A new toll free area code!!!
There's a brand new toll free area code launching February
15th... 5-0-0! Finally there's another toll free service that
has the potential to live up to the example set by the original
8-0-0 area code. We've seen 877 and 866 numbers come out, but
this may ultimately be even bigger! The problem with 877, 866
(and eventually if they ever finally launch 855 numbers), is
basically that they look like any other area code and have to be
remembered as three digits. 888 numbers are fairly unique since
there's no 777 or 999, but the unique part of "800"
isn't the eight as much as the hundred. That's why I think
"500" has so much potential.
500 numbers are more like 800 numbers in the early days in
several other ways too. They aren't widely used or recognized
yet, there are some one time switch activation and coverage
issues to be worked out, they're more expensive than traditional
toll free numbers are today, and right now, some of their
services are only available from one company too. The main
difference is that, you have one major advantage over marketers
back in the late sixties and seventies. You know how popular
toll free numbers are with the American Consumer. Overall, I
guess the bad news is that 500 numbers are new and obviously
aren't popular yet, but the good news is that they're new and
aren't that popular yet too.
THE PROS...
1. The biggest and most obvious pro is number availability.
Imagine if you could turn back the clock twenty years and get
the perfect 800 number that you've always wanted. Well now's
your chance, because there a lot of great new Toll Free 500
numbers available. This is probably the most important benefit
but unfortunately, it clearly won't last. There hasn't been as
much publicity about this as I think this really deserves, but
for anyone reading this I think that is probably a good thing
and may mean you still have some significant opportunity, before
the entire world hears about it!
2. 500 is inherently unique and memorable. It may be starting
out from a little different bloodline, but it has the potential
to turn into 800's closest cousin. Unlike the other latest
additions to the toll free family 866 and 877, "500"
is memorable as one string rather than three separate digits and
it's much more unique just like "800". It has the one
thing that none of the other toll free area codes we've come out
with over the last 8 years had... two zeros! Simply put, it
doesn't look like any other area code, the way 866 and 877
always do.
3. The third thing that 500 has going for it is hind sight.
500Plus LLC, the organization behind the new toll free 500
service has the advantage of 30 years of toll free experience
and has incorporated some private industry practices, and the
Internet to deliver additional value while making the best 500
numbers available to many times more businesses than traditional
toll free numbers. This will also mean there are several times
more potential advertisers and in the long run may get more
exposure than any other single area code.
4. There are several great value added services provided along
with the toll free 500 service for the premium
"Beachfront" service packages that include: more
advanced call reporting and tracking services, a matching domain
name with web hosting and email services, and a sales and
marketing newsletter from Jay Conrad, the best-selling author of
the Guerrilla Marketing series of books.
THE CONS....
1. Consumer awareness is the first most obvious hurtle. It's a
cloud with a silver lining since it is also an advantage for
number availability and an issue that every new toll free code
faces. There are two main ingredients necessary to overcome it,
Time and Advertising. One advantage is that by breaking down the
better "Beachfront" numbers by market area, they
actually have a lot more potential advertisers.
2. Toll Free 500 service packages are a little more expensive
than traditional toll free numbers are today, but toll free
numbers were originally quite a bit more expensive than
traditional toll free numbers are today too. Domain names used
to cost $100 to register too. This growth process is typical for
most new technologies, from big screen TVs to CD burners, but
there is one difference. A CD burner you purchased 3 or 4 years
ago probably isn't as good as one available today for much less
money. But a good toll free 500 number will be every bit as good
as one 5 years from now, except that it'll probably be a much
better number, but only if you act quickly.
If you could go back in time and reserve a good domain name for
$100 wouldn't that have been a good investment? How about if you
could go back in time to reserve a brand name toll free 800
number for a couple hundred dollars? I charge all my clients
$3,800 to get valuable brand name 800 numbers, because if you
are serious about your marketing, a good number is well worth
the investment and you have to look at it that way with a little
long term thinking.
You also have to realize that it costs millions of dollars and
many months to get phone companies all over the country to
activate these Toll Free 500 numbers in their local switches.
Traditional toll free numbers have already done this and don't
have that expense. So it makes sense to pass a tiny part of that
along to each new subscriber. You could wait till the prices go
down and the popularity and acceptance go up, but don't expect
to get any of the great numbers that are available right now...
3. Coverage areas are also a factor for the short term. There
are over 1200 local phone companies, cellular carriers, pay
phone vendors and rural telephone companies that all have to
program these numbers into their switches and equipment. To
date, three of the six RBOC service areas (Verizon, SBC and
PacBell have already programed these numbers but there will be
some coverage issues in the short term for Bell South,
Ameritech, Qwest and the local, rural phone companies. This is a
rapidly evolving (and hopefully temporary) issue and is based on
your geography so I can't really give you any more specific
info, except to realize that this is part of being on the
"bleeding edge." It took a while for the programming
of each new toll free exchanges to be completed and because of
the newness and uniqueness of this code, and the expenses
involved, it could be a little while before they have really
solid coverage everywhere.
