Telephony tips for advertisers

The world of advertising and marketing is all about managing risk and maximizing reward.

Traditionally there’s a certain element of hit-or-miss involved; after all, who can really predict

which ad media will be most advantageous to your company and which will end up costing a lot

of money for very little reward? Fortunately for advertisers and business owners who handle

their own ad departments, implementing some simple tech solutions can go a long way toward

figuring out what works and what doesn’t.

First and foremost, advertisers stand to gain from inbound call tracking technology. While it may

seem complicated, call tracking is actually very simple, and can quickly paint a very accurate

picture of which ad methods are pulling their weight and which need to be scaled back or cut

altogether. It works like this: before you run any advertisements for your new confectionery

shop, you inexpensively purchase a few different local phone numbers through an aggregator

like CallFire. Next, you assign each number to a different physical advertisement: one for the

billboard ad on the edge of town, one for the bus bench ads by the college, and one for the TV

spot on the local ten o’clock news. When the phones start ringing, you’ll know immediately

which ad methods are working based on which numbers are being used to contact your

business. It’s that simple, and using the information gained you’ll be able to budget much more

efficiently for next quarter’s advertising.

Secondly, foreword thinking advertisers are relying more and more on mobile text marketing to

build communication with current and potential subscribers. Mass texting is quickly replacing

email and other old fashioned forms of marketing outreach simply due to the fact that the

majority of text messages on personal mobile devices are opened and read within fifteen

minutes. Compared with the abysmal open-rate of email and the impossibly time consuming

and wasteful snail mail, it’s no wonder text messages are quickly becoming our most prevalent

method of communication.

When building an SMS campaign, it’s important to remember that incentive is everything. You’re

asking for permission to contact an individual’s personal cell phone at your whim; make sure

that they not only have a good and compelling reason to opt-in in the first place, but that every

interaction thereafter carries some sort of immediate incentive or benefit for the recipient.

Everyone loves free stuff and discounts, but the only real limit is your creativity. It’s okay to have

more than one campaign going at once, but save the best incentives and insider deals for your

loyalty rewards program.

Finally, remember that every name on your subscriber list represents a unique individual. Mass

text messaging software may give us the ability to reach out to thousands of people at once, but

that’s no excuse to forego a personal touch.