Your phone number is a part of your business’s brand since it’ll be there on almost every bit of your marketing campaigns, so it pays to have an extra bit of attention when choosing it. You can’t afford to just pick any number as long as it can receive calls. You’ll need to carefully consider the merits and demerits of any specific number you end up having for your business.
Bear in mind your business’s phone number might determine the number of calls you’ll receive as a business, so it’ll have a great impact on brand awareness, your brand’s reach, and customer service standards. Sounds like too many things to be achieved by just a number? Well, your company’s phone number is more than just a number.
Having A Custom Phone Number
Think of it like picking a domain name. You have to make sure a domain name for your website is easy to memorize and generally unforgettable, right? This should be your approach as well when it comes to phone numbers. You want your clients to contact you; and in a world where there’s so much going on in cyberspace, it helps to provide your customers with a number both standing out and easy to remember, so they can contact you after seeing your advertisement. Acquiring a specific phone number from 1800 Numbers and other companies offering the same service could help in guiding your business’s hotline.
You might now be wondering what’s the best way to achieve this feat. Well, good thing you asked because there seems to be just the right answer to this challenge.
What’s A Vanity Phone Number?
A custom phone number, also referred to as a vanity number, refers to a custom-made set of numbers memorable in some ways because they’re made to spell out a word. Words are generally easier to remember than numbers because remembering each digit singularly is quite challenging while memorizing one common word to recall a business’s phone number is much more convenient. In this way, your business would always be remembered easily.
Vanity Or Necessity?
Now you know what a custom phone number is all about, it might be a good time to brainstorm its potential importance to your business. Here are some reasons why a vanity number is a necessity for your business:
They’re Memorable
Almost every business attaches a contact number to its marketing material, and an average person will encounter various forms of advertising in almost overwhelming amounts per day, including both online and offline. In the forest of businesses busy marketing themselves and hoping to grab the customer’s attention and take a specific action, your business and its marketing efforts must do the same but in a more effective manner. It’s a crowded place and your chances of success will be directly proportional to how good a job you’re doing in standing out of the pack and outpacing your competition.
Every business will most likely include a phone number on their marketing material, but what kind of number? Surely, it shouldn’t be an obscure string of digits, but most often than not, that’s exactly what it is. Even if people are keen on the services you offer, at the end of the day, it’s still a fast life and most of them don’t have the time to pick a pen and paper after they saw a billboard with your advertisement to jot down your number.
An easy way around will be just to find a new phone number that’s easy to remember like 600-CARS. For extra strength, pick both digits and words meaning something to your brand or something related to it. If your bookstore is giving away 100 books this month, 100-BOOKS is a good number to go with because it’s easy to remember and it makes your potential clients remember both your message and your number at the same time. Now that’s what a winning combination looks like!
Increases Call Volumes
Your business’s overall goal is beyond just getting remembered. You want to push sales and to do well, so calls need to come in, among other ways a client can contact your business. The great thing is the more clients can easily remember your phone number, the more calls you’ll receive. And isn’t this the exact reason you included contact details on your marketing materials, to begin with?
The more advanced your strategy toward getting more calls is, the more you can get ahead of your competition, so there’s just no way to ignore this. You’re functioning around competition, so seeking help from Drop Cowboy and other professionals specializing in increasing call volumes could help widen your company’s reach.
Improves Brand Awareness
Remember how the best vanity number will need to spell out a word emphasizing something about your brand and what you do? It should go without saying buying such a phone number will greatly improve brand awareness.
Your customer needs to be confident of you as a brand, and a customer’s trust is built through more than just one way. Incorporating a number spelling out what the customer is calling for helps them be sure they’re calling the correct number and the campaign’s machinery is well- oiled, being run in professionally. These are all positive brand messages your business would love to communicate through a simple vanity number retention.
Cost-effective
If a vanity number did all these things but would cost a fortune, then it’d most likely hit the return on investment (ROI) brick wall. Instead, a vanity number is a great way to reach the ROI goals you’re aiming for as it’ll offer you a great boost in sales and make all your marketing efforts worthwhile by making your contact information stand out in customers’ minds.