4. The next major consideration is just inertia. It's mostly a
human factor but equally important. The biggest vanity number
advertisers currently use 800 numbers and that isn't going to
change right away. 800 is a brand name because of the amount of
advertising and exposure that it gets. It'll take time for 500
numbers to grow into a recognized brand name. The major market
(and opportunity) for Toll Free 500 numbers will probably be the
10 million small to medium sized businesses because they are
faster to adopt innovative new services plus sales people
because of the additional reporting options that give you not
only the phone numbers, but the name and addresses of callers
too. I also think that in some cases, it's newness can be an
advantage, especially for programs built on innovation or aimed
at a younger audience.
When balancing the benefits and the limitations of 500 numbers,
you need to understand that 500 numbers obviously aren't for
everyone. Like the original 800 numbers, they probably aren't
appropriate for most personal use. There will be both a learning
curve for the consumer as well as for programming, but serious
advertisers can't afford the unique opportunity today to secure
a great vanity number that spells out their company name or the
product or service they sell. This is obviously a truly unique
opportunity for smart marketers.
There are two types or classes of 500 numbers. There are
"Beach Front" premium numbers that come with a whole
package of services and are available market by market across
the country. These numbers are generally the more generic
numbers or ones that start with a more valuable prefix. There
are also "Suburban" regular numbers that are available
on a nationwide basis. This smarter allocation system basically
insures that one real estate agent won't end up with a
"Beach Front" number like 1-500 REAL ESTATE
nationwide, but that it will be available to just one agent in
each region in over 200 different areas across the country. The
generic term for this is "Shared Use" and it means
that other users all over the country will be advertising and
promoting the number in their areas too. (See the shared use
article for advantages of Shared Use.) "Suburban" or
regular 500 numbers are available nationwide but also come with
matching email addresses.
This is the ground floor early days of toll free but with one
major difference. The difference is that today you know as Paul
Harvey would call it, "the rest of the (toll free)
story" because you know how popular toll free numbers are
and even more importantly, how valuable a good number can be.
The trick in life is to figure out what's obvious after the
fact, in time to get the best number for your business but
before it's totally obvious to everyone else. And in this case,
because of the exclusive nature of phone numbers, timing really
is everything!
You should start by visiting www.tollfree500.com and checking
for availability of your dream number in your area; their
website is scheduled to go live the middle of February at which
time you'll be able to register your number(s). Be sure to think
carefully about what numbers would be the best for your
business.
Part of my job is to keep you up to date on toll free marketing
related issues and is clearly an excellent example of that. The
bottom line is that while 500 service isn't for everyone, but
anyone serious about marketing has to think long and hard about
this. The drawbacks are temporary but the benefits and value
that it'll bring to your business are permanent!
Get
more info on 500 PLUS!
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Greetings!
The purpose of this newsletter is as always to keep
you up to date on anything toll free related and to give
you good marketing ideas and assistance. We have some
big announcements and cool new things for you in this
issue. First of all, there's a whole new toll free area
code launching and we're also opening up our active
number database too.
There are a lot of things happening and I try hard to
bring them all to you. There are a lot of opportunities
today and I just want to help explain how to use them to
build your business. But most of all, I want you to
think of me as your toll free consultant, because I will
be happy to answer your questions and help you any way I
can with any of these things and much more.
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- The Benefits of Shared Use
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 Shared
use has several valuable benefits geared toward smaller
individual advertisers. It brings the power of a larger
organization to individual business owners similar to
the way a franchise does.
First of all, a network of similar businesses in a
shared use program means that there are many more
advertisers using a number. This all contributes to
building a stronger more recognizable brand name the way
a franchise does for it's individual businesses.
Each advertiser receives all of the benefit (ie.
incoming calls) from their area, but there is often some
spillover of leads. This is usually a good thing since
the leads that are lost are outside your regular service
area and therefore probably less valuable than the ones
that are gained inside your service area.
A mature shared use program generally has more prepared
advertising materials available. This may take some time
to develop, but if an individual advertiser develops an
effective cable tv or radio commercial for example, that
same commercial is often made available to other
advertisers. Some programs utilize an advertising agency
for this purpose, and the cost is shared over a large
number of participants. Each advertiser gets the full
benefit as if they had hired the agency themselves for a
tiny fraction of the cost.
