Toll free numbers Vs. Local Numbers: What’s the Difference?
A famous saying – “building a castle is difficult, defending and maintaining it is harder still” defines the essence of small business functioning. Starting a small business is easy, but, running it successfully is a tough journey. Most critical component of businesses is the business phone number that helps your customers reach you and brings in sales.
Business phone number can be a local number or toll free number or both. Decision depends on what is best suited for your business. Based upon your audience choice and business clients – you can choose the way to connect with your customers. Before proceeding with the measurement of pros and cons of local phone number and toll free number choice, let us understand them better.
Local Phone Number
Everyone in the business world understands the significance of getting closer to the customers. Local numbers help businesses to establish local business presence and develop a more easy-to-reach image that gives a quick and agile turnaround for your business clients.
Toll Free Numbers
Easy to remember catchy toll free or vanity numbers are for businesses willing to build-up a stable international presence. It gives a unique and established image of your business which helps in creating a strong presence of your business.
Now, let’s glance at the merits of each of them.
Advantages of Local Phone Number
1. Setting up Local Presence
800 numbers reflect an impersonal image of your business. Local numbers present a friendly image of your brand and increase the chances of reaching you. These numbers are beneficial if you are trying to grow the number of clients or customers in a specific location. It also increases the chances of getting companies or brands placed in online searches and phone books. Thus, customers looking for a local business may come across your company.
2. Spreading Advertising Message Locally
Businesses can incorporate local numbers in marketing campaigns and advertising plans. Businesses aiming to advertise in a specific region, integrating a local number form a critical part of the advertising campaign. A specific local phone number linked with your advertising campaign can help to track its success rate easily and make the necessary adjustments in time. Using a local number in search listing and ads, simplifies the life of customers searching for a nearby store branch.
3. Easy Identification of your Business
Businesses can incorporate local numbers in marketing campaigns and advertising plans. Businesses aiming to advertise in a specific region, integrating a local number form a critical part of the advertising campaign. A specific local phone number linked with your advertising campaign can help to track its success rate easily and make the necessary adjustments in time. Using a local number in search listing and ads simplify the life of customers searching for a nearby store branch.
Advantages of Toll free Number
1. Hassle-free Way to carry your Business Anywhere you want
Your business might be fixed to one location but what if you wish to expand? Contrary to local numbers, toll free numbers can function nationwide, implying that businesses can easily scale up and grow anywhere they want. No need to update the marketing channels, just without needing to change the way customers reach you, your business is easily reachable over the phone.
2. Building a Better, Easy-to-Remember Brand Image
It takes robust efforts to create a brand identity separate from competing brands. Implementing a vanity or toll free number in business such as 1-800-Smile or 1-800-Call-Us is much simpler to remember than 10 digit number. Thus, easy-to-remember numbers have brighter recall rate and allows implementation of several forms of advertising such as billboards, company’s website and company’s cards.
3. Above All It’s Free
Having said much on how toll free numbers can help your business – customers are more likely to reach your business when they get a chance to call for free. This, in turn, gives businesses a potential chance to increase its sales. Toll free number providers offer its customers to manage and maintain call records automatically. Also, personalized professional IVR allows easy connection with the callers.
Conclusion
Ultimately, it depends on the businesses which they want their customers to access their products and services. Before opting any toll free number or local number to establish the brand it is important to prepare the layout of the business.