Improves Credibility
As part of brand building, one of the things you aren’t trying to do is to look cheap. Customers tend to associate themselves with brands reflecting who they want to be and not necessarily who they are. So even if you’re not dealing with an up-market audience, there’s absolutely no reason for your business to not be a thing of your client’s dreams. There are so many ways to market your brand’s visuals, story, packaging, and yes, its phone number.
The perception of professionalism and being established coming with a custom phone number is something that can’t be bought at any price, but you can establish it by asking the services of a reliable phone service provider near you. Whichever company you choose for this job, make sure to check their track record first.
Better Customer Service
In the age of social media and other online communities when people can readily share their thoughts, your brand’s integrity is oftentimes one viral negative comment away from being shattered to pieces. Such things can happen if customers feel like you’re unreachable and they have to resort to the streets. You have to avoid it as much as you can, and one good way to do it effectively is to have a number resonating a welcoming notice.
Have your number as inviting as you can by making it as easy to remember as possible. This’ll help those who want to communicate with your business do so with greater convenience and make your customer service a lot more efficient.
Manages Business On The Go
If you’re imagining yourself sitting next to a single central phone once you buy a custom phone number, then it’s not quite the truth as vanity numbers can offer some of the best flexibility for numbers of their customized function.
If you’re going to be out of the country, out of the town, or simply going to be doing most of your work outside the office, then there’s absolutely no reason for your calls to go to one centralized place. You can get your vanity number’s calls diverted to a phone you have with you always. It’s made to cater to business people after all and because you’re always busy doing more than a thing at once, your contact methods should be able to move with you.
Expands Into New Markets
Perhaps the easiest way to upgrade the campaign you’re running, even if you’re doing it from your kitchen table, is to get a custom phone number. It’s an effective way to have your campaign spread and have a national presence and impact.
All you have to do is to make sure your number is carefully chosen and is well optimized to increase calls from people beyond your immediate surrounding suburbs and your town. You’re even more likely to grab a bigger slice of the customers’ pie if other competing businesses aren’t offering a similar service. Even if they eventually join the train, you still started it and the market has a very long memory, so your name and message are likely to ring the loudest.
Campaign Longevity
Every marketing campaign has a beginning, middle, and end, just like a lot of other things. A vanity number can help build marketing campaigns to beat common sense. Now you can build campaigns live even way after you’ve stopped actively pushing them. If you’re smart enough in picking a custom number, then there’s nothing to stop it from outliving you.
Build A Business Around A Custom Number
You want a demonstration of how strong and effective a vanity number can be? Then you’ll need to start by checking the amazing thing Jim Mccann did with a vanity number.
In 1986, he bought the name 1-800-Flowers for his flower shop located in Manhattan, and their market capitalization now is worth a whopping 1.21 billion! That’s what a good vanity number can do and become. The list can keep growing the more you check around for such good companies built around custom numbers.
If business giants are being born out of vanity numbers, then there might be a need for you to start considering its potential benefits for your business.
Tips Before Getting Your Custom Phone Number
It’s important to know some businesses have already landed on this gold mine. This’ll likely make finding your first choice in vanity numbers a bit tricky, but finding a good number isn’t impossible.
You’ll have to think around short and catchy phrases best capturing your value proposition and brand’s message. While getting one word is favorable, chances are the best words in the industry might have been taken already, so the next best thing is to string together two short words. Their eventual success can mean very good things for you if you try it out.
Another good thing to note is not to get too creative for your own good. Some businesses get their creative juices worked up and come up with the most complicated custom numbers. Remember, you chose this route because you needed the number to be as straightforward as possible.
It doesn’t help anyone if the words get complicated and as many as 1-US-RENT-A-WRECK. The only reason such a number would make sense is the creators are already familiar with both the message and the service, so it’s easy to assume everyone will remember it or find it easy to dial. In reality, a big number of your customers might just end up being confused, which is the exact opposite of what you wanted to do!
Lastly, it’s not always necessary a custom number has to spell a word. An easy-to-remember sequence of numerical numbers could be enough. 1-800-800-8000 is a good vanity number, which is why a motel chain is successfully using it.
Conclusion
Don’t be misled by the name because vanity numbers aren’t vain at all. They’re some of the best things your business can add to its marketing material to make it stand out and encourage sales and feedback from customers.
Your business wants to get the audience of its intended market, but it should also be unforgettable. Think outside the box and choose a custom number helping you do exactly that. In this way, your organization would have higher chances of thriving.
