4 Ways to Market to your new business phone number

You’ve just purchased a shiny new business phone number. It’s memorable, you’ve loaded the perfect call handling technology and you’re good to go.

…It’s quiet…too quiet.

A few days pass and the phone still doesn’t ring. You panic. Have you made a terrible decision? Have you been mis-sold? Have you wasted your money? Absolutely not. You just haven’t marketed your phone number properly.

There are a few incredibly easy steps you can take to make sure you get the full benefit from your virtual telephone number.

Step 1: Get that business phone number on your website

The first thing you should do is update your website with your new business phone number. Why? Because 98% of customers want your company phone number to take centre stage. As we wrote back in December last year, people like to have the safety blanket of being able to speak to an advisor at all times. In fact, 71% of visitors purchasing online expect help within five minutes of landing on the website and the most effective method of getting answers is with a quick phone call.

By making sure that your phone number is highly visible on the website from the moment somebody lands on your site, you’ll not only provide a better overall customer experience, but you’ll see call traffic spike.

Step 2: Let your customers and prospects know!

Now you’ve got your website in order, it’s time to let people know. If you don’t have one already, it’s worth signing up to an email service provider (ESP) because it will allow you to quickly let all of your customers and prospects know about your new number. There are a number of free or low cost ESPs to choose from, if you’re on a shoestring budget and have a small contact database to reach out to.

Posting updates to your social media pages letting your followers know about your new number is a good place to start, but making your number prominent on your profile descriptions is a must if you’re looking to boost call traffic.

Step 3: Engage with local business listing sites

There are plenty of UK business listing directories that will drive traffic to both your business phone number and your website. If you’re already using them, be sure to update your details as soon as possible. If not, get your business listed as soon as possible. This is a simple process that will help to give your business (and phone number) the exposure it deserves.

Getting listed on a business directory has more benefits than you might think too. Building high-quality links to your website (known as ‘backlinks’) will have a positive impact on where you appear in the search rankings and it’ll be a low-cost advertising channel to extend your reach too.

Be sure to update your profile for Google Business too. This will provide a host of benefits from better search visibility to allowing prospective customers to quickly access your new phone number and address.

Step 4: Update marketing collateral

OK, so this part isn’t free but we thought it was important to include. If you’re going to go to the effort of improving all of your free marketing channels, it’s still important to make sure you place your new phone number clearly on any additional marketing materials. This could include your business cards, vans, brochures and presentations.

Get seen, get sales

The reason customers love memorable business phone numbers is that they are just that: Easy to remember. But in order for them to have any chance of remembering the number they need to see it first, right? Without taking the appropriate actions to market your phone number, you’ll find that you never truly experience the benefits you deserve from it.

Remember…we’re here to help. If you need any advice whatsoever on making the most of your phone number, give us a call. We love to help!