Find a Phone Number or Find a Person

 in imitation of most car dealerships, Maroone Honda of Hollywood, Fla., wanted to drive more thing to its showroom floor. as a result the dealer further a catchy, easy-to-remember phone number to its ongoing print and radio ad campaign. Maroone was soon flooded next a thousand additional phone calls from prospective buyers each month and sufficient extra sales to make it one of the nation's top 10 Honda sellers.

"The defense we got this number is simple: If someone in the South Florida area wants a Honda, every they craving to know or remember to call is 1 800 other HONDA," says general overseer Bobby Yoxall. The company extra the vanity number three years ago. "Other (local) dealers are just ticked off because they didn't think of it first," Yoxall says.

Easy-to-remember, toll-free numbers such as Maroone's are a "cash register" for businesses, especially "vanity numbers" using a word joined considering the company or its service, says Judith Oppenheimer, an industry analyst and president of ICB Toll-Free Consultancy in supplementary York. But in imitation of the pool of toll-free 800 numbers all but drained, and buying and selling phone numbers illegal, snagging a memorable number can be an exercise in futility. There are a few actions that can support small businesses locate a illusion number, despite the competition.

Ringing the Cash Register

Vanity numbers such as 800-FLOWERS and 800 CALL ATT are known to generate a minimum of 40 percent more calls than non-memorable numbers, says Oppenheimer, who believes the average is much higher.

The pool of 800 numbers understandable to companies is fairly little at any firm time. Telephone carriers have attempted to accommodate growing request by introducing additional toll-free prefixes. But those prefixes - 888, 877, 866 - typically develop less traffic. "Some will tell you that 877 and 866 are fine. They're not," Oppenheimer says.

Few studies have been done, but large quantity of anecdotal evidence supports that claim. Oppenheimer points to a client that included its toll-free 877 number in a series of radio ads. It next owned the 800 relation of the similar number, but didn't count it in the ad. But the 800 number conventional more than twice the number of calls as the 877 number.

Why? Consumers tend to remember vanity numbers as "800," no event what the prefix. "It's not whether you know that 888 or 877 are toll-free prefixes," Oppenheimer says. "It's whether those numbers have been branded in your mind in a way that gets you to respond." correspondingly following a company uses an 888 or other toll-free, non-800 prefix, many of its calls - perhaps 40 percent - end in the works going to whomever owns the 800 bill of the number, which may agreed well be a competitor, she says.

Free Mobile Voting Service 

There are new reasons to sustain out for an 800 prefix. "Across the board, taking into account people call a vanity number, they are raising their hand to buy," says Oppenheimer. "They are not tire kickers. subsequently you're dialing a word, there's a alternative mind set and behavioral process." People are ready to purchase at that point, she asserts.

Yoxall won't song how many more cars he's selling gone the number. But the dealership has moved from the list of the nation's top 20 Honda dealers into the top 10 during the subsequently three years. Yoxall attributes much of that achievement to adjunct an easy-to-remember phone number.