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GITEX 2025: Trends & Conversations Shaping MEA Communications

Gitex trends shaping MEA communications

Another incredible year exhibiting at GITEX has just come to a close in Dubai. As a long-time attendee, it was clear this year’s event marked a significant acceleration in the …Read More »

How to Choose the Best Phone Integration for Zoho CRM

how to choose best phone integration for Zoho CRM

You rely on calls as a salesperson to communicate with potential clients. But without proper tracking, digilent follow-ups and successful outcomes can be tedious. Disorganized call logs might result in …Read More »

Global Call Forwarding Returns to GITEX to Showcase Smarter Global Voice Solutions for Tech Teams

Gitex press release

DELRAY BEACH, FL, Sept 2025 – Global Call Forwarding, a leading global provider of enterprise-grade virtual phone numbers and cloud communication solutions, will return to GITEX Global 2025 to exhibit …Read More »

Why Cloud Telephony is Essential for Scaling Tech Startups

Cloud Telephony for Scaling Tech Startups

Over 150 million startups operate globally, with approximately 50 million new businesses entering the market each year, highlighting the exceptional growth of the global tech startup ecosystem. For tech startups, …Read More »

What to Look for in a Helpdesk Software (Guide)?

What to look for in a Helpdesk Software guide

Imagine a customer reaching out with an issue—and without any manual intervention, your helpdesk software assigns the ticket to the right agent, sends an acknowledgment, and arms your support team …Read More »

6 Ways to Use the GCF Softphone in the HubSpot CRM

How to use the GCF Softphone with our Hubspot Calling Integration

The Global Call Forwarding HubSpot integration gives your sales and support teams the tools they need to communicate effectively — right from within your CRM. With features like click-to-call, automatic …Read More »

9 E-Commerce Marketing Strategies

E-commerce businesses are more accessible than ever before. They’ve spread to a wide variety of platforms and even modified themselves to different devices. If you have an online business of your own, you know it’s a very saturated market. So, figuring out how to build a memorable brand can be difficult. That’s where e-commerce marketing strategies come in. These tactics help online businesses boost and sustain their growth.

The Growing Need for E-Commerce Marketing Strategies

Whether you’re starting up an online business or you’ve been running one for years, it’s vital to invest in e-commerce marketing strategies. These online marketing tactics and trends are constantly evolving to better suit users. If you want to see even more sales come through your business, following these digital marketing techniques is critical.

What is E-Commerce Marketing?

E-commerce marketing is a strategy that helps businesses sell products and services online. These strategies drive up e-commerce sales by promoting brand awareness and directing attention to the products. A good digital business marketing strategy informs and engages the business’ customer base. Some examples of e-commerce marketing include:

  • Blogs and content marketing
  • Banners and pop-ups
  • Digital ads
  • Social media posts

E-commerce marketing is equally as important to business growth as order fulfillment and other aspects of doing business.

Challenges of E-Commerce Marketing

E-commerce is an extremely competitive space for businesses. Since other online businesses use e-commerce marketing strategies to increase their sales, it is hard to stand out. To successfully build brand awareness, businesses need multiple marketing channels and approaches. Although this leads to more staff and time spent, it is required to drive business growth.

Developing a Successful Marketing Strategy for E-Commerce

Before you jump right into creating a growth marketing plan, there are some foundational elements to consider. Defining these fundamental components is vital to creating a successful e-commerce marketing strategy. Here are some key points to keep in mind:

  • Identify your target market – Your target audience influences brand voice, messaging, communication methods, platforms, and more. With a key target audience in mind, you’ll draw the right customers to your company. But if you don’t understand your target market, you’ll end up with a weak campaign that doesn’t drive profitable customer action.
  • Establish goals and objectives – Outline what you want to achieve with your e-commerce marketing strategies. Goals keep your strategy focused on the bigger picture. Objectives break down your goals and strategies into smaller, achievable steps. Clearly identifying goals and objectives will also help you measure success down the line.
  • Analyze your business journey so far – Take a close look at your business’ evolution and current progress. In what areas are you struggling or succeeding? What types of strategies or campaigns worked for you in the past? Your business’ journey will help highlight the areas to focus on in your strategies to increase business growth. Additionally, you can recycle strategies that previously worked, saving your business both time and money.

