Professional or Personal: Which Works Best for Your Vanity Number?

Some businesses blend exemplary professionalism with individual experts to great success. Communicating this magical mix via your marketing channels can be a tough task, however.

That's because a logo or other formal brand assets struggle to communicate the human touch, while too much personalization can threaten to dilute a company's overall brand recognition.

Choosing whether to focus on the person or the wider profession can be an important part of finding the right vanity number for your business. You could represent the law firm as a whole, individual lawyers with distinct numbers, or break your vanity numbers down by different areas of law.

Person or Profession? Base It on the Brand

The reality is that vanity numbers are extremely flexible and will bend to the requirements of your brand.

If your company is built on a reputation in your chosen field or a diverse group of experts, focusing on the profession is probably best. If the founder or another individual has built the business from the ground up, it's likely to be the personal side that you'll emphasize in your vanity number and the marketing that flows from it.

Let's look at a comparison in the legal field, between Nager, Romaine & Schneiberg Co. in Ohio and New York's Sokolove Law, for example.

NR&S chose a vanity number that puts their profession front and center, with 1-855-GOT-HURT as their primary client contact number.

It's a clear pointer to their expertise in personal injury law and summarizes the type of legal need that they serve. As a law firm with multiple partners and an area of law that , this vanity numbers gels well with their brand and underscores that this is a practice who will fight for people who have been injured.

As you can see to the right here, the tag line “Got Hurt – Get Results – Get NR&S!” blends in with the vanity number and helps to define the firm's professional brand. There's less of the personal touch, but the marketing speaks to the firm's core values.

Sokolove Law takes a different approach but still focuses attention on the brand of founder Jim Sokolove.

Much of the marketing for this firm centers of his personal expertise, so he clearly went with the inviting number 1-800-CALL-JIM to keep his contact point just as personal.

As Sokolove takes on more varied cases across the legal field, from fraud claims to medical malpractice, it feels more natural to push the personal angle and decades of experience that he brings.

When you have a well-developed personal brand that forms the core of your business, and which you're proud to emphasize as a core marketing message, a vanity number like this can make all the difference. The call to action is a neat sign off as well, one which feels like a piece of friendly advice from someone recommending the firm: "Call Jim."

To sum up, both of these numbers are memorable and work to communicate the core value of each firm's brand.

When you know you're uniqe selling proposition well, you'll also know where your marketing should be positioned and whether personal or professional is right for you.

A vanity number is a versatile extension of your existing business branding. It will slot in perfectly with other marketing materials, as well as providing a memorable standalone tool to remind potential customers to contact you.

So the only question that remains is this: is your brand rooted more in the person or your profession? When you have the answer, search for the right vanity number here.