Businesses want people to know your name, what you provide, and even more so, purchase your products or services. Succeeding in this all boils down to a few factors: being a well-known and recognizable brand. Consumers hear or see the name of your business and immediately know who you are. They can easily recall your website or phone number to reach out for assistance. This is the type of recognition any company endeavors to have and will no doubt lead to a more profitable business.
One simple and yet very effective way to do this is by having a vanity phone number for your business. Find out what a vanity number is, how you can use it to increase sales, and how to choose the best number for your company.
What Is a Vanity Number?
A vanity number is a customizable easy-to-remember phone number you can purchase specifically for your business. It can incorporate a word or phrase that relates to your company or simply a row of letters or numbers that a customer could recall easily. A phone number is ten digits long, including the prefix, so you have up to seven digits available to create the number combination, word, or phrase to match your business.
If you choose to use a word or phrase in your vanity phone number, the letters will correspond with the letters on the numbered buttons on your phone. A customer can use this dialing method on a landline or cell phone.
Features of a Vanity Phone Number
Toll-free vanity phone numbers have a variety of features that can benefit your business.
- Toll-free calling: Choosing a custom phone number does not mean that everyone now must pay extra to call you. Your unique vanity number remains a toll-free number to contact for all your customers.
- Virtual phone (VOIP): You can use your new 800 number over any internet-enabled device. This can allow for multiple calls at once helping you to connect with your customers quicker.
- Text messaging: Use your vanity phone number to interact via text messaging. You can send reminders, promotional offers, or customer support by messenger.
- Memorable and recognizable: Specifically choosing a number that relates to your business will help customers remember it and recommend it to others.
- Call forwarding: Forward all the calls to your 800 number to multiple representatives or cell phones to connect with your customers as efficiently as possible.
- Variety of prefixes: You can begin your number with a variety of different three-digit prefixes besides 800, such as 855, 888, 877, etc. This opens the options for you to find the number that’s just right for you.
Benefits of a Vanity Number
Vanity phone numbers have many benefits that could help to improve your business. Below is a breakdown of just a few of the effects you could see to your company after setting up a vanity number.
- Memorability: The first and probably most noticeable benefit of a vanity number is that they are easy to remember. Having a phone number that literally spells out the name of your company, what you do, or a feature of your services, can capture anyone’s attention and potentially move them to reach out. Placing it on all your advertisements and making it something people will recognize will no doubt help them to remember the number and therefore, remember your business.
- Brand Recognition: Along the same lines of being memorable, having a number that tells who you are or what you represent will stick in people’s minds. They will trust that the number they are dialing is reaching the organization or business they want to contact. They will feel more confident in reaching out if they can easily recognize who you are by your phone number and more readily contact you over another business that may appear to be less transparent.
- Increased Phone Calls: If people remember your phone number and recognize your brand, they hopefully will pick up the phone and call. This means an increase in call volume for your company. More incoming calls could result in more sales or at least more leads for your marketing and sales team to follow up on. An increase in the number of potential customers contacting you opens the opportunity for an increase in revenue.
- Improved Customer Service: Customer service is of utmost importance in any business and using a vanity phone number can help you improve the customers’ experience in a couple of different ways. The first is just the fact that they don’t have to stress themselves out by trying to find your contact information. By having that easy-to-remember number, they can quickly dial you up without a problem. Second, you will be able to forward any calls that come into your vanity phone number to wherever you are currently. You could forward them directly to a cell phone or another representative working from home or another office. This enables you to never miss a call from a customer, making your business one people will want to reach out to.
Using a Vanity Number in Marketing
Marketing strategies have expanded and evolved with all sorts of ideas and ways to contact potential customers. However, call-based marketing is still a popular choice for many companies to reach out and have that one-on-one conversation with their customers. They can personalize each phone call and use the resulting data from each call to improve their strategies going forward. Using a toll-free vanity phone number can improve this process even more.
If a customer picks up the phone to dial a vanity number, they know exactly who they are reaching out to. This means your team already has a leg up in knowing this person wants to talk to your company and has reached out with a desire for a positive customer experience. Your customer service representatives can know where the individual is calling from, potentially where they found your phone number, and if they have contacted your business before. Each of these analytics can help your team to adjust their marketing to fit this person with the hopes of a successful interaction.
Conversation Intelligence is a feature of toll-free vanity phone numbers that can give you even deeper insight into each inbound and outbound phone call. You can analyze each call in several ways which will help you improve your customer service and promote more high-value leads. Just a few of the useful tools include:
- Categorized calls by day & time, geographic location, and duration to narrow down where and when customers are responding the best.
- Recorded calls to help improve customer service by revisiting difficult conversations.
- Transcribed calls to track specific keywords and noteworthy interactions.
- Keyword analytics to provide detail into which words resulted in positive or negative customer experiences.
The most important marketing strategy in using a vanity number is getting your number out there for people to see. Put it on everything you use to advertise your business. If you advertise on the radio or TV, make sure to include your number with perhaps a catchphrase or a jingle to match. Promote your number on any written signs, pamphlets, or websites that people will see to help them instantly remember who you are and how to contact you.
Tips to Finding the Best Vanity Number for Your Business
The key to having a successful vanity number is to make it something people will remember and to make sure it connects directly to your business. There are a few ways of doing this outlined below:
- Be simple. The point is for a person passing by a sign or glancing at a website to grasp the number and recall it later on. This means it must be simple. This could be as easy as a number sequence that is linear or repetitive. Or it could include a simple word that is easily recognizable.
- Be clear. You want people to remember the number but also remember who the number belongs to. Choose a word or phrase that clearly connects to your business. An obscure reference or a word that doesn’t definitively relate to your company could confuse customers and cause them to forget why they even remembered the number in the first place.
- Be creative. Having a direct connection to your business shouldn’t limit the choices you have. Many popular words or phrases may already be taken by other companies so be creative in coming up with a phrase or word that is simple but also will grab their attention and get your customers to call in.
- Be flexible. You may be wracking your brain trying to come up with a number and nothing is seeming to work. Then be flexible with your choices and ask for help. A vanity phone generator can help you come up with a list of possibilities by just typing in a word or phrase related to your business. You could also use a thesaurus to come up with a unique word that still connects but maybe is less used among your competition.
Choose the Right Vanity Number for Your Business
You have seen the many benefits of using a vanity number to increase sales, improve customer service, and make your company a memorable and recognizable brand. Consider the tips for choosing the best number for your business and pick one out today. With just a few easy steps on 800.com, you can have your new toll-free vanity phone number up and running in no time.
