Phone calls are still a highly effective communication channel for any business. Whether you want to get new customers, provide customer care, or talk to your partners, phone calling is still one of the most reliable and preferred choices.
If you’re using a personal phone line to do business, sooner or later you’ll realize that it is necessary to switch to a telephone system for business. Especially if your business is rapidly expanding. A vanity phone number allows you to have a local or toll free phone line with a customized easy-to-remember sequence of numbers.
Consumers see thousands of advertisements each day, therefore any competitive business needs to make it easy for prospects to get in touch. This is the main reason why many companies prefer a vanity phone number. In this article, you will learn everything about vanity phone numbers and how they can bring great benefits to your business.
What Is A Vanity Phone Number?
A vanity number is a toll-free phone number that usually includes a simple word or business name in the dialing sequence. It’s basically a unique sequence of digits that include a hint to be easily remembered. This hint can be a repetitive sequence or a spelled word. Some examples are: 800-LAWYERS or 212-NY-PIZZA.
Your vanity phone number may form an integral part of your branding strategy by providing either your company name, a short slogan or any other words related to your product or service.
Whether you are a new company or an established business, using a vanity number will add professionalism and prestige to your brand.
Set your creativity free and choose a catchy, simple and effective vanity number. It should aim at leaving no reason for your prospects to contact any other business, show them you can offer what they need.
Benefits Of A Vanity Phone Number
There are tremendous benefits of vanity phone numbers for organizations all sizes. Let’s take a look at some of the most relevant ones that will place your business ahead of your competitors and establish a solid presence:
1. It shows a consistent and strong brand identity
Every brand that wants to make a big impact on its niche should use vanity phone numbers. Branding is all about storytelling and consistency is key in order to tell the right story to your audience.
Vanity phone numbers help you show a consistent brand identity to new and prospective clients that want to get in touch with you. Basically, it tells your customers who you are.
They will recognize your business just by looking at a phone number, and immediately associate it with previous info they know about it. It’s your duty to make all your business contact info easy to recall.
2. Increase incoming calls and response rates
Studies show that Vanity numbers can increase incoming calls by 25-50%. Additionally, an advertising survey found that advertisers using 800 Vanity Numbers were getting ten times the response of those advertising with a local numeric number.
A higher volume of calls and response rates means increased opportunities for your sales team as well as widening your customer base.
3. Easy to set up and handle
Vanity phone numbers are easy to set up and can be used by everyone. These numbers are permanent and they can be restricted to a certain geographical location or not. They are very intuitive to operate and they guide your call traffic to the appropriate department.
Since it is a Toll-free number, it doesn’t cost the dialing party any fee. Which means consumers can easily contact you without paying any associated fee.
4. Other advanced features
Most vanity phone numbers include very useful features like call screening, call recording, call forwarding, call tracking and voicemail. It also enables you to include an automated phone answering system. The system can identify your callers’ location and direct them accordingly.
All these features also provide you with valuable data that you can use to constantly improve your interactions.
5. Easy to remember
Vanity numbers easily grab people’s attention. Having to remember your family and friend’s phone numbers is already hard enough to worry about businesses’ phone numbers.
It’s clear, then, how a vanity phone number makes your callers’ lives easier. They will have your number more present if they have a familiar word to associate it with.
In a recent study, 72% of people correctly recalled vanity numbers after hearing a 30 second advertisement, whereas the numeric number’s recall rate was only 5%.
6. Vanity numbers are shared use
This means that it is exclusive to your local market and you only pay for the areas that you want to service. This helps you reduce your competition if your market is not global. For example, if you have 1-800-CHILD-CARE for a child care agency in Michigan, no other child care agencies would be able to use 1-800-CHILD-CARE in Michigan.
7. Improve customer retention rate
By allowing your customers to call you free of charges you are building customer trust and nurturing loyalty. These important corporate assets directly contribute to boosting your customer retention rate.
A toll-free number evidences that you care for your customers, and they will appreciate that. However, this doesn’t mean that only by having a vanity phone number you’re already making your customers happy, you also need to be strategic and have a well designed customer retention program.
8. Cost-effective
Budget is an important matter to consider for almost every business, but especially for startups and SMBs. Any starting business wants to make strategic investments to avoid losing any initial capital.
Business owners may think that Vanity phone numbers are very expensive, but in fact they’re pretty affordable and the best part is that they help you grow your income, so they’re actually a great investment. Check with your provider all the different pricing plans available.
Conclusion
To conclude, you already know pretty much all of the advantages of a Vanity phone number. If you choose to go for one, remember to place it on your website, all your ad campaigns, business cards and all your communications. Consistency is key for your brand to be wowing.
Vanity phone numbers are very affordable, accessible and beneficial, but it’s important to understand that your customers want to talk to someone who solves their inquiries fast and effectively. While doing that you also need to build a relationship with them and not just let the machine do all the job. A vanity phone number is a great asset, use it to your advantage and the rewards won’t take long to arrive.