One of the most important benefits is obviously that
shared use makes a good vanity number available to many
more people. Anyone who's ever talked to their phone
company realizes very quickly that it's extremely
difficult to find a really good vanity number today. It
often costs tens of thousands of dollars to get a good
number, and a shared use number gives you the benefits
of ownership without the expense.
Ultimately a good shared use network creates a lot of
synergy. Each advertiser uses the number locally but
that also contributes to the larger more national brand
name too. People are more likely to call a number that
they recognize and memorable numbers are certainly more
recognizable.
Brian Lynott, of 1800TeleSmart.com one of the leading
companies specializing in shared use routing, pointed
out that another benefit to the small advertiser is
enhanced call reporting functionality many vendors are
now offering, but which is often not available for
smaller businesses with traditional service.
Shared use programs can be cost prohibitive for national
advertisers, but they can be a goldmine for more
localized businesses and services. They avoid the cost
and large expense of getting a good number but in
reality actually provide even more value than owning a
number yourself. Ultimately it's a classic case of the
totally being greater than the sum of the parts.
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- Referral Marketing - 2.9¢/min
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If
you sell Long Distance and Toll Free Service don't read
this part. You'll probably hate me because I give it
away so cheaply that nobody makes any money at all. For
those people, I'm sorry but maybe some of the other
ideas in here will help you or your clients in the long
run.
Unfortunately long distance is a commodity and most
customers today are very price conscious. They love it
when they find a bargain and they enjoy sharing that
with other people if it's a really good deal. That's why
I offer my special 2.9 cents per minute service with no
fees or minimums at all, because it gives people an
incentive to tell their friends and it attracts a lot
more people to me in a really positive way.
I got this special deal from a company for helping them
with a toll free issue. They set me up as a preferred
agent giving me a better deal than almost any other
agents and they said I could set the commission at
whatever I wanted. When I told them I wanted to set the
commission at zero, they didn't understand why anyone
would want to do that.
I'm not allowed to advertise this 2.9 cent price because
it would undercut all their other agents, and since I
don't make much money, I couldn't really afford to
anyway. But I promise you that it's significantly better
than anything else you'll find anywhere, and that's why
this works, because it's such a great deal, you'll want
to tell your friends.
It's kind of a reverse business approach. Gorilla
marketing is all about knowing when to break the rules.
Everyone else expects to make money off long distance,
so I use that fierce competition to my advantage and
have the simple philosophy that in the long run I'll
make more by helping people and giving them the best
deals than I will offering the same thing everyone else
does. Hopefully over time, through my newsletter or
websites, I'll build a positive relationship with this
larger audience. If you like my approach, just tell
someone else that makes or receives a lot of calls about
this and eventually I'll be able to help a lot of
people!
For
2.9¢/min go: http://www.billquimby.net/special
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- Free Leads for Shared Use!
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 Shared
use is a good marketing tool, but even if you have a
good number, how do you find interested businesses? Most
people who market shared use, have found this is often a
lot harder to explain the value of a good number than
they had expected. The trick is to be able to reach
people that are actively looking for a vanity number
like yours right when they are looking.
That's the idea of our Active Number database, to put
vanity number owners together with prospects who are
specifically looking for that type of number. It's like
getting free money in your email. The only way
most people have to search for numbers is either by
calling them or by going through their phone company
which only looks for spare numbers in the SMS pool.
Unfortunately the best numbers are obviously not
available freely from a phone company any more, so we're
putting together a database of "Active
Numbers."
Every time a visitor uses our lookup tool, it not only
checks the national SMS database, but it also checks our
list of active numbers to see if the visitor entered any
string matching a number in our database or any related
keywords. This special keywords search technology allows
your number to be suggested to the visitor as an option
not only when they type your exact number but even if
they use a related keyword anywhere in their query.
Here's a sample of what it looks like.
If the visitor clicks on your number a form appears
which the visitor must fill out. The owner's information
is never given out and the visitor never sees a list of
all numbers or knows who owns which numbers, but their
information is sent via email directly to the owner of
the number. This protects completely the number owner's
information but allows interested parties a way to
submit their information for appropriate numbers. This
database will never be distributed or displayed anywhere
and the owner information won't be given out to anyone
at any time.
You'll get new leads right in your email. If you don't
think they're credible just delete them, but it gives
you fresh hot leads from people who expressed an
interest in your specific number. You're probably
wondering how much this valuable service costs. It's
FREE. That's right there's no charge at all.
Whenever I tell someone about this they ask why would I
give this away for free? It's pretty simple. Because it
doesn't take anything away from me and my sales, but
helps set me apart from a couple other sites that are
trying to copy my SMS search capabilities, and it makes
my site and service more valuable to visitors. Also
because I really believe the shared use industry needs a
central listing. But the bottom line is that it doesn't
really cost anything but a little programming.
