It’s fair to say that many of us are given a particular telephone number and are perfectly happy with it. We don’t need it to comprise a pleasing pattern of digits or be routinely free to call; we simply aren’t that fussy. Well, you probably should be if you intend to use a telephone number for business purposes. A carefully chosen such number can meet various needs if you are seriously ambitious about your business; here are reasons why that number can make a vital difference.
Make sure that the number starts with 0800
When running a fledgeling business, you are in the situation of having to regularly tempt people to take the initiative of getting in touch with your business. Tempting people in this way can be tricky if they are not naturally inclined to use your kind of business or they are already happy with products or services from a rival company. Therefore, the onus is on you to pull out all the stops to make reaching out to you as easy and convenient for potential customers as possible.
You can do this by making your corporate phone number an 0800 number. To 90% of people, this number will be recognisable as one that they can call without incurring any charges. In fact, independent market research has found that, by putting this type of number in your company’s promotional and advertising material, you could increase responses by as much as 185%.
Select a number that can be easily remembered
When you are competing with a huge number of other businesses for custom, a phone number with a tendency to stick in people’s minds can certainly be a boon. When someone needs a specific product or service that your company offers but this person lacks time to spend researching, your company’s number could spring to their mind before any competing company’s contact details.
If you heed the advice just provided about aiming for an 0800 number, then a case could be made for the 0800 part of a free-to-call number making that number easier to recall in a hurry. If you knew that a number was free, wouldn’t you be likelier to remember it, too? However, don’t allow complacency to set in; you can still make the rest of the number memorable as well. At the time that we write, Planet Numbers offers what it calls “ultimate memorable” 0800 numbers for business.
There is only a slim selection of those numbers, which Planet Numbers is offering on the basis of “first come, first served”. Therefore, you shouldn’t wait long before attempting to obtain one. Still, if none of the numbers in that selection are to your satisfaction, Planet Numbers invites you to get in touch to let them know, as they might still be able to provide the specific number you want. If you haven’t made a definite decision about what specific arrangement of digits you would like, the LinkedIn SlideShare website has tips for devising one that could effectively stick in the memory.