A marketing strategy is at the heart of any competitive business. New technologies are constantly disrupting industries. As a result, the opportunity arises to improve your marketing strategies using these technologies. Today, I’ll be talking about Voice-Over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP).
This technology is an improvement on Plain Old Telephone Service or POTS. With VoIP, all physical landlines can be transmitted digitally, by fiber optic cables, instead of through copper wires. This creates an opportunity for businesses to enhance their marketing strategy in several ways.
Here are eight ways you can use your VoIP phone to improve your marketing strategy.
1. Target Geographical Locations
One of the big advantages of VoIP is that you can get a local number anywhere in the country. For example, as a company based in New York, it’s possible to get a local phone number for Boston Massachusetts by utilizing local Internet Protocol (this is possible because VoIP transmits data packets digitally).
The benefits of this are twofold. Firstly, you can create the appearance of having a local presence. This is useful for a small company looking to appear larger than it is, or with a greater local presence than it has. You can create a faux sense of local appeal.
Having a local number is useful for both support and sales. After all, many businesses and customers prefer to work with local firms.
2. Enable Virtual Extensions for Working on the Go
With VoIP, you are no longer attached to a physical line. You can assign a local number to your mobile. Not only that, you can assign one phone number across multiple devices. This has a range of benefits for a business.
Firstly, each employee can have a virtual extension. This means each employee can reach the system on any connected device, such as smartphones and laptops. If you’re traveling on business or working out of the office, everyone can still be kept in the loop, regardless of location. This is perfect for sales teams who need to be available for customers at all stages of the sales funnel.
Secondly, it’s also possible to set answering rules. For example, if the first person does not answer the business phone in the first five rings, the phone call is directed to a colleague. This feature maximizes the chance of the prospective client getting through to the company and in turn, improve your customer satisfaction.
3. Save Money
As with other forms of digital transformation, one major advantage of switching to VoIP from POTS is cost. VoIP is cheaper than a regular phone because the data is transmitted through the infrastructure you probably already have in your office. You do not need to wait, or pay for, the installation of a phone line.
Several benefits flow from this. For example, you can add extra phone numbers or remove them at little cost. The main overhead you will pay for is data usage. Moreover, some VoIP providers also include free-of-charge numbers for clients to call.
4. Set Up an Auto Attendant
Auto-attendants are the automated voices at the start of any helpline. Their purpose is to replace the intervention of a receptionist or live operator. They are the first touch-point your prospective consumer has with your business and, therefore, a crucial part of the sales cycle.
The obvious benefit of an auto-attendant is human resources. With VoIP, you no longer have to hire a receptionist to field calls. Moreover, your workforce spends less time answering and directing unnecessary calls.
Source: RingCentral
With an auto-attendant, you can engage your customers when they are in a queue. VoIP allows you to customize a virtual receptionist to your specific needs using features such as inserting slogans and key pieces of sales information. An auto-attendant can also direct potential customers to the right team or department for lead nurturing.
Finally, if you are unable to pick up the phone, a message can be left and is directly transferred as a transcript to your email. Instead of interrupting other calls and meetings, this allows you and your teams to respond at a different time. This ensures that the customer can always leave an inquiry while also ensuring no call is missed.
5. Improve Team Performance With Call Recording
Clear communication and the ability to get your point across effectively is crucial in business. Of course, it is hard to monitor this in your day to day conversations. This is not the case with a VoIP phone system.
With VoIP, it is easy to set up call recording on your business lines. This offers a massive benefit to any company involved in customer service and sales. With recorded calls, managers can analyze and track the work of employees. This is useful for measuring KPI. Recorded calls also offer an opportunity for personal development. Sales or customer service teams can benefit massively from analyzing calls to see what went right and try to improve their approach.
6. Optimize & Rate Your Marketing Materials
As mentioned, VoIP phone systems allow you to link multiple phone numbers to a single phone. One of the benefits that we have not touched upon is using phone numbers to test the effectiveness of your marketing material.
In times gone by, direct marketers would use different coupon codes in various publications. They would manually review the codes that were redeemed to identify the publications that offered the best ROI for advertising. The same method can be applied with phone numbers attached to marketing material thanks to VoIP.
Just as with advertisements, you can create multiple phone numbers for different pages on your website. This way, you can measure the performance of your web pages by monitoring the number of calls received across different phone numbers.
7. Integrate Seamlessly with Unified Communications
Ensuring you hit multiple touchpoints is vital to building a strong marketing strategy. However, it is hard to measure those touchpoints. Unified communications are how you can start to integrate your business’ instant messaging, video conferencing solutions, email, and more to deliver seamless communications to your customer.
Source: RingCentral
With the right approach, ultimately, you can reduce the number of different software platforms and tools you have to deal with. This makes things more manageable for staff. Moreover, it makes things easier for managers to track.
Multiple conversations over different platforms aren’t lost. They can be stored in one place to avoid any confusion and overlap, helping your business provide the best communication experience possible. VoIP is part of this solution, as you’re able to combine your phone data with information from other communication channels.
Final thoughts
The premise of this article is to highlight some of the advantages VoIP can bring to your business. Notable benefits include the freedom to work where you want while still maintaining a business number, the option to get a locally registered number, cost savings, and advanced features.
