Positioning and Toll Free Numbers by: Custom Toll Free, April 11, 2011 Positioning is crucial for any enterprise's success and toll free numbers could be just the tool you need to do the job. For those of you who are new to brand positioning, you can use toll free numbers to position your business both to hone in on your niche and to differentiate yourself from your competitors, or in some cases use your competition’s position to leverage credibility. For example, acquiring generic and broad industry related vanity numbers can help boost your brand’s visibility and gain masses of new leads. However these numbers are not always available, or at least not for nationwide coverage. If you can take advantage of shared usage plans to harness the power of these premium toll free numbers for certain geographic areas, you should definitely do it as well. However targeting your toll free numbers towards your niche will bring you a more qualified flow of prospects and is often easier on your marketing budget. You may be promoting exactly the same products and services as your competition. But what is it that you can hone in on that will make consumers choose you instead? What is most important to them? Speed, the inexpensive option, or just the easiest person to do business with? Think about how you can incorporate these terms in to your vanity toll free numbers and grab up market share quickly. While the above marketing strategy involves distancing and separating yourself from your competitors, you can also use their strength and larger marketing budgets against them by identifying your business with them using your toll free numbers. By comparing your organization with the leaders in your industry, you can position your business as also being a leader in your customer’s minds. Or you can simply piggy back off of their advertising. What toll free numbers are they using? Can you obtain the same toll free numbers that they have, only with different prefixes? Read More
How Affiliate Tracking Works by: Custom Toll Free, April 8, 2011 The affiliate tracking software is mainly designed to effectively supervise and manage your affiliate marketing program. It displays statistical data associated with visitor activities, sales, and conversion rates. The affiliate tracking software is an integral part of the strategy because it determines the strengths and weaknesses of your marketing techniques. There are various methods in affiliate tracking. This type of program continues to evolve to meet the changing Internet landscape. Common affiliate tracking methods include the following: Simple direct URL links URL query string tracking Cookie tracking Self-replicated pages Sub-domain tracking Database record match tracking Each of these methods have their own advantages and disadvantages. But cookie tracking has emerged as one of the winners because it offers flexible and reliable tracking data. There are obviously certain cases when other types of tracking methods may be preferred. Among the things that should be considered is the flexibility of the method (will it work with your shopping cart system?), the ease of administration, reliability of the statistics, and the security offered by the system. All these factors will have a significant impact on the performance of your website. Read More
Get the Most Out of Your New 855 Number by: Custom Toll Free, April 7, 2011 The 855 prefix was recently introduced to the market. This presents a rare opportunity for every business to get a toll free number of their choice – which can pave the way for phenomenal success! The 855 opens up a new slate of possibilities. It can significantly impact the following: Increased brand recognition Increased number of calls Improved sales and return on investments So if you’re a small business owner, you must be wondering how you can get the most of your new 855 number. Below are some tips: Get vanity numbers – if the 800 vanity toll free number you want is already taken, you can get it as an 855 number which can be equally effective. Reserve your chosen number – don't procrastinate in reserving the vanity number you want. These go very quickly so if you want to maximize its benefits, it’s time to act now. Market it properly – getting an 855 number is just the first step in building a strong marketing strategy. The next step is to know where to promote it. You can advertise it on billboards, newspapers, and on popular websites. Read More
Your Business Phone Numbers & Your New Cloud Computing Model by: Custom Toll Free, April 6, 2011 Cloud computing and cloud services are not just fancy buzzwords being thrown around the business world today. They are rapidly becoming used by a huge number of businesses looking for more affordable and flexible ways of doing business. A recent study on cloud computing services by Microsoft shows that 29% of those small and medium sized businesses surveyed are already using one or more cloud computing services with 39% expected to be investing in one or more cloud services in the next three years. However with the huge surge in new online businesses being launched everyday you can bet the real figures are even higher than that, especially when you take into consideration those currently testing out free versions of various cloud services. The study also showed that many companies will be using multiple cloud computing solutions, with 56% of companies with 51 to 250 staff members or more expecting to use an average of around four cloud services for their organizations. This will give them the complete ability to move their entire operations into the cloud computing world should they choose to. The most common cloud computing solutions today center around CRM and project management for virtual collaboration. However many businesses are overlooking the importance of their business phone