Matching your local number
Some people go to our site and put in their local number, trying to match their local number. That is fine if it’s available, but I always point out that, matching your local number is only memorable to the one group of people that you don’t need to make your phone number memorable to, the people who already know your phone number.
Having a local number and toll free number matching does look cool on your business card and does have a cool professionalism to it, but if your local number is random it’s throwing good money after bad and you should really look to see what better options you can find that will increase the response rate to all your advertising, not keep it the same as it is now.
And for anyone with a nice numeric number that ends in 00 or 000, don’t get your hopes up for getting the matching ‘800′ version. 00 or 000 numbers in 800 are literally a hundred more times harder to get than they are in most local area codes. That’s because there are almost 200 local area codes nationwide so there are 200 times as many people competing for them in toll free area codes. And nice numeric numbers are visible to the phone companies so they don’t give them up but take them and recycle them internally giving them to their biggest advertisers.
We’ll be glad to get a toll free number that matches your local area code if it’s available and that’s what you really want, but my advice would also be to use our tools and see if you can find a number that is more connected to your advertising. Maybe you should consider both and use one in your advertising for new customers and the matching combination on all your operational materials. That way you can tell how many calls you’re getting from new customers versus existing ones. That alone can be extremely valuable information. And it really doesn’t cost you any more since you would be receiving the same number of minutes, just splitting them between two different numbers.
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Brenda Higgins says:
March 25, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Do you have any suggestions as to how you can get local area people to STOP using the toll free number? Our phone bill is outrageous due to the amount of incoming calls we receive on our toll free lines. Approximately 75% of the calls we receive are from people in our local area that would not be charged to call our regular business number. Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Brenda
Bill Quimby (510 comments.) says:
March 25, 2008 at 8:24 pm
Hi Brenda,
You could give out your local number too at least in the advertising that hits your local area. You could also block the calls from your local area if you really wanted too. Or if you have one of the enhanced voicemail services you may be able to point the calls from your local area to one number that plays a message telling the callers to use a different number.
.Bill Quimby.
Bill Quimby (510 comments.) says:
September 23, 2008 at 4:42 pm
Someone just pointed out one other valuable application for matching your local number. That’s dealing with international callers, who can’t reach your toll free number from other parts of the world. Since you may have to include your local number for international callers, this makes it look better and more professional.
Bill