These days, when we want to contact a business owner or company, we have two primary options. First is going for the company’ official social media page and start chatting them from there. Second, and the most traditional form of contacting a business, is dialling their phone numbers which can be found on their website or through a simple Google search.
You might not have realized it but phone number marketing is a thing. Since the usage of phones by businesses, phone numbers have always been a major driving force to have clients and eventual returns. Originally, phone numbers of companies can be seen through print. Ads on posters, magazines, and billboards have the glistening numbers of the companies, inviting you to dial them. Phone numbers are also prevalent in radio, specifically on advertisements where the digits are spoken by the announcers.
It might not seem much and it might go under our radar but phone number marketing is there and it can be truly effective than what we might think.
In this article, we will be talking about why phone number marketing is an ideal form of marketing and how you can maximize it now that we are living in a more advanced world than before such as making click-to-call buttons on your website or including them on your URLs!
Phone numbers as a marketing tool
You might be wondering what’s so special about a phone number. Yes, it connects us to potential clients but they are too clinical too be exciting. This is true and it shows by companies not overly emphasizing their phone numbers rather doing the subtle approach. Still there are companies who have capitalized on their phone numbers successfully. Perhaps the most famous fast food chain in the Philippines is Jollibee and they used their phone numbers to drive their enterprise into success.
Image Source: Jollibee Davao Toril Facebook Page
Is the number familiar? Did you sing it in your head? Jollibee actually made an effort to make a jingle out of their phone number as to make it a staple of their brand rather than leave it as a passive element.
This is also not some shoe-horned tactic. Jollibee is a food corporation and they are doing right by taking advantage of their phone numbers because hungry people want quick food that they can get by dialling numbers that are actually easy to remember. This is one of the finest way of phone number marketing.
Aside from good strategies, phone numbers have innate features that make them a worthy marketing tool. Here is a list of the remarkable characteristics of phone numbers that you should take note for your digital marketing here in the Philippines.
Phone numbers can be used for branding
Like we established before with the Jollibee story, your company or small enterprise’s phone number can be your brand and no, we’re not just talking about including them in almost any marketing material that you can put out. You can actually include phone numbers in your business name or better yet, your URL or web address.
For example, if your service is for pets, you will have to secure a phone number that fits to the word that you will go for. For pets, you will need to have a phone number that corresponds to the letters to a traditional keypad. So a 123-7387 can be converted to 123-PETS. This is called vanity numbers and is a very clever tactic because consumers can figure out your phone numbers without actually memorizing them.
Phone numbers can work without the Internet
Before the Internet, phone numbers are really just the sole way to connect with businesses. Today, phone numbers are pretty much the same. They work without Internet which makes them easy to offer to people who are not big on the cyber world. This proves that phone numbers will never go out of style.
Phone numbers build up trust
Phone numbers are more than just numbers to dial, they actually inspire integrity that helps build trust for your customers. Flashing your phone numbers ensures that you are a legitimate business and that your services are ready as you are eager to take inquiries through phone calls.
Click-to-call and URLs
While phone number marketing through radio, print, and even TV is an incredible way to market your business, the technological advancements are rapidly changing and digital marketing is ready to catch up. Now most people, especially the younger demographic, are more attuned to the Internet rather than radio shows, magazines, and television ads. Yes, they still have a large impact and shouldn’t be completely set aside but businessmen especially those in the field of digital marketing should think about putting phone numbers in their marketing strategies online.
You can now use click-to-call links (sometimes spelled as click to call links) that can be inserted to homepages, landing pages, and most importantly, blogs. The main purpose of this is that clicking on the link or the URL means directly calling the company. Potential customers won’t have to search frantically for your phone number, guess what the right among the many ones listed, and manually dial themselves. This is applicable for landline, mobile, and even computers.
The click to dial or click-to-dial mechanism is a good form of phone number marketing as it is also a remarkable approach to customer service. It is an antithesis to the usual form of phone marketing where after learning about a business’ phone number, they will have to do all the work by their own. Click-to-call makes things easy for the customers and for the businessman and this is evident by its impressive figures. In 2013, Google did a survey that showed that 70% of 3,000 mobile users use click-to-call buttons. BIA/Kelsey, a research and analysis company predicted that there will be 93 billion customer-to-business phone calls through click to call by 2019.
Aside from putting a click-to-call button on your website, you can also include your phone numbers to your URL as we’ve discussed before. We recommend an alphanumeric domain name and going for letters and numbers that reflects your business and are easy to remember.
If this article made you interested with click-to-call or using a URL for your phone numbers, contact a digital marketing company in the Philippines for inquiries!