owner, working with MyBaseGuide means you’ll have a constantly rotating roster of new business opportunities, since new military families are coming to town every single year, and all of them are going to be looking for new regular spots to shop and take care of their consumer needs.
If you’re not located around a base, then things get a little lackluster for MyBaseGuide’s service offerings. Add that into the lack of a free trial or month-to-month pricing structure, and it’s a hard sell.
Verdict:
Check out your access and proximity to military bases near you. Some locales even have more than one close by. Some have just one that’s off the beaten path and forty miles out into the desert. You’re unlikely to get much business from personnel at those particular locations. But if you’re in a city with multiple bases across branches, or lucky enough to have a huge joint base in your area, or just a small town proprietor with a nearby base shoring up the local economy, then it could be worth it to see how MyBaseGuide might increase the number of customers you can bring through the door.