How to
Successfully Use
800 Number Marketing
800 Number Marketing
800 numbers used to be the big rage
and are still used extensively but for a much different purpose.
The key to using an 800 number successfully in a marketing campaign
depends on the design of the overall campaign. In short, the
campaign needs to be a two- to three-step marketing campaign to use
an 800 number successfully.
What is a
two-step marketing campaign?
For a moment, let's go back to
basics in marketing. Every marketing strategy needs to take a
prospect through a sequence of events until a sale is made.
Those steps are:
-
Attention: A
campaign must get the prospects attention. This is not
always easy in this world of mass communication. We are
bombarded with hundreds of sales messages per day. Getting
the prospects attention may seem simple, but it is not always
easy.
-
Interest: The
campaign must next get the prospects interest in what is being
sold. This usually depends on getting prospect benefits in
the message to convince the prospect that "Yes, THIS is what I
need."
-
Desire: Next the
campaign must turn that 'interest' into a burning desire to have
the product or service... NOW. There are numerous ways to
generate this heightened interest which I will not go into here.
-
Action: Next the
campaign must drive the prospect to take action to close the
sale. Pull out the wallet, plop down the credit card,
click the PayPal link... any of those and more are actions to
make the sale.
These steps are known in the sales
world as AIDA -- Attention, Interest, Desire and Action.
So, back to two-step marketing.
Basically what that means is that the 800 number will just cover one
of the AIDA steps, usually the initial step of getting the prospects
attention and/or interest. In other words, the 800 number is
just a part of the overall marketing campaign that covers all of the
AIDA steps.
What are good
uses of an 800 number for marketing?
A good place to use an 800 number
in a marketing campaign is to generate Interest. You might
have a short ad about a benefit or two of your product or service.
and then... "Call our pre-recorded line at 1-800-809-1583 for more
information right now." The 800 number recording can be short
and give more benefit information and then take the prospect to the
next step such as "press 1 to speak to the operator to order the
"Miracle XYZ Cure" or "Visit our website at
www.8008091583.com for more
information and to place an order."
It all depends on how much 'selling' you need to
do to get the prospects Interest and Desire high enough to make them
take Action. You may have to give them a detailed brochure,
pamphlet or website to review all of the features and pick out sizes
and colors. Or you might just need to take the order for
immediate delivery.
What should I
look for in an 800 number marketing service?
800 numbers are not expensive and
come with tons of features. Some of the important things to
look for are:
-
The 800 number service should
capture the incoming phone number of the prospect.
-
It should also cross reference
the incoming number to national databases and tell you the name
and location of the caller, if available.
-
The 800 number service should
provide email delivery of incoming voice mails and caller
details (if you desire it.)
-
The service should be able to
take voice mails from the prospects (if you desire it.)
-
The service should be able to
provide additional marketing tools (such as "press 1" service)
for advanced marketing campaigns.
-
The service should have an easy
to operate web service with which to program the 800 number and
retrieve caller information.
The service I have used for a few
years that provides all of these services is
Kall8.
Who uses 800
number marketing?
Every business
should! If you have products or services to sell and want more
customers and more sales, you should use an 800 number in your
marketing campaign. People will call an 800 number before
responding to email or a web advertisement or sometimes even before
opening their mail. 800 numbers are free for prospects to call
and they will be assured to not have to speak to anyone... so the
decision to 'get more info' is easy. Again,
Kall8 has very
reasonable prices and great features.
What else
should I know about 800 number marketing?
Don't try to
record your entire sales presentation onto your 800 number.
That might break your bank if you get too many callers. There
are other services which can cost effectively handle longer
recordings if your business needs dictate.
Related
ideas
Once you start collecting prospect information
from your 800 number marketing efforts, you will want to followup
with those people to generate "interest, desire and action" for them
to buy your product or service right? Well, if you can't
collect their email address for your autoresponder as we suggest
strongly, the backup is that you have the phone number from which
they called on which to call them back.
One thing to think of is if you start getting
hundreds to thousands of prospects, you will not be able to call
them all back... especially enough to close sales on them all.
Again, we can let technology assist in taking the burden off of you
to make thousands of phone calls. Let machines do it and give
them your follow-up recorded message. Well, there are two cool
services (maybe more) that let you follow-up with folks via phone...
but you don't have to call them all.
VoiceShot and the
Phone
Broadcast Club both let you put in lists of phone numbers
and record a message and the system sends it to them all...
automatically. How cool is that?
Enjoy your new-found 800 number marketing
knowledge and profits!
Listen to this
short audio recording to understand the importance of
establishing an Email Marketing Campaign to add to your bottom line.
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