A New Business Idea To Help Companies Save Money. Please tear it apart :)

sirus21

I am in the very early stages of setting up new service aimed at small businesses and would very much appreciate your feedback on the idea.

The concept is simple: we want to give you the ability to precisely track and increase the success rate of your offline marketing.

1) We can provide you with as many local phone numbers as you wish. Anyone calling these numbers will be forwarded on to a land line/mobile of your choice.
You can then assigned each individual offline advert a unique number. For example, each Yellow Pages or Thompson Local ad.

If you operate across several regions you can use local numbers for each region.

2) We send you simple weekly stats on how each number is performing. This will give you a clear idea on the effectiveness of each advertisement.

Estimated Pricing
For 3 numbers of your choice and 750 transfer minutes: £20 Per Month (no contract)
----

Additional numbers: 4 pounds per month
Additional minutes over allowance : 8p per minute

Any feedback or questions would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

Joe

pitkin2020

sirus21 wrote: »

I am in the very early stages of setting up new service aimed at small businesses and would very much appreciate your feedback on the idea.

The concept is simple: we want to give you the ability to precisely track and increase the success rate of your offline marketing.

1) We can provide you with as many local phone numbers as you wish. Anyone calling these numbers will be forwarded on to a land line/mobile of your choice.
You can then assigned each individual offline advert a unique number. For example, each Yellow Pages or Thompson Local ad.

If you operate across several regions you can use local numbers for each region.

2) We send you simple weekly stats on how each number is performing. This will give you a clear idea on the effectiveness of each advertisement.

Estimated Pricing
For 3 numbers of your choice and 750 transfer minutes: £20 Per Month (no contract)
----

Additional numbers: 4 pounds per month
Additional minutes over allowance : 8p per minute

Any feedback or questions would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

Joe

Its not a new idea and has been well used for many years, yellow pages already provide a very similar service so you can track your hit rate from yellow pages and yellow.com using a specific telephone number. IIRC when they last tried to offer it me it was cheaper than the service your offering but you could check that out.

1) Most businesses who use a local number instead of say an 0870 or 0800 would want one number for a single region, having several different local numbers being seen by potentially the same person can be off putting. Its just as bad as seeing several phone numbers and mobile numbers on business literature, customers want to call one number and it be answered not have to go through several to get someone who will answer.

Different numbers for different regions is fine for most if they cover those areas, which depending on the type of small business is unlikely for small trade services. It can work in a businesses favour to have a local number for that area rather than an outside number, it gives the customer the impression you are local. I wouldn't call a london number when looking for a local tradesmen but I would be inclined to call a local number with maybe the business being ran from a london office for example. Again depends on the types of business involved.

2) Well you would need stats or they would be no point of point 1 lol.

Ok, from a small business owners point your service has no added value. Especially if I only intend to advertise in the like thompson or yellow pages. Basically yellow pages can offer me the same level of service and advertising, (1 supplier). Leaflet advertising can only be more effectively recorded by taking leaflets back in or collecting codes for example.

If you could couple your service with a yellow pages advert and/or maybe a thompson advert it would have more value. Currently it has no USP. The other issue is when the adverts are going to print, people would need to have this arranged before getting the advert ready which could also mean they are paying for a service a couple months before they need it or could even use it.

Are yellow pages a viable advertising means for most businesses now?? The number of businesses pulling out of such media is increasing year on year. The cost alone is deterring a lot add that to your phone cost aswell and there are more effective and cheaper ways to advertise that could be more beneficial!!

PlutoinCapricorn

My block of flats used to get Yellow Pages and Thompsons delivered in bulk: this post has reminded me that I can't remember when I last saw any. I don't think people bother much with them any more.

When I needed a handyman service urgently and a laptop repair company, my first, instinctive action was to go online and use email to contact them.

InsideInsurance

The problem with what you are saying is that you simply get to track the volume of calls that each campaign is producing (and technically it isnt just offline marketing as you can also put your phone number online) and what a company really wants to be able to do is also track the conversion rate or average basket value etc for each campaign too.

You can find that one number gets hundreds of calls but they are all customer service, or even spam, where as an advert in a particular magazine gets only a couple of dozen calls but each one is a high value new customer order.

Obviously to do this type of analysis would be dependent on your clients and their systems/ processes but if I was looking for this sort of solution from a provider I would certainly want their system to offer a method for my telephone people or system to identify which number has been dialled too.

sirus21

Thanks guys for your response, although offline advertising is in its's decline, it's still very prevalent amongst small businesses. Yellow Pages and Thomson are just obvious examples of how the tracking system can be used, It would also work for any offline print marketing.

paulwf

It sounds like a nice add on if you are already selling advertising. However, if you are selling it as a standalone product will it be worth it? If your net profit is £10 per customer you're going to be doing a lot of running around attracting customers and that time and associated costs may eat up all of your profits.

Errata

Don't most people chuck their yellow pages and thompsons directory straight into the bin? They're out of date the minute they're printed and the net is a lot easier and quicker to find local tradespeople/businesses.

pitkin2020

Errata wrote: »

Don't most people chuck their yellow pages and thompsons directory straight into the bin? They're out of date the minute they're printed and the net is a lot easier and quicker to find local tradespeople/businesses.

Generally, I think a lot of OAP's who don't have PC's keep them. Depends on your business, it works well for some and utterly useless for others.

We have one some where but I can only think of two reasons as to why it would be my first port of call and it would be of no use for the 2nd.
1) an electrician, not much good looking on the net for a number with no power
2) a lock smith, can't check the net if I can't get in the house, but then if I can't get in the house I can't get the yellow pages lol

Savvy_Sue

pitkin2020 wrote: »

Generally, I think a lot of OAP's who don't have PC's keep them.

Don't they all contact their relatives and ask them to look things up for them?

pitkin2020 wrote: »

I can only think of two reasons as to why it would be my first port of call and it would be of no use for the 2nd.
1) an electrician, not much good looking on the net for a number with no power

that's where you need a laptop / netbook and a wireless dongle: lovely being able to get online when no-one else can because the home network has crashed (again!) And very useful when your BB is off because the supplier has a localised problem!