9 E-Commerce Marketing Strategies for Your Business

After you’ve developed your foundational elements, it’s time to begin planning your e-commerce marketing approach. Here are some e-commerce marketing strategies to help get you started:

  1. Create & Promote Original Content
  2. Optimize Your Website
  3. Communicate & Interact with Your Customers
  4. Create a Personalized Experience
  5. Offer Incentives & Rewards
  6. Enhance Customer Service
  7. Expand to Social Media
  8. Keep Up with Your Competitors
  9. Create a Community & Following

1. Create & Promote Original Content

Original, quality content attracts and retains your target customers and, if successful, leads to profitable consumer action. This e-commerce marketing strategy focuses on the production and circulation of consistent, timely, and valuable materials.

Your content should deliver messages, inform, and, of course, entertain to keep the audience coming back for more. Use your content to support different departments (i.e., marketing, sales, production, etc.) in their goals. Additionally, use web pages, blog posts, and guides to further amplify your business’ products, services, brand, and more. This establishes your company as an industry expert and a trustful source.

So what kind of content should you create? There is so much freedom when it comes to creating your content. For example, here are a few different types of content you could develop:

  • Blog posts
  • Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
  • Newsletters
  • Knowledge bases
  • Videos
  • Podcasts
  • Social media

It may be obvious to state, but different types of content provide different types of value to consumers. But, all should work together to guide users through their customer journey.

Now, let’s discuss promoting content. If you don’t market your content, there’s a chance no one will see it. Marketing is just as important as content writing and creation. The most popular technique for content marketing is search engine optimization (SEO). A strong content marketing method and e-commerce SEO strategy help increase brand visibility and awareness.

Overall, content marketing and the use of a reliable SEO text generator for content creation, can contribute to your brand’s distinctiveness in comparison to online competitors. This approach not only helps in cultivating a loyal audience but also plays a vital role in establishing trust between your brand and consumers.

2. Optimize Your Website

Up to 100 percent of your business is probably done on your website. So, making sure it’s fully optimized will ensure customers navigate your website seamlessly and feel encouraged to make purchases. There are a few different elements that go into creating a fully optimized website. Let’s take a look.

  • Website Design – Your website’s layout and design should be simple and attractive. You want to draw customers in, convince them to stay, and ultimately, make a purchase. Here are some tips for creating a well-designed website:
    • Grab your user’s attention with high-quality photographs, graphics, and color choice.
    • Make sure important information like return policies are clear and easy to find.
    • Present products and services in an unforgettable way.
    • Offer easy access to significant content that will help them in their buying journey.
  • User Experience – User experience (UX) is the most important element to consider when building your website. Good UX occurs when you understand what users want to see and access and help them do that effectively. Make their experience as smooth as possible by creating an easy-to-use website. Avoid complicated site navigation, slow transitions, unnecessary content, or complex designs.
  • Conversion Rates – A responsive site contributes to better UX and website design. It keeps visitors on your website and reduces bounce rate. A responsive website includes the following:
    • Quick loading times
    • Mobile conversion
    • Good page-to-page connectivity
  • Checkout Process – A smooth checkout process can single-handedly boost your e-commerce sales. It doesn’t take much to create a great cart and checkout design. The key is to be as transparent as possible with shipping costs, taxes, and other fees. This ensures the customer doesn’t encounter any surprises that scare them away when purchasing. Additionally, provide multiple payment options such as PayPal and major credit cards.

A fully optimized website aims to remove as many roadblocks as possible in every design element.

This image shows a marketing strategy for an ecommerce brand.

3. Communicate & Interact with Your Customers

Customers expect responsive support. So, when they want to get in touch with your business, you must make it easy for them to contact you. Consider adding a contact page to your website with omnichannel options like email, business phone number, chat, social media, and more. This way, your customers can reach out to you through their preferred method of communication.

