4 Primary Phone Products to Boost Your Sales (and Service!)

What kind of sales call volume does your advertising generate? Can you break it down by channel and location? How about your peak time for receiving customer calls or your team's response rate to that volume? These aren't intended as confrontational questions but, if they make you squirm in your seat a little, it's a good sign that you don't have the telephone tools in place that would make your business better. Ringboost's Paul Faust recently spoke to the Rainmaker blog about the importance of a memorable number and the four main phone number products your company can use to improve brand recall and inbound call volume. Today we'll take a look at those products and what makes them an indispensable element of any marketing tool kit.

Four Primary Phone Products for Business

Here are the four types of phone-related products and services you'll want to consider to get more from your sales and marketing methods:

Vanity Numbers - Toll Free and Local

Our highest priority for any business is taking the boring, easily-forgotten digits that the phone company gives you and transforming them into something that potential customers can't overlook. It can't be stressed enough just how many sales calls your business could be losing because of a generic number. The numbers support the memorable value of vanity numbers and the main question isn't if you should get one, but which kind will work best for your business. Toll free vanity numbers are the classic phone product that have been serving brands big and small for decades. They're a tried and trusted marketing tool that continue to thrive in any marketing environment because of their versatile nature. A toll free number always exudes value and service, while the memorable word or phrase that you choose for your vanity is equally at home on search ads and social networks as it is on radio spots and print advertising. Local vanity numbers focus more on customizing digits that follow a familiar local area code, adding a relevant word to the memorable numbers next to it. One of the questions we hear most often is whether it's better to go for a local or toll free number?  The inevitable answer is: it depends! Some customers care more about their proximity to a potential service provider than the call being toll free, so your business might see a benefit from keeping that current area code. It has been Paul’s experience that those who gain the most value from vanity numbers, like law firms and real estate professionals, choose both a local and a toll free number. If your customers will be attracted to both depending on the area they find your ads and marketing, it makes sense to give them what they want. Perhaps the real question is: why limit your customer's choice? [caption id="attachment_1251" align="aligncenter" width="526"] One of the most famously successful toll free vanity numbers.[/caption]  

Easy Dial Numbers

Although words and phrases tend to be easier to recall than a set of numbers, there are some digit combinations that can work well for your business. We call these easy dials. These are numbers that include repetitive patterns or the same digits several times to improve recall rates and drive more calls to your business, just as a vanity number does. If you can't find the right word(s) for your business - although we have a lot of them available! - an easy dial number might be the right route to take. If you have a few minutes to read more on the subject, the neuroscience of vanity number recall is quite intriguing. [caption id="attachment_2311" align="aligncenter" width="599"] A local easy dial number lets you keep the digits but still make them more memorable.[/caption]  

Call Tracking Numbers

If your operation is getting too big to keep track of all those calls, integrating the right phone number technology can aid that analysis. Sure, you can ask customers how they found you, but it's far from an exact science in this digital world with multiple brand touch points and constant distractions. Customers will forget that they saw a certain billboard or confuse Google's organic search with its paid listings, leaving you little wiser about where they found you. Allocating a specific, tracked number to each marketing channel that matters removes the burden from the caller and gives you automated reporting to remove much of the confusion from your analysis. Businesses who advertise a lot prefer tracking numbers because they allow them to identify the advertising channels that deliver the best response rates. By using specific numbers for individual channels, call volume becomes clearer and can be attributed to the right source. When you understand which ones are giving you the most bang for your marketing buck, you can redirect the spend on those that aren't to the more effective channels. [caption id="attachment_2285" align="aligncenter" width="647"] Image Credit: Ken Teegardin[/caption]   There are many more features of vanity phone numbers that can prove beneficial to your business, but these primary four phone products give a solid starting point to decide which product is best for you. That said, if you still have questions, as always we are only a phone call away! -- 1-877-RINGBOOST (or email us here).