No Longer in Service?

No Longer in Service?

Do you have the same phone number you had five years ago? Will you have the same phone number five years from now? People move, area codes change, and a number that used to work is now no longer in service.

This point came home to me as I was reading a marketing book published five years ago. There were several examples of good marketing pieces that included phone numbers. Out of curiosity, I checked and found the many of the numbers were no longer valid. How motivated will potential customers have to be to track these businesses down?

When you market, many of the seeds you plant will continue to bear fruit for months or years. Something posted on the Internet today may still be floating around cyberspace many years from now. Make sure that when they hear about you, customers can find you.

One good way is to get a toll-free number and include it in everything you put out. Even if your regular office number changes, your toll-free number can follow you. Calls to your toll-free number can be directed anywhere. If you decide you don't want to deal with taking orders or handling calls, you 
can have the number sent to an answering service or fulfillment house anywhere in the country.

To get a toll-free number, contact your long distance carrier. They can do a search for you to come up with a memorable number. Current toll-free prefixes include 800, 888, 877 and 866. 

Don't forget to make yourself easy to find on the Internet. Have a web site and keep it up to date. If you have an unusual name, consider using common misspellings of your name in meta tags or keywords for your site. If you have a common name, include information that makes it easy to know which "John Smith" you are.

Marketing has a cumulative effect. To make sure you reap all of the rewards of your efforts, make it easy for customers to find you, wherever you are.

You'll get lots of fun and creative ideas like this one in Cathy Stucker's free email newsletter, Bright Ideas. To subscribe, see http://www.idealady.com/

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