numbers and how they will operate as they are absorbed into the cloud. Moving your business to a virtual platform or at least developing a hybrid business model is absolutely essential for survival and success in the coming years and to be able to remain competitive. However, it certainly does not make sense to improve part of your operations while sacrificing your front end marketing or still being tied to expensive brick and mortar offices because of your business phone lines. By acquiring toll free numbers and having them managed by the best Independent RespOrgs you will be able to completely free your enterprise for the ultimate flexibility, while simultaneously streamlining your business processes and maximizing marketing ROI. In fact obtaining winning toll free numbers and harnessing the power of the latest routing and forwarding features for your business phone numbers should be any organization’s first step into cloud computing. Image Credit: © Saniphoto | Dreamstime.com Read More
Why Discount Online Advertising Is Destroying The Industry by: Custom Toll Free, It is no secret that the major news media and print advertising is already suffering greatly from the surge in Internet usage and online advertising. However, discount online advertising is also destroying online industry as a whole. In a way it is similar to the bubbles of the past in other industries like real estate and the stock market. Deeper discounted online advertising services are constantly being announced which in once sense benefits some consumers and businesses who want to promote themselves on the Internet. However, at the same time it drives down the quality of these services which ends up leaving those who invest in them further out of pocket, often with few or no results. When companies let themselves be drawn into price wars both they and the consumer loses out. We are talking about online advertising offers promising to get you top place Google rankings for $200 and websites being churned out for $50 and Internet marketers promising floods of leads and complete set up for just a few hundred dollars a month. Sure, they can provide some of the work by subcontracting it to India for 50 cents an hour and spinning junk marketing. Though this is neither going to make your company look good to anyone who sees your online advertising, nor is likely to actually provide you with good search engine rankings for more than a few days and certainly won’t lead to closed deals or money in your pocket. The second issue with discount online advertising is the hoard of websites promising that you can launch your own successful business on the Internet overnight by doing your own marketing if only you invest in their software program of course. Unfortunately many of these programs are extremely outdated and are pretty worthless today. Much of this surrounds content marketing and article spinning which Google has already announced that it is cracking down on. Still this is resulting in the Internet being flooded with masses of junk content and poor online advertising, which just makes things confusing and frustrating for the consumers who are really serious about shopping on the web. Plus with everyone trying to jump into the game, consumers are increasingly facing more scams and poor service from companies who just don’t know what they are doing. This is bad for everyone. Of course it will work itself out in the end, even if it takes a serious correction for the bad to be weeded out and those who are doing it right to see the fruits of their labors. The bottom line is that you can make great money on the web if you align yourself with those serious about quality online advertising through a reputable affiliate program, and you can realize amazing results with a smart online advertising strategy, just remember that you normally get out what you put in. Read More
5 Tips For Maximizing Marketing ROI by: Custom Toll Free, April 5, 2011 1. Improve Your Targeting If you want to not only increase the number of leads you have, but increase the number of deals you actual close for truly maximizing your marketing ROI, then start by improving your targeting. If you haven’t already, hone in on a niche, develop your keywords for your marketing further and look for new opportunities to position your organization as the top choice for your niche market. Read More
Phone Number Look Up And B2B Marketing by: Custom Toll Free, April 4, 2011 Phone number look up tools and successful B2B marketing go hand in hand. Let’s take a look at some of the innovative ways that you can use phone number look ups to build your B2B marketing prospect list, hone in on your ideal customers, making closing the deal easier and even maximize the value of every potential client. Building Your Prospecting List Building a target list using a toll free number reverse look up can enable you to hone in on businesses in your niche by searching for related keywords. This means immediately identifying B2B marketing opportunities among businesses that clearly are taking their own operations seriously and want to be the best. Researching Your Prospects Researching your prospects for your B2B marketing is easy when you use the most advanced phone number look up tools. These tools now not only provide the owner’s name, but their web domain name, how long they have had their toll free number, and additional contact information and often a description of their services. This gives you one quick and easy resource for finding out all you need on a prospective client for tweaking your pitch and presenting a customized solution for their needs while sounding educated about their organization. Maximizing Marketing ROI The best toll free number reverse look up tools also instantly provide numerous suggestions for related vanity numbers that are ideal for your prospects. By joining a toll free affiliate marketing program you can also profit by offering these numbers to your prospects both for a warmer introduction and to maximize your revenue from each contact. Make Them Come To You Outbound B2B marketing is great, but why not start attracting them to you so that they do all the hard work and are lining up to do business with you? The leading toll free service providers today also offer a range of search tools and widgets that you can place on your own website once you have joined their affiliate program. This will help you draw in new web traffic which you can then convert into customers for your core products and services as well as enabling you to make additional income from current clients revisiting your website or blog. Read More
