Ifbyphone Blog

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.

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. 

Your Web advertising program is only as good as your landing page. That’s the message of this post at the Small Business Wordpress blog.

“If a surfer clicked an ad expecting to find gold plated doorknobs, then you better make sure the landing page has just that. There is nothing worse than a customer who is ready to buy but can’t.”

The key isn’t clever copy or design — quite the opposite. It’s clear copy and simple design that makes things easy for visitors to act on your offer in three clicks or less.  Adding a click-to-call to that landing page can help you keep those clicks to a minimum. The equation is simple: ”The more clicks you have, the less sales you make.”

That’s math for online marketers to live by.

The folks at Brand UK Blog don’t mince words. Here’s what they say about brand advertising in a recent post: ”For a small or medium size business it is a complete waste of money.”

Got that? Now, direct response on the other hand, does just what it says — gives you immediate feedback on how well your campaign is working. 

And how effective is that? Let me tell you from personal experience.

This year alone I’ve spent more money at the women’s clothing store Ann Taylor than I want to acknowledge. With an overflowing closet, I hardly need more clothes.

But last week, when I got an email from my friends at Ann Taylor with the subject line “Save 70% Now,” don’t you think I leaped like a trout to the bait? As a marketing insider, I know exactly how and why I got that email. But it’s also true that I love Ann Taylor clothes and I’m always game for a deal. And that’s what it’s all about — not conning people, but connecting people with what they’re looking for. In my case, it’s a perfectly fitting pair of navy capri pants and an adorable red silk blouse. 

How many ways can you use a click-to-call? UK-based mobile phone dealer Dial-a-Phone has given it some thought in a post with the deceptively dull title Click to Call VoIP And The Consequences For Mobile Phones. In addition to the usual suspect — advertising — author Kathryn looks at online dating and social media applications.

The mobile Web really is different and advertisers are taking note.  Mobinttechno’s recent post, Mobile Advertising Channels and Mobile Sites offers one-stop shopping for what you need to know to ramp up mobile Web advertising campaigns. The post covers design tips and strategies, tools and links, a comprehensive list of “click-to” response actions for mobile Web advertising — click-to-call tops the list — and illustrates ways to use the phone/Web combination for maximum effect:

“Telephone numbers can be linked directly from a website to a call, so ensure that ability has been added and think about expanding the amount of staff information available on the site. If someone’s late for an appointment, an email address isn’t the best use of information, but a direct line number is.”

I seem to be on a retro track these days. I tripped over this Team Rubber post recently about the father of “measured” advertising, Claude C. Hopkins, whose 1923 classic “Scientific Advertising,” broke new ground for the then-infant advertising industry.

“For those who are sometimes tempted to believe that advertising has been thoroughly re-invented by Google, Hopkins is a salutatory read,” says Team Rubber’s writer.

“The severest test of an advertising man is in selling goods by mail,” wrote Hopkins. “But that is a school from which he must graduate before he can hope for success. Their cost and result are immediately apparent. False theories melt away like snowflakes in the sun. The advertising is profitable or it is not, clearly on the face of returns. Figures, which do not lie, tell one at once the merits of an ad.”

To measure results, Hopkins used specially marked coupons to test competing ads. By measuring results, Hopkins continuously improved the effectiveness of his ad campaigns.

In the online universe, click-to-call does exactly what those coupons did for Hopkins. With click-to-call icons linked to specific sites, pages, offers and campaigns, businesses can get a clear picture of what works - and what doesn’t.

You can read more of Hopkins’ book here.

If you watched TV during the 1960s -  or AMC’s hot new show about the 1960s advertising universe, Mad Men - “David Oglivy” is a name to be conjured with.

A YouTube video of the Master at Gavin Heaton’s Servant Of  Chaos blog is a Schweppervescent trip down memory lane.  It’s also a timeless reminder for marketing folks that direct response - not general - advertising is the real gold standard. Why? Because direct response advertisers know “to the dollar” how effective their programs are.

Yet direct response advertising is a stepchild in the advertising hierarchy. But while those edgy image ads are garnering Advertising Age awards, a constricting economy means businesses will increasingly demand results in cool, hard cash. And that means….direct response.

So make it easier on everyone with a click-to-call.