Ifbyphone Blog

A recent post at the CSS-Edge Web development blog highlights how interactivity like click-to-call can help make your website “stickier.” In a strategy to go beyond simply matching consultants with projects, the freelance job site Elance has incorporated click-to-call to allow prospective providers and buyers to communicate without giving out a phone number. Not only does this facilitate communication, it also increases the value of the Elance site for its community — turning the site from something I visit when I need work to a the place where I do work. 

Would you hand out a business card without a phone number or email? Not likely. Yet every day marketers publish ads that don’t have a call to action. And that’s a mistake, writes marketing maven Jeff Bacon: 

“In general, I strongly recommend that everything you do has a call to action – where you tell the prospect what you expect them to do and provide the means for them to do it.”

There are many avenues for communicating with customers — print, Web, email, TV, mobile phone. But none of them are worth anything if you don’t make it easy for people to respond. Tools like Ifbyphone smart toll-free numbers and click-to-call not only make it easy for customers to connect with you. They also make it easy to measure response, so you can justify your ad spending priorities. 

A new study by Forrester Research of interactive marketing finds that the “third screen” — mobile phone — gets short shrift in marketers’ plans, reports Rick Mathieson at Marketing Unbound.

“…only about 28% of marketers are using mobile marketing - and a full 36% say they have no plans to…Meanwhile, 15% said they don’t know their goals for mobile marketing.”

That’s because they’re looking at that little screen in exactly the wrong way: as another place to watch TV — and a pretty poor one at that, compared to that 50 inch in the living room. But the third screen has a big advantage over the set in your living room — its return channel. 

“What most marketers don’t realize is that mobile shouldn’t be viewed as a marketing delivery platform. It should be viewed as a response mechanism,” writes Mathieson.

In the last year mobile TV content has grown by leaps and bounds and a lot of that is video that’s uniquely suited to the device – – video snacks, interactive shows, specialized local information like traffic. And this creates a perfect opportunity for targeted, direct response advertising leveraging that return channel with a click-to-call.

Since July we’ve been blogging about our Voice Broadcast App For the iPhone. As of this morning, Apple is featuring the Voice Broadcast App on the front page of the iTunes App Store. Here is a nice screenshot:

If you haven’t had a chance yet, take a look at our Plugins page which includes information on the Voice Broadcast App and our other Plugins.

Direct response and brand advertising aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. You can marry the two in online marketing to build brand recognition as well as move customers to action. That’s the message of blogger Jamie Riddell at Cheeze.com.

As keyword advertising on generic terms gets ever-more crowded, Riddell advises advertisers to be “visible at all aspects of a customer’s purchase cycle - from research to purchase.” Not only should you be visible, you should offer an opportunity to connect. For example, click for more information, click-to-call to talk to a customer service respresentative, click to place your order while supplies last — Riddell offers an excellent chart. Not only do you build a relationship, but you also get a lot more information about your customers’ buying process. And don’t neglect to offer that same level of interaction when customers get to your site. 

There’s been a lot of hype about mobile advertising in the last few years. But the reality has left many asking with the old commercial “Where’s the beef?”

In Mobile TV, says Frank Dickson of Multimedia Intelligence. In a post at RCR Wireless, Dickson says that as mobile TV grows, so will the mobile advertising opportunity. 

“Unlike many other forms of mobile advertising, the familiarity of the broadcasting advertising model makes mobile video advertising very easy for advertising buyers to understand,” he writes.

And although the small screen doesn’t hold a candle to the big screen for watching a full episode of Mad Men, it’s the perfect device for interactive, call-to-action advertising like click-to-call. Dickson reports that CPMs go up with call-to-action advertising, partly because viewers are more inclined to see the ad as a service, similar to those “you may also like…” recommendations on e-commerce sites. 

Yesterday Ifbyphone CEO Irv Shapiro participated in a discussion with Truphone’s James Body and Martin Rosinski of Palringo on Alex Saunder’s Squawkbox about the iPhone Development Platform. The discussion was centered on the following topics:

How long the companies had been building mobile apps.

Why they made the move to iPhone.

What iPhone brought to the party that other platforms couldn’t.

The experience of developing software for iPhone.

The hidden gotcha’s.

Native vs Web based applications, and when to use each.

Apples (in)famous NDA.

The App Store approval process.

And whether to risk Apple’s wrath and build applications for Jailbroken iPhones.

You can listen to the podcast here.

You can read about our Voice Broadcast App here.

This past weekend the Chicago Sun-Times highlighted Ifbyphone’s suite of telephone applications, including the Ifbyphone Virtual Call Center Solution for small and medium size businesses.

Here is a quick excerpt:

Its software applications let small businesses set up virtual call centers and make “live” contact with potential customers without having to hire technicians and phone operators.

“We’re in the business of providing all of the phone features that a Fortune 500 company would use in a way that’s instant and cost effective,” said Irv Shapiro, CEO of Ifbyphone . . .

Basically, using the Ifbyphone Virtual Call Center Solution you can setup a JetBlue style call center where your agents, sales reps, etc. are located anywhere. You can route calls to them based on location of the caller, schedule of the agent, or the caller’s response to an interactive voice response dialog. Then using our Lead Distributor you can also route calls to different agents based on percentages.

All of these calls are tracked and your company can download real time call detail reports.

To learn more, click on the links below:

Ifbyphone Home

Virtual Call Center

Lead Distributor

Call Tracking