Having omnichannel communication methods is also a great strategy for reaching out to your customers. Take a look at these 3:

  1. On-Platform Messaging – Providing a way to communicate on your e-commerce platform removes all roadblocks for you and your customer. This method transforms your online store to literally a one-stop shop for both sales and support. With everything on the same platform, you can access customers’ purchase histories. This means you can quickly update users on order status and return policies, without searching through your archives. For example, Etsy allows buyers and customers to message each other.
  2. Outbound Calling Service — Increase both sales and brand awareness with outbound calling for your online business. Adding outbound calling to your e-commerce marketing strategy gives you the opportunity to welcome new users, send out reminders, collect feedback, and much more. Through this method, you’ll receive valuable insight into your consumers and services. And, you’ll also craft a more personalized experience for customers in the process.
  3. Email – Email gives you the opportunity to follow up on abandoned orders, send promotional coupons, direct users to onboarding info, and more. You can personalize each email to different target audience segments. This method allows you to generate leads, boost traffic to your website, and drive sales.

If you can only use one of these methods, consider your business needs, target audience’s preferences, platform’s capabilities, and overall budget.

4. Craft a Personalized Experience

A personalized experience creates a lasting impression on customers, bringing them back to your business. This e-commerce marketing strategy helps increase consumer loyalty, brand reputation, and revenue. Most of all, it separates you from your competition. One way to do so is by using headless e-commerce platforms that deliver highly personalized shopping experiences to each and every customer. A tailored service encourages consumers to stay with your brand instead of switching to another. That is so important in such a competitive marketplace.

With personalized service, you eliminate irrelevant options for users and direct them to products they need. This establishes a relationship between your business and the customer. You can incorporate personalization into your e-commerce marketing strategy through:

  • Personalized emails
  • Recommended products
  • Targeted ads and pop-ups
  • Websites and pages customized to users’ interests

Targeted strategies like these make the consumer feel understood and boost loyalty towards your business.

5. Offer Incentives & Rewards

Who doesn’t love a good reward? This is a sure-fire way to drive sales up. Incentives motivate consumers to interact with your brand. Incentive marketing for e-commerce grabs a user’s attention with unique offers, discounts, sales, and more. It gives consumers who are on your website an extra push to make a purchase. Here are some incentives to offer:

  • Coupons
  • Promo Codes
  • Loyalty Programs

These incentives and rewards encourage repeat clients and repeat purchases, while promoting consumer retention and loyalty.

6. Enhance Customer Service

Customer support and service are parts of any business, whether it’s online or in person. Support methods are always adapting to the consumer. But, here’s an opportunity to expand your e-commerce marketing strategies past traditional avenues. Delivering high-quality customer service starts with these methods:

  • Omnichannel Communication – Multiple channels of communication such as over-the-phone service or chatbots provide customers with options. This way, they can choose their ideal method of communication.
  • Accessibility and Reachability – Being easily accessible is the minimum requirement for a high-quality service. Customers want to immediately reach you when they need help. Local and toll-free numbers come in handy for global businesses or businesses looking to expand internationally. These numbers provide an easy, free way for callers to get a hold of you. Make sure to advertise your toll-free number to your customers, if they need it.
  • Round the Clock Support – 24/7, real-time support builds reliable and quality customer service. Consumers always know you’re available if they require assistance no matter what. To provide constant support service via phone, consider time-based or follow-the-sun routing models. This way, you are always available to all your consumers around the world.
  • Personalization – (Surprise, surprise) Personalization goes a long way in customer service too! Consumers want to know you’re going to solve their problems according to their individual needs.

Successful, high-quality customer service results in delighting the consumer and establishing loyalty. Happy customers increase brand reputation and can even lead to great publicity through word-of-mouth.

7. Expand to Social Media

Social media works not only as an e-commerce marketing strategy, but also as another opportunity to sell. Social media is a powerful tool for attracting new customers and boosting sales. You can increase your exposure by using social media for marketing purposes. A social media proposal is a great way to show off the products you offer, connect with potential clients and build awareness about what exactly makes up an excellent customer experience.