It'll be set up to administer and monitor over the web,
but because the initial submissions will probably be
large for some number owners, we will be compiling the
list manually in an excel spreadsheet. If you would like
to receive a spreadsheet to enter your numbers, and see
samples of what you and the prospect receives, email me
at billquimby@billquimby.net. You will be responsible
for creating your keywords but I will of course have the
ultimate authority over what numbers are allowed, and
what keywords are relevant and allowed.
We're getting thousands of queries per day, and many are
probably relevant to your numbers. If you give me the
information, I'll send you FREE LEADS in your email! I
hope that this becomes a valuable resource to both
number owners and visitors.
If
you have any vanity numbers to promote, Email me for
info and a spreadsheet.
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 You
probably already have a toll free number. But do you
have a toll free FAX number? Here are a couple quick
benefits of using a toll free fax number.
1. Portability - Toll free numbers allow you to
change the ring to number whenever you need to. You
can't reprogram your customers fax machines or even
change your business cards and marketing materials very
easily. But you can change the ring to number of your
fax number any time you need it, with a single phone
call. You can also have multiple numbers pointing to the
same fax and then change them as programs or businesses
grow or evolve.
2. Non-geographic - Toll free numbers can point to or be
called from anywhere within the North American Numbering
Plan. That means they are essentially local to everyone
and nobody ever knows where you're located. That may not
sound like much, but when you combine that with free fax
to email services like Efax from J2.com you can use
their free basic service to receive your faxes. That
alone can easily save you around $20 per month by not
having to get a dedicated fax line, since unless you
send an extremely high volume of faxes, you can use your
existing phone to send faxes. Receiving your faxes in
your email will also save you on toner and can also help
you to get more organized by saving your faxes with
client or project names or folders on your hard drive
too.
3. Generating a Fax List - If you use a toll free number
for your fax number, save the bills and in six months or
so, go through the bills to collect the incoming call
records and you'll be able to make a list of the fax
numbers of almost all the people you do business with.
And if you use a service with online billing, you can
probably just copy and paste directly from the billing
records to create a list in just a few minutes. This
list can be extremely valuable for announcing last
minute specials or anything you need to blast out a
message to your customers. Email can get blocked, buried
and overlooked, but faxes are faster and easier than
snail mail and never have to be opened and they always
get looked at.
The bottom line is that toll free numbers are extremely
valuable tools and give you a lot of information and
control that you can't get with a regular local number.
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- 1-800 MERCEDES, David beats Goliath!
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It
was a classic case of David vs. Goliath, the Goliath in
this case being none other than one of the largest
international conglomerates of the automotive world,
DaimlerChrysler against an 800 number owner who happened
to have the number 1-800 MERCEDES.
I spoke with Donald Bloom, the "David" in
this David and Goliath story and he said that,
"Unfortunately in the real world, it's often not so
much what you say, but who you are that wins out. That's
part of what makes this such a big case." It was a
heck of a ride, Don added when asked about his
conclusion. Interestingly though his first response was
that it might have been smarter to have given the number
to them in the beginning. He also felt that Mercedes'
arrogance was an issue. But Donald Bloom is an
entrepreneur at heart and didn't listen to everyone that
told him he couldn't win. He came up with this number as
a tool to build his business (a small Mercedes
dealership at that time) and wound up creating a whole
new business in the process.
"This is really a decisive case for our
Industry! " reported Mark Olson a California
Attorney emphasizing Telecommunications Law and practice
before the FCC. "This ruling is definitely a
landmark case and is extremely important for everyone
with a valuable vanity phone number." I'm not an
attorney so I really couldn't begin to explain this all
here, and this newsletter is probably already way to
long, but Mark Olson has prepared a great site just
about this ruling including all the key court documents
at www.Global800.com. It even has a 30 minute recording
of the live oral arguments of the case and their 1-800
MERCEDES jingle. This is a great win for all the phone
number little guys of the world!
Read
more about this at Global800.com
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About
a year and a half ago, I got a small client the number
1-800 AIM HIGH (800-246-4444). He wasn't in the air
force or anything but was trying to develop and market
an ISP and web community (AIM-HIGH.com). In hind sight,
it was a very tough business to be in and his timing was
bad. But he's an extremely nice guy so when he called me
to tell me he was shutting down that business and asked
if I knew anyone that would like the number 1-800 AIM
HIGH I wanted to help.
I'll add him to the new Active Number database (see
above). Although it doesn't have an obvious core word it
is very memorable and even has a good numeric sequence,
246-4444. I really think this may be an interesting
opportunity and/or number for anyone in any type of
consulting, marketing, coaching or aviation business as
well as the Air Force of course. It also comes with all
of the matching domain names. If anyone is interested in
1-800 AIM HIGH just let me know.
email
for more info
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