Cloud technology like VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) can save small businesses a lot of money. By replacing traditional ways of doing things, and providing features you couldn’t get with a local phone service – VoIP provides various opportunities to cut costs. In this blog post, we’ll give you 5 ways small businesses can use VoIP to increase sales and marketing that are proven to work…
What is VoIP?
VoIP is a way to use a phone via the internet instead of through the traditional phone service provided by a local company. It works over the cloud, meaning that you need no phone installations or cables to be set up.
All that’s needed to make VoIP calls is:
- An internet connection
- A VoIP-enabled phone
- VoIP technology
Benefits of VoIP for small businesses
VoIP is especially beneficial to small businesses because it cuts costs and is scalable. Other benefits:
- It’s the cheapest and simplest phone option because data is transmitted through an infrastructure that’s already in place. No phone lines need installing and no expensive equipment is necessary.
- Easily scaled up and optimized; your business need not be large to start.
- It is flexible. You can use it from any location, which is why it’s popular for remote call centres and office work.
Using VoIP to Increase Sales
As a small business owner, your focus is always on getting the most value for money and finding out methods that work to grow your business. Here are 5 ideas of how to use VoIP to increase sales:
#1: Get a local number for local presence
VoIP allows you to get a local number without having a physical presence in the area. For a small business seeking to build awareness in a specific location, it’s an easy and cheap way to create an appearance of a local presence or make your business appear larger than what it may be.
#2: Never miss a potential sale
Most people who phone a company will not call back after the first time. If their call is not answered, you’ve probably lost the potential sale.
But…you don’t have to be tied to your desk with a ball and chain to make sure you receive calls. With VoIP, you are able to assign a number to a device, or even one number to a few devices so that if one person doesn’t answer, another can.
It is ideal for all stages of the sales funnel, even if the sales team works remotely from various locations.
#3: Send marketing text messages
SMS marketing is one of the most effective marketing mediums for two reasons:
- On average, people check their phones 47 times a day. It is much more likely contacts get and check your text message faster than they would an email message.
- SMS’s are opened more than are emails. On average, only 20% of emails get opened whereas research shows that SMS open rates are as high as 98%. Therefore, SMS’s have a 78% higher chance of being opened than does email.
If you want more people to open your marketing message, send them an SMS, and this can be done through VoIP at a much lower cost than other SMS mechanisms.
#4: Click-to-dial on your website
Marketing and reports that calls have a conversion rate of 30 – 50% compared to clicks which have a 1 – 2% conversion rate. That means that calls are a more effective sales method than trying to get online clicks.
VoIP Click-to-Dial is a feature that allows your website visitors to place a call directly from your website to your company via the user’s mobile device.
Having this feature makes your web visitors more likely to get in touch with your company, leading to higher conversions; in other words, more sales.
#5: Use it for cheaper cold calling
While cold calling may appear to be old fashioned, it’s still one of the most effective marketing methods, provided it’s done differently to how it used to be done.
In other words, cold calling should not involve an obviously rehearsed speech but rather used as a way to find out how your company can provide the right solution to meet the call receiver’s needs.
Cold calling also only works well in certain industries, and for leads procured in certain ways, for example, referrals lead to high conversion rates via cold calling, whereas leads obtained from events have the poorest conversion rate.
Image Credit: Salesforlife
But…if we are to compare apples with apples, then depending on the industry, you can also only expect an average of 2% conversion rate for email marketing which is a lot more expensive than cold calling.
Cold calling is most effective for prospecting when getting in touch with existing clients.
