Are you frustrated with the lack of leads contacting your store? Have your cold call, social media, and content marketing efforts flopped big time?
If so, then we get that it can be frustrating. If your strategies haven’t been working as expected, then it may be time to consider other inbound marketing techniques to bolster your revenue potential.
One inbound marketing strategy that tends to be overlooked is getting a business inbound telephone line. While getting a telephone line may feel outdated, this can’t be further from the truth.
Lots of people still call businesses, and even if your business is primarily Internet-based, having an inbound number can be highly beneficial for several reasons.
Are you curious why this may be the case? We got you. Here are seven reasons why having an inbound number can bolster inbound marketing efforts.
Let’s jump right in!
1. It Helps With Number Recall
One great perk of an inbound number is that you can customise it to make it fairly easy to remember.
Unlike a generic personal phone number, these phone numbers start with a specific sequence of numbers that’s exclusive to businesses, such as 1300- or 1800- for Australian businesses.
All you have to do is ask your chosen provider for a specific sequence of numbers. If it’s not taken, they’ll likely accommodate your request. You can even ask for multiple numbers for the same business if that aligns with your marketing goals.
Furthermore, you can also put a word sequence to follow after the 1300 number, like 1300-BIZNAME. This is referred to as a vanity number, and it’s something many businesses use, from small mom-and-pop stores to large national corporations.
Vanity text not only makes the number more memorable, but it also solidifies your brand identity and pushes you to the top of your customers’ minds whenever they need your product or service—which is great for marketing purposes.
2. It Allows Round-the-Clock Reception
Using a generic personal phone number means that prospecting customers can only contact you, the owner, to handle their inquiries. So if you’re busy with something else or are asleep, you may end up with unanswered calls, which can mean sales lost or an unhappy customer.
A 1300 number for your marketing and operational plan allows you to delegate the task of handling calls to a dedicated team. If you want to keep your operations running 24/7, as is the case for call centres and offices across multiple time zones, getting an inbound number helps you set up a system to accommodate round-the-clock reception.
With such a number number, your business will always be accessible to customers, regardless of the time of day. This, of course, hinges on your customer service structure and availability.
However, if you want to scale your business to that level, it’s definitely a possibility and can be a great way to bolster your marketing efforts and credibility.
3. It Looks More Professional
Due to its relative rarity compared to generic phone numbers, owning an inbound number is a great way to stand out from the competition.
This not only brings more eyes to your business, but it also makes it appear more professional and established. Customers are more likely to engage with your business if you have an inbound number compared to a personal number due to the added trust factor.
After all, going the length of getting a business phone number is unfamiliar for your customers. This makes it seem like you put in the time and effort to truly build your brand (which you definitely did!), which can signal your credibility and commitment to your brand.
With this increased trust, you can bring more traffic to your store, which you can take advantage of to increase your sales and revenue. And if your competitors are also using a business number, this puts you on even ground with them.
So if you want to improve your professional image, go ahead and get an inbound number. Your potential client list will increase as you do.
4. It Features Analytics and Metric Tracking
Another reason why you should get a business number over a personal number is the rich array of analytics present in the dashboard of an inbound number account.
These metrics offer data such as a caller’s profile, call history, call volume, peak times, and much more. You can also track agent-specific metrics, allowing you to structure KPIs and training material based on historical and seasonal data.
You can even track past recordings of calls, allowing you to identify underlying motivations behind calls and frequent complaint patterns more easily.
With these valuable bits of information, you can make better decisions surrounding your business. This sets the foundation for you to grow and expand your business to new heights, all backed by data-driven insights and actual customer behaviour and interactions.
5. It Allows You to Split Test Your Campaigns
Did you know that you can run a split test campaign with inbound numbers? Most inbound number providers allow you to purchase more than one inbound phone number type.
This can be useful for advertisements in social media and Google ad campaigns in figuring out which marketing material generates the most impressions, calls, and conversions.
With this information, you can tweak your marketing campaign to target the most profitable marketing channel. Your split test variables can be anything from your chosen marketing channel, a specific visual ad, or even the demographic you’re targeting.
In short, this is a useful tool in helping you make the best return on investment for your marketing efforts. This is because inbound numbers have features that track call volume and caller history, which can provide actionable insights to help you make the most profitable decisions for your business.
6. It Provides Data to Improve Customer Service
Not only do inbound numbers come with marketing data, but they also come with useful operational data to deduce the performance of your customer service staff. This includes metrics such as average handle time, first-call resolution, and abandonment rate.
These analytics provide insights into your service efficiency and customer interactions, giving you a glimpse of the average response time and giving you a better shot at finding areas of improvement.
Beyond those data points, you can also utilise average after-call work time and percentage of calls blocked to streamline operations and improve resource allocation.
All these factors combined can give you the tools you need to make or improve your current KPI systems and quotas, thus improving the quality of your business’s customer care experience.
7. It’s a Cost-Effective Contact Solution
With a single inbound number, you don’t have to deal with the headache that is multiple phones and multiple numbers.
While it may seem natural to assume that added convenience would lead to a more expensive price tag, this isn’t the case with an inbound number. With a business inbound phone number, you can reduce the complexity of handling customer calls while also reducing costs.
The reason why this is the case is that your inbound number can scale alongside your business. You don’t have to shoot for the most expensive business plan if your peak callers don’t exceed five or ten people at any given time, or if your business is currently facing a crisis and needs to cut down on costs.
Similarly, you don’t have to restrict your caller ceiling with a cheap inbound number plan. You can easily switch to a higher plan whenever you want. This is because this feature is scalable and grows with you.
