Home / Chapter
1 / Chapter 2 / Chapter
3 / Chapter 4 / Chapter
5 / Chapter 6 / Chapter
7 / Chapter 8 / Chapter
9 / Chapter 10 / Chapter
11 / Chapter 12 / Chapter
13 / Chapter 14 / Chapter
15 / Chapter 16
Chapter 11: Phone and Fax
Using Offline Communication Tools to Drive and Complement Your Business.
Phone services can complement your online marketing and customer service efforts. If you don’t have a toll-free number for your customers, consider adding one. The
number one reason to have a toll-free number is to add credibility to your company and site. Research shows internet visitors view sites with a toll-free phone number as more credible and are more likely to purchase from that site, even if they never call the number. Adding a toll free number is easy, you can get one from
My Toll Free Number or
800 Toll Free. You can have one forward to your existing telephone
line or you can get an automated voice attendant with multiple mailboxes that can forward to different numbers, depending on which extension is pressed. This type of toll free service can link employees at multiple locations with one number. These systems can also handle faxes, fax-on-demand and recorded marketing message (have a recorded marketing message on one extension and marketing that number and extension in ads, offering a free report that they call to hear or have faxed back to them). These types of systems are called
Virtual Offices and require no purchase or lease of equipment, just a
small monthly rental fee. The Virtual Office system I use is Freedom Voice or
GotVMail. These systems can even deliver fax and voice messages as an attachment to email addresses, based on extension.
Fax services can also be used as a marketing medium to complement your online
efforts and to help make your business more transient. You can get a fax number that automatically forwards any received faxes as an attachment to your
email, receivable anytime, and anywhere through the internet. You can also use fax broadcast services to upload faxes and distribution lists and have your fax sent
out without having to tie up a phone line or computer. You can even send and receive faxes through the internet, through your
email, to a single recipient. If you aren’t interested in using broadcast fax to send out fax flyers, but just want the convenience of sending and receiving single faxes through your email, I recommend
E-Fax. If you are interested in sending broadcast faxes through the internet, I recommend
Jfax, Concord Fax or
Fax.com. The nice thing about Fax.com is that you can send faxes through the internet to target specific zip codes, or in a tailored radius from a chosen location (e.g. every one with a fax within in a 5-mile radius of your brick and mortar store).
I also like to support Fax.com because they provide a free fax service to
agencies and individuals trying to locate exploited and missing children.
Summary:
Phone and fax are offline communication tolls that can complement your online business, especially since these technologies
now have portals that interact with the web. These add credibility to your company and help you to save costs on equipment. It also helps you to tie in employees or multiple locations with a single phone or fax
number, which is often necessary in business that are solely virtual with no
brick and mortar counterpart.
Home / Chapter
1 / Chapter 2 / Chapter
3 / Chapter 4 / Chapter
5 / Chapter 6 / Chapter
7 / Chapter 8 / Chapter
9 / Chapter 10 / Chapter
11 / Chapter 12 / Chapter
13 / Chapter 14 / Chapter
15 / Chapter 16
This eBook is the express intellectual property of NHPartner.com
Please Click
if you like this on google plus.
|