There are so many options when it comes to social media marketing. Starting with platforms, there’s a variety to choose from, with a different target demographic tied to each. For example, Facebook has a different user base than TikTok. Select the platform that fits your target audience and brand identity.

Additionally, you can pick from paid or organic posts, depending on your business needs. Influencers also bring visibility to your brand and showcase your products to a wide audience.

Social media gives your consumers another opportunity to interact with your brand. Consumer engagement increases through likes, shares, comments, hashtags, and more. It’s easy for users to share information between different platforms, which helps your business reach an even wider audience. Trending hashtags work as an attention-grabbing strategy. You can use these hashtags to measure your campaign’s success.

8. Keep Up with Your Competitors

Always keep an eye on your business rivals. This means looking at their e-commerce marketing strategies. Consider these questions:

  • What type of content are they producing?
  • What services do they offer that you don’t?
  • Are they using any incentives or reward programs?
  • What social and digital platforms are they on?

By reviewing your competitors, you get an outside perspective on what’s working and what can be improved. Then, you can incorporate the successful tactics into your own marketing strategies. A failed campaign gives you the opportunity to learn from their mistakes and make an even better version!

9. Create a Community & Following

Building a community around your brand adds another level of value for your consumers. A community gives your consumers a space to interact with you and each other. Here are some examples:

  • Comment sections
  • Forums like Reddit, Quora
  • Social media groups like Facebook groups or Slack channels

Community building is a great e-commerce marketing strategy as it gives customers a sense of belonging.

Real-World Benefits

Although your business and these e-commerce marketing strategies happen mainly online, they have real-world benefits. Your business will build brand awareness, increase revenue, establish a loyal customer base, and so much more. We’ve discussed many different strategies here but your next steps depend on what you need. So, choose the ones that work best for your business!

Want to learn more about cloud telephony solutions for e-commerce? We can help with that! Call us at +1 (561) 908-6171 or chat with our reps online!

6 Call Metrics to Track in Your Global Marketing Campaigns

A majority of top marketing teams will use attribution modeling and tracking to measure the effectiveness of their various marketing campaigns in 2024, according to Pyxl.

Attribution can help you understand the means by which customers come to know and buy your products and services. There are many different approaches to attribution modeling that modern businesses use today.

What is Call Tracking?

Call tracking is one of the most commonly used forms of attribution modeling that marketers are using in 2024. It is the process of determining how callers found your business.

Call metrics are used to analyze what channels generate the most customer calls so that you can optimize your marketing efforts and improve ROI.

What is Global Call Tracking?

Many businesses today serve a global clientele.

The global economy is huge and it offers businesses a lot of potential to grow and expand. Although the top fifteen countries make up 75% of global GDP, tremendous potential exists for your business throughout the rest of the world.

International call tracking can enable your business to have unique phone numbers for different countries that are being targeted in your global marketing campaigns. Your marketing team can then track the results of various global campaigns through call tracking metrics.

Common Ways to Use Global Call Tracking

  • Compare the performance of multi-country campaigns side-by-side.
  • Assign unique in-country phone numbers to different traffic sources (social media, adwords, email, landing pages, etc).
  • Measure the results of your advertisements across a number of countries.
  • Set up local or international toll free numbers from other countries.
Global call metrics that you must track.
Source: DepositPhotos.com – Lic#50391141 ID#27446420

6 Global Call Metrics You Must Track in 2024

There’s a lot you can measure with call metrics such as where your calls are coming from and what times are most popular. You can even further delve into the content of conversations with our cloud call recording service.

But in order for your marketing team to benefit the most from global call metrics and really dig into the granular data, you’ll want to export your call detail records (CDRs) into a spreadsheet and apply filters.

These next steps and calculation of metrics will require some basic Excel knowledge.

call tracking excel

1. The Number of Calls Per Country

Have you wondered which countries or regions are generating the most phone calls? You can easily determine this through global call tracking.

