Radio advertising accounts for just under 10 percent of all advertising dollars. It’s effective, universal, and mobile. That’s why many Custom Toll Free clients do direct response marketing over the air waves.
The folks at Radio Lounge USA are in the business of producing direct response ads for their clients. They advise companies to make the call to action clear and give listeners a URL or phone number that’s memorable.
“If you are driving users to a toll free number, make sure you are not advertising some random ten digits that are difficult to remember. Use vanity phone numbers,” is their advice.
Here are a few general tips for using radio advertising with your custom toll free number:
Know your audience. Pick stations and time slots that best match your audience demographics.
Repeat, repeat, repeat. Once you’ve chosen a particular time slot or show, stick with it. That guarantees enough repetition of your ad and your toll-free number with a particular audience (morning drive time, gardeners, talk show fans) that your information will be remembered.
Try “roadblocking.” The term “roadblocking” means running your ads on several stations during the same weeks. Businesstown.com explains why roadblocking can be highly effective.
You’ll also find some great advice for successful radio advertising here.
Many callers don’t even notice, but there are often extra digits in vanity toll free numbers. Almost all phone systems are trained to ignore the extra digits, so the call will go through even if eight or nine, rather than seven, digits follow the toll-free prefix.
Vanity toll-free numbers drive sales by making it easy for consumers to remember your number. While the ideal is to find a seven-letter message that translates to an available seven-letter number, what’s most important is that the message be easy to remember.
If using eight or nine letters creates a truly memorable message, you can go for it. 1-888-INSULATE, 1-866-LAWNCARE are examples of eight-letter messages where having the extra letter makes all the difference. You’ll also see an extra digit or two added at the front to differentiate your custom toll-free number, such as 1-877-99-LAWNCARE .
Custom Toll Free provides some great tools, including our Available Toll Free Number Search, to help you create memorable vanity numbers. Use words you have in mind, and take a look at some of the alternatives words our tool will suggest for you. You can even adjust your search to generate results that fit the monthly price range you want to pay.