Is A Toll Free Number Really Worth The Expense? by: Custom Toll Free, April 1, 2011 There probably isn’t any business owner or executive out there who wouldn’t ‘like’ to have a toll free number, but is it really worth the extra expense? Many businesses are not even aware of how affordable toll free numbers are these days so do not even make an effort. Of course there are some highly sought after toll free numbers that can go for hundreds of thousands of dollars. However there are also many winning toll free numbers that can be taken advantage of through toll free shared usage plans that run as little as $20 per month! Remember toll free numbers and are not just for vanity; they offer a wide range of benefits from improved branding to making referrals easier to testing and streamlining your business processes. These benefits alone can add up to large sums of money every month, though will vary widely depending on your current business model and industry. So let’s take a look at some more specific numbers to really determine if toll free numbers are worth using. The biggest and most immediate tangible advantages of using freephone numbers are often seen in terms of response rates and closing ratios from marketing campaigns. Let’s say you are sending out a direct mail campaign to 10,000 recipients this month. Toll free numbers have proven time and time again to improve response rates to direct response marketing by 12-42% and often much more. So if you are used to getting and average response rate of 5% or 500 calls then by including toll free numbers you may likely see 60-210 more more responses from the same campaign. Businesses utilizing toll free numbers for their marketing have also reported triple digit increases in their closing ratios. So if you normally expect to close 25% or your 500 leads, 125 of them you could be seeing as many as 355 closed deals from the same campaign. It really doesn’t matter whether you have a $10 product or a $100,000 annual membership program the benefits to the revenues and the bottom line are obvious. Read More
How to Select Domain Name Hosts by: Custom Toll Free, March 31, 2011 With so many domain name hosts on the market today, it is difficult to choose the right provider. Most will offer similar basic features so you need to look at their prices, customer service, and reliability among others. It is possible to get excellent or lousy hosting service for the same amount so it is important to choose carefully. To help you make the right decision, we have outlined some of the essential things you should look into: It is also a good idea to choose domain name hosts that offer money back guarantee. This is testament to the company’s confidence in the quality of service they provide. Subdomains and Multiple Domain Name Hosts – ask your domain provider about this to see if they offer the service. Most don’t advertise this particular feature. Take note, however, that it may come with an extra charge so see if the prices fit your budget. Backup System – hard drive failure is more common than you think. That’s why it is important to select a provider that has a reliable backup system which can restore your files when needed. Storage Space – the you select should have ample storage space. Your needs will depend on the number of files you have (especially pictures and videos). Make sure that the hosting service you get has sufficient space and bandwidth. Price – an obvious factor is price. As mentioned earlier, you can get excellent or lousy service for the same amount. Before subscribing, read up on some online reviews and feedback. Read More
How Much Should You be Spending on Internet Advertising by: Custom Toll Free, March 30, 2011 Advertising on the World Wide Web is now more important than ever. People have migrated from newspapers, magazines, and even television to get their news, reviews, and other forms of content online. So with that being said, the next question for Internet advertisers is, “how much should I spend on Internet advertising?” It actually depends on the kind of business you’re in. If you’re a manufacturer or are managing the online advertising campaign of a large retailer, then you obviously have the budget to launch a strong and widespread advertising campaign. For small businesses and Internet entrepreneurs though, the amount you spend for promotions should be more wisely budgeted. For example, small businesses can usually get a higher return on their investment if they focus on local search campaigns and social media marketing. It is important to make sure that the people you advertise to are actually potential customers and not just random visitors. Then of course, it is also important to look at how much the competition is spending. You certainly don’t want your business to get drowned out by a strong campaign by a competing brand. At the end of the day, your Internet advertising budget can range from $1,000 to $100,000. No specific amount can be provided because it depends on the factors that are unique only to your business. Read More