Once you’ve exported your CDRs, you should then filter by service line. You can type in the country code under column D and choose the right phone number. Refer to this list of international call prefixes.

You can do a sum of the lines to see how many calls came in from each country.

Analysis: You’ll want to look further into those countries that are generating lots of calls so you can understand which marketing efforts are more successful.

2. Call Volume by Time of the Day

It’s helpful to see when most of your calls are coming in. This helps you adjust bidding strategies at various times of the day and ensure enough staff is on hand to support high call volumes throughout the day.

You can see the total number of minutes in column I. Break the column down further by filtering the date and time columns.

Analysis: Long-duration calls are likely a sign of good quality conversations while short-duration calls may indicate low-quality sales calls.

3. Call Source & Campaign Performance

This is what call tracking is all about — on a global scale.

Look at your various campaigns to evaluate which campaigns are generating the highest number of successful calls. For example, you can assign one call tracking number to social media campaigns and another number to paid search.

In the coming months, you’ll be able to enter unique names and tags for each phone number.

Analysis: Allocate more of your budgets towards high-performing campaigns.

4. Call Duration

It’s important to know how long your calls last. As a general rule, sales conversations last longer than x amount of minutes. Through global call metrics, you’ll be able to see which calls have a sufficient duration. And if you notice a dip in call duration, you can bring it up in meetings and brainstorm ways to improve caller experience.

Analysis: You don’t want to spend money on channels that do not source high-quality conversations.

5. Caller ID

Is there a certain area code where most of your calls are coming in from? Are these first time callers to your business? You’ll want to measure this through global call tracking. It is important, however, to connect our data with your other tools like your CRM and / or marketing software to really make the most sense of the metrics.

Analysis: Invest more in cities where you have lots of callers.

6. Landing Page Performance

Landing page performance can give you insights into the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. You’ll also want to talk to sales managers as much as possible and ask about lead quality and next steps in your buyers’ journeys so that you can create quality landing pages that convert.

Analysis: Invest more in landing pages that are performing well. For the low-performing landing pages, try to see how they can be improved.

How to Calculate Global Marketing ROI

Once you have all the data and it’s synced with your other business tools, how are you going to present your findings to upper management? That’s an important question that many marketers face.

Upper management is often concerned with revenue and profitability, though some marketing teams use other metrics to measure success. At a basic level, you’ll want to keep close track of costs and conversions in your calculation of ROI.

ROI = (final value of investment – initial value of investment) / cost of investment x 100%

Conversions can be new customer acquisition, qualified leads, etc. But you’ll want to clarify this definition internally and then measure conversions.

In order to calculate overall costs, download invoices into excel and you’ll see costs by country. You can add this up or simply view costs by country.

How to Sync Global Call Metrics with Your Business Tools

At some point, you’ll probably want to sync your call tracking data with your other systems and tools. This will help you recognize more patterns in the data and make better use of metrics. You can do this through our API.

Why You Need Global Call Tracking

Want to get more insights into where your customers are and what leads them to connect with your business?

You can’t improve what you don’t measure. Global call tracking can help you measure the effectiveness of your international marketing campaigns. This will help you increase profitability and slash costs.

Talk to our sales team to learn more or get a free demo today to see how we can help.

What is Customer Journey Mapping? (2025)

(Updated on Dec. 2024)

As a society, we have always been fascinated with storytelling. We like to know where we started, who we were, and how far we have come. The essence of such storytelling and journey mapping is simple — we want to know how we got where we are. This process of mapping out a story or journey spills into the business world. Businesses pay close attention to their customers’ journeys and how they arrive at a company. This is called customer journey mapping.

Customer Journey Mapping: How Does it Work?

Companies develop entire marketing plans around the movements of their customers. Of course, they have to map these movements to ensure their strategy is working. That’s where customer journey mapping can help.

So, what is customer journey mapping? Mapping customer journeys helps businesses tell the story of how their customers travel across their brands. For example, customers may interact with a specific business through their exhibitions, marketplaces, webinars, website, social media, email, chat, etc. These are the different touchpoints that customers may pass through which a customer connects with your brand. Customer journey mapping is the process of creating a visual strategy of how your customer travels through your business from their perspective. By doing this exercise, you can identify common pain points and strategize ways to improve customer experience.

