Like most car dealerships, Maroone Honda of Hollywood, Fla., Wanted to bring more business to the showroom. Thus, the dealer added a memorable, easily remembered telephone number to his current advertising campaign with print and radio. Marone was soon flooded with thousands of additional phone calls from potential buyers each month and enough additional sales to make him one of the first 10 Honda vendors.
“The reason we got this number is simple: if someone from South Florida wants Honda, all they need to know or don't forget to call is 1,800 NEW HONDA,” says general manager Bobby Joksall. The company added a vanity number three years ago. “Other (local) dealers are simply ticked, because at first they didn’t think about it,” says Joxall.
Easy-to-remember, toll-free numbers such as Maroone are “cash registers” for businesses, especially “fuss numbers” using the word associated with the company or its service, ”says Judith Oppenheimer, industry analyst and president of the ICB Toll-Free Consulate in New York But with a pool of free 800 numbers, everything except drained ones, as well as buying and selling telephone numbers illegally, skidding a memorable number can be useless. There are a few tricks that can help small businesses find a magic number, despite the competition.
Call to the cash register
It is known that vanity numbers, such as 800-FLOWERS and 800 CALL ATT, generate at least 40% more calls than unforgettable numbers, says Oppenheimer, who believes that the average is much higher.
The pool of 800 rooms available to companies at any given time is small. Telephone carriers tried to meet growing demand by introducing other free prefixes. But these prefixes - 888, 877, 866 - usually produce less traffic. “Some will tell you that 877 and 866 are fine. They are not, ”says Oppenheimer.
Few studies have been done, but much evidence confirms this. Oppenheimer points to a customer who has included his toll free number 877 in a series of radio commercials. He also owned the 800 version of the same number, but did not include it in the ad. But the number 800 received more than twice the number of calls than the number 877.
What for? Consumers tend to remember vanity numbers as “800,” no matter what the prefix is. “You don’t know if you know that 888 or 877 are free prefixes,” says Oppenheimer. "This is what these numbers have been branded in your mind so that you can respond." Therefore, when a company uses 888 or another toll-free, not 800 prefix, many of its calls — perhaps 40 percent — end up with those who own the 800th version of this number, which may well be a competitor, she says,
There are other reasons to keep the 800 prefix. “On board, when people call a vanity number, they raise their hand to buy,” says Oppenheimer. “They are not tire kickers. When you say a word, there is a different mind and behavioral process. ” She claims people are ready to buy at that moment.
Yoxall will not disclose how many more cars he sells with a number. But dealers have moved from the list of the top 20 Honda dealers to the top ten in the last three years. Yoxall attributes much of this success to adding an easily remembered phone number.
Sharing
In 1997, the Federal Communications Commission ruled that the purchase and sale of telephone numbers was illegal and supported by a decree last December. Part of thinking is that the phone numbers themselves should not be profitable goods bought and sold on the open market. But while keeping your own 800 number may be almost impossible, exchanging one of them is a much more accessible, affordable and legal alternative.
Next page: select a number, any number.
Here's how it works: companies usually get a list of all phone numbers that dial 800. If most of their business is in a limited region, they may agree to share their number with another company outside their region. The telephone company sets everything up so that incoming calls are detected by the regional code and redirected to the desired company.
This is the same technology that big players, such as Pizza Hut, use to refer customers to the nearest store when they call 800 PIZZA HUT. Thus, the recycling outfit in New Jersey, which receives mostly local calls, can share with the surfing shop in Los Angeles, which is sold on the West Coast and in autoloading in Dallas, and they all need the same numbers to indicate their fuss number.
Maroone Honda shares its number with Honda dealers in other parts of Florida that do not compete for the same buyers. How much is a company for luxury? Oppenheimer says that the price can be very reasonable. “You can pay from about 40 to 200 dollars a month,” she says. "Or a company that owns this number may charge for a minute or $ 1 per call." They usually charge a little more than they pay per call, in addition to the monthly fee.
Small businesses can start their searches by contacting a company that specializes in holding such meetings with numbers, such as Dial800 and Response Marketing, which set up the agreement and then allow customers to track the number of calls, peak traffic times, and other data on the Internet. Oppenheimer says that just call the number and agree with the current owner.
If all else fails, a local vanity number may be appropriate. If you have a pizzeria in New York, and most of your business comes from area code 212, (212) JOES PIZZA could be a lucrative phone number.
Another option for some companies may include hooking a number with easily remembered numbers, for example 654-4321. The most obvious flammable numbers are pretty good, but they are worth asking for, says Oppenheimer. It is in telephone sets. best interest in making business customers happy.
Hide your cards
In any case, do not tell, says Oppenheimer. It is known that telephone companies reserve such numbers for large corporations with huge advertising budgets. They know that the number is likely to cause more traffic, and then more profit for the mobile phone itself. Identifying the actual amount of vanity, whether local or not, can overturn the phone company, which is a good number for another business.
“Never ask them for a vanity number. Tell them how much you want (using numeric numbers), ”says Oppenheimer. And if AT & T says it doesn’t have a number, go to MCI, Sprint or other carriers, including wireless and cable providers.
What is considered good? The vanity number should reflect the company name of the company, if it is well known or in some other way is the product or service. And numbers greater than seven digits after the prefix 800 will not work from mobile phones.
