I often see signs, trucks, apparel and other marketing materials with multiple phone numbers on them. Why? Are you not organized enough to set up call forwarding? Perhaps you have a partner and you are hoping half the call volume goes to her. Maybe you just plain don’t like phone calls, and you are hoping that your confusion with what phone number to use will carry onto the customer and get them not to call you.

There is only one reason why you would want two numbers on the side of your truck, if you have two locations in different area codes and you want to offer the customer the option to call their local number. Even this is sitting on thin ice with me - get a toll free number.

The truth is, you want your customers to call. How do you get them to do that? Most importantly is to make it easy to get your number. When you give them an option you do two things:

1. You make the number smaller. This is both literal and figurative. If you have limited space on a vehicle for example, you must make the numbers smaller to fit them both on there. It also shares the importance of your phone number - therefore making it less.
2. You may confuse your customer. They may not know which number you want them to call. A confused customer will not open their checkbook.

So what do you do? Pick one number.

• Pick a number and have it forward to whoever can answer the phone at that time. You might change where it forwards depending on who’s available.
• Put the second number in the voicemail of the first. Give customers the option to call down the phone list after they have written down and tried the “main one”
• Use a service like phonepeople.com and get a toll free number with a virtual pbx.
• Hire an answering service to answer your main line and text you when you have a message.
• Use the easiest to remember number. Zeros and repeating digits make a number easier to remember.

These are just a few ideas. Get creative, but stop using two phone numbers. I promise you, it’s not helping your business get double the calls.

I have linked to him a few times on my blog, but the guy is good. You can check out his blog here. He speaks about “the big picture” in marketing.

No matter what you’re doing, your business, your world will feel the impact by our ever growing communications network. All internet connections will be wireless in the near future, giving the whole world cheap, fast and reliable internet soon.

Check this out. And read this.

I was getting a drink at my favorite watering hole the other day, and no it was not a pub, it was QuikTrip. While I was standing in line, tasty beverage in hand, I noticed the guy in front of me digging deep into his pockets as his face grew increasingly red. “Let me check my car.” he said. He had a large fountain drink and a bottle of Mt. Dew.

He forgot his money. We have all been there.  What was interesting was what the attendant did. He grabbed the bottle of Mt. Dew and said “I need to keep this,” but pushed the fountain drink towards the edge of the counter, and said “but you keep that.” The customer thanked the attendant and walked away with his free large drink. A smile never left either of their faces.

QuikTrip was at a loss. They would have had to throw away the cup, throw away the beverage, but most importantly, they would have sent a customer away with disappointed feelings. Maybe these feelings were not directed at them, but they are bad never the less. They didn’t. They turned the situation around and became a hero. They made his day and took a lose lose situation and turned it into a win win at the cost of 44 ounces of diet coke - about 50 cents.

You might find yourself in a similar situation with one of your customers. If you can turn it into a win win, you might get people to blog about my their awesome experience. 

When a customer decides to use your company for the first time they get a first impression, but it’s not your voice or how you answer your phone. It’s your phone number. Your phone number is part of your brand. It defines who you are in many respects. You wouldn’t give your customer your Yahoo email address, nor would you give your new customer a hand written business card. Why would you give your customer a phone number that is hard to dial, confusing or doesn’t mean anything? Take a few minutes before you start your next business, or order a second phone line to ask the phone company for an easy to remember phone number. They usually don’t charge for this.

And for those of you with a Yahoo email address, I’m not sorry for offending you. If you can’t put the $10 into a .com with a free email address, why should a customer think you would spend any extra time or money to make their experience worth while?

Hand out your business card to everyone and everything you know. You couldn’t give me a good reason why all your friends and family don’t have one in the bottom of their purses or in their car cup holder. Don’t be stingy. Order a ton of them, and give them out like they didn’t cost you a thing.

I once heard that a good Real Estate agent could be measured by how many business cards they handed out in a year. The best go through hundreds, if not thousands a month.

Don’t forget to use the back. “We Love Referrals” goes a long way.

Local online advertising is becoming more and more important. Customers are spending more time online to find local businesses than ever before, and the trends will keep rising for foreseeable future. It might be time to take some money out of the paper yellow page ads and put them into local listings online. If your not ready to budget for local online advertising, fear not! There are plenty of places to listed online for free.

Here are a few places to get started with local advertising:

• Google Local (Google Maps) - List your business for free. You can advertise on Google Maps through your Adwords account on a pay per click basis.
• Yelp - A local review site. Yelp feeds some Yahoo Local and other local search results.
• Yahoo Local - Another local review site. Huge in many areas.
• CitySearch - Ask.com and Live.com get some of their information from here.
• Zillow - Free Real Estate listings. This would be a great place to advertise for home services such as lawn care, plumbing, contractors, etc. It costs $.01 per ad view and can be targeted by zip code.
• Craigslist.org - We all know what this one is. Use it! Post a new ad every 3-4 days about your business.
• BackPage.com - Another free, local classifieds site.
• Facebook - This one might be a suprise, but you can get some pretty cheap advertising targeted on a local level.

This is by no means a complete list, but it is a good start. If you get one potential new customer a week from each of these sources, imagine how fast you could grow!

P.S. If you want more search engines to pick up on your website as a local site, you might try adding your mailing address to the bottom of each page of your website. 

Garage and yard sale season is here. I wrote a little guide on advertising your garage sale for those out there looking to have one this year. There is something to be learned from the frenzy of customers deal hunting at a garage sale. Could your business benefit from similar traffic? Here are a couple of ideas to pull in some new customers this spring.

• Use garage sale like signs to promote your products. Hand written signs attract attention. The real estate investors swear by them. You might even use arrow directionals to drive traffic right to your front door.
• Use classified ads like craigslist.org, backpage.com or your local newspapers to advertise specials, closeouts and overstocks.
• Set your stuff outside. Have a sidewalk sale and set your products out front where shoppers can see them.

If you want customers to pick up your business card, make it the most interesting.

If you want customers to find your website, make it the most useful.

If you want customers to see your yellow page ad, make it the largest.

If you want customers to refer you, make them the happiest.

The point here, no matter how important, is not to make your customers happy. My point is that these facts are not interchangeable. You won’t get more people to pick up your business card by making your prices low. Just like you wont get more people to visit your website just because it’s happy. Each part of your marketing efforts are independent paths towards your overall brand.

If you want more customers, make each part better. You won’t get new customers through your website if you don’t make it better.

The only way to get someone to listen is to tell them about something they are interested in or thinking about. How many ads do you ignore in a day? Thousands. When you use yard signs, keep to the point, don’t waste your money with long descriptions or laundry lists. You have 432 square inches of real estate to get ONE point across. Don’t hide it amongst a plethora of other information.Thanks to Seth Godin’s Blog for the info.