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Home > Consumer Information Center > Need for Toll Free Numbers
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Many home based and small businesses today are employing the use of toll free numbers for their business. Now, the question is does your business need a toll free number?
Tracking Your Marketing Campaigns
Many business owners think if they are marketing strictly offline to a local market, then they would have no need for a toll free number. The truth is that even local businesses can utilize toll free numbers. With the extremely low cost of having multiple toll free lines these days, toll free numbers can be a great way to track marketing efforts.
You can use a different toll free number in various advertisements, flyers and marketing efforts and then track the amount of calls coming in on each one at the end of the month via your bill. This allows you to see which marketing campaigns are successful in obtaining inquiries, which are successful at obtaining sales and which marketing efforts need to be tweaked to provide better performance.
Being Free to Call Nationwide
If you market your business online or to a large offline area, having a toll free number allows you to be reachable across the country without costing prospective customers money to contact you. Take a look at your competition. If a consumer has the choice of contacting one company toll free or having to pay long distance charges to contact another, it could cost you business if you are the company "costing them money".
Building Trust with Consumers
Having a toll free number when marketing your product or service online will add professionalism to your business. It also makes it easier for customers to contact you with questions and order products. It gives your website a "live" feel. It can also be the difference between making a sale or not with certain customers who are still leery of the web and want assurance that there are real people behind the webpage.
By making a toll free number available to your customers, you present an image of solidarity that customers often look for. All you have to do is look at the big commercial sites selling on the web to see that even with the boom of their dot.com store fronts, they are still making live support available to the customer.
A toll free number can help you relate to potential customers that you are a serious business and working hard to get their trust either on the web or via your national advertising campaigns. They can make even the smallest business "look" bigger.
Shop Around to Keep Costs Down
It pays to shop around when considering a toll free number. Some of the more mainstream companies command rates starting at 7.5 cents a minute with a 10 dollar monthly fee and 25 dollar minimums. For a home based or small business owner, that can quickly put a toll free out of your price range. Even if you have a medium to large sized business, there is no reason to spend more than you need to.
But there are many smaller phone companies that cater to the toll free needs of small and home-based businesses, with pricing starting as low as only 2 dollars a month and 3.9 cents per minute, with no required monthly minimums.
Some smaller phone companies also offer "stand alone" and "forward-able" toll free service, so you can get a toll free number without having to change your long distance company.
You still get quality connections and customer support with the smaller companies, but because they don't do big budget advertising, they are able to offer lower rates. And the difference in these rates can make the difference in affordability for the home based or small business owner.
Things to Consider
Before you choose a toll free provider, be sure to ask yourself and the provider the following questions:
• Can you limit incoming calls to a certain state or area?
• If you want customers to call you nationwide, can you block countries you don't service?
• Is there a monthly fee for the number?
• Are there are usage minimums per month?
• Can you choose your toll free number?
• Do you need and does your toll free number come with voicemail?
• Do you need the ability to have the toll free number go to various numbers (such as your house, your cell phone - wherever you may be)?
• Can you transfer your toll free number easily should you change providers?
• What are the in state and out of state rates to call your toll free number?
• Do any taxes or surcharges apply?
Even with the costs of having a toll free number and receiving calls on it, if you are able to better target consumers, raise sales, raise trust and track your advertising campaigns, the cost can easily be paid for in savings in other areas. If you know a certain ad campaign isn't performing via your toll free calls (or lack there of) you can either pull the ad or edit it to get a better response. Your toll free number may have saved you hundreds or thousands of wasted advertising dollars.
Of course, not every type of business is right for the toll free approach, but those offering products and services to a national audience or hoping to improve the conversions on their advertising campaigns should seriously consider making a toll free number an addition to their business and vault of marketing tools.
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