Tracking your customer’s journey can be a complicated yet powerful process. Such tracking can help map out precisely where your customers are, where your business is excelling, and where improvements are possible.

Let’s take a more in-depth look at what customer journey mapping is and how and why you should use it.

Why You Should Pay Attention to Customer Journeys

The vast majority of organizations don’t struggle to gather data. What they struggle with is understanding the frustrations and personal experiences of their customers. Understanding common customer pain points and their behaviors and expectations is crucial to the success of any business.

Tailoring to Meet Customer Expectations

Small to medium-sized businesses should map out customer journeys to identify ways to improve their service and product. For example, customers currently expect to connect with a company not only by phone calls but through email, live chat, social media, and even text messaging. As such, if your business does not offer omnichannel support, you may be missing out on a huge demographic. Another example is including customization and personalization. Stock emails and scripted messages won’t have the same effect as personalized messages and recommendations based on customer interaction.

Discovering a New Customer Base

Without closely watching customer journeys, you might miss out on key demographics and psychographics. When paying attention to the buyer journey and how certain customers arrive at your business and navigate through to purchase, you might discover a new customer base. Your marketing team can then devise strategies to appeal to this target audience and grow your customer base.

Providing Proactive Customer Service

Lastly, since your team’s priority is to identify and improve customer pain points, your business can take a more proactive approach to solve ongoing and new customer issues. You can also identify key touchpoints where customers welcome additional support and interaction. The bottom line is that you can use customer journey mapping to create customer-centric strategies.

customer journey mapping

How to Map Your Customer’s Journey

Customer journey mapping creates a framework that enables organizations to provide a better customer experience. To do this, you must document the customer experience from start to finish and identify potential improvements.

For example, if you own a coffee shop, you’d want to know what brought the customer in (i.e., Stage 1). Did they see an ad on Facebook? Did a friend tell them about your shop? Next, you’d want to know who helped them, who they had contact with, and how that exchange went. Was it pleasant? Then, you’ll want to know what motivated them to make a purchase. Was it the informative content on your website or in your email campaigns? Also, you’ll want to know what they thought of your product (the coffee) and whether or not they’d come back.

Using real-time information supplied by customer feedback is a step above surface-level data. Information and insights gained in these areas and across these touchpoints can help you visualize customer experience better.

Customer journey mapping does this all with the help of visual aids. Most maps are presented as infographics for easier digestion. Dimensions such as touchpoints, goals, and customer feedback are priceless to create an accurate customer journey map.

Tips for Creating Customer Journey Maps

Customer journey mapping should focus on building valuable insights and putting them in quantifiable maps. Identify your key touchpoints and factors that affect buyer journeys for your whole business or specific products.

Some questions to consider when mapping out the buyer journey include:

  • What is the customer thinking or feeling? Is something guiding their motivation or action?
  • What is the action?
  • What is their touchpoint with the business? (Examples: social media, paid ads, local directories, email, etc.)
  • Are there any changes that can be made to this step to improve customer experience?
  • What steps are needed to make this change?

Here are a few tips to help you do that:

1: Incorporate customer satisfaction measures.

2: Decide on the behavioral stages and develop data based on each stage.

3: Customize the journey map to match your audience (stakeholders might want different information than marketing departments, etc.)

4: Isolate your customers’ goals.

5: Identify key touchpoints (where do customers interact directly with your company?)

6: Get specific. Interact with your customers, survey them, and find out precisely when and how they get in touch with your business.

How to Use Customer Journey to Improve Marketing

The goal for any organization using customer journey mapping is to isolate the customer’s goals and perspectives and then use these insights to create a strategic and successful plan. An excellent customer journey map captures your customer’s experience concerning their needs and expectations. It helps you figure out how you stack up and exposes gaping holes in your strategy.

Essentially, they provide profound insight and create actionable steps for your organization. They show positive and negative interactions and help you replace those negative customer experiences with more positive and helpful ones.

By mapping out customer journeys and experiences, you can attempt to provide convenient and personalized service at every crucial touchpoint. Furthermore, you can create more accurate buyer personas for each step of your sales funnel. In short, mapping out customer journeys can support your inbound marketing efforts.

Related: Toll-Free Numbers for Marketing Campaigns

Using Customer Journey Mapping to Move Forward

Understanding how your customers interact with your products, service, or business helps your team take actionable steps towards an enhanced customer experience. It gives you the knowledge needed to expand and improve upon what you already offer. Clearly defining your audience, gaining greater insight into the customer lifecycle, and combining this knowledge with your team leads to tremendous business success. Use customer journey maps to ensure customers remain with your brand long-term while building strong client relationships.

How To Improve Lead Generation Services with Virtual Numbers

Growing your business is directly linked to the strength of your lead generation services. With no new leads, your company must rely on a well-established customer base. This is something that’s unlikely to be sustainable in today’s fast-paced economy. Whether you outsource your lead generation services to a company or use an in-house sales team, there is a solution: virtual phone numbers. 

Virtual phone numbers can improve the quality and quantity of your leads in a number of ways. This is thanks to the versatility of cloud-based communication technology available through Global Call Forwarding. In this article, we’ll cover a number of methods to improve lead generation services, including

  • Tracking Where Your Leads Are Coming From
  • Better ROI for Marketing Campaigns
  • Testing New Markets
  • Dedicated Phone Lines for Customer Types

Tracking Where Your Leads Are Coming From

Knowing where your leads are coming from is important to determine where your marketing efforts should be focused. After all, if your lead generation is only providing low-volume or poor-quality leads, what’s the point? Conversely, if your lead conversion rates are better through certain methods, delegating more effort can grow your business. 

Virtual phone numbers offer the option of tracking the metrics of inbound call data. This can be done through the virtual phone number provider’s interface/ dashboard. Similarly, using a virtual phone number dedicated to only one type of marketing campaign (ex. social media) can help you pinpoint accurate data.

Better ROI for Marketing Campaigns

The more you market, the greater the reach for your brand. To get a better ROI, 

Global Call Forwarding offers affordable payment plans and services geared towards businesses of all sizes. However, considering there are no unlimited marketing budgets, virtual phone numbers can be a creative marketing tool for your business with low overhead costs. Furthermore, virtual numbers are simple to implement, can be used on nearly any device, and require minimal training. 

In essence, virtual numbers enable your business to gain a wider audience at a lower cost than other advertising methods. 

Testing New Markets

Like it or not, but improving lead generating services requires risk through trial and error. After all, if you knew exactly which methods worked to improve your sales, you can make better organizational decisions. Virtual phone numbers cost little to begin using. Also, they can be ready to use within 24 hours or less. For these reasons, your company can try out new target markets instantly. And if you discover potential in a market, you can scale your efforts. And vice versa, for poor-performing markets, your company gains the knowledge of where its brand presence is weak.  

Lead generation with virtual phone numbers.
Source: Stockphoto.com – O#100080152424 ID#100186088462

Dedicated Phone Lines for Customer Types

Virtual phone numbers are available in a wide variety of types. These include geographic numbers, toll free numbers, ITFS numbers, DID numbers, UIFNs, vanity numbers, and more. Similarly, Global Call Forwarding offers a wide variety of add-ons that enhance how inbound and outbound calls are processed. Let’s look at a couple examples, as each organization is different and can use its creativity to improve lead generation:

  • If you want to dedicate a direct line for your international and domestic sales teams, this is possible with virtual phone numbers.  
  • For directories of your business’ departments and individual staff members, using a PBX is a smart solution. Short for Private Branch Exchange, a PBX can enable customers to self-select through a directory system by phone. This helps customers find the person or info they need to guide themselves down your sales funnel. 
  • Depending on whether a caller is a previous customer or a new one can help improve your sales. Based on the type of callers, you can offer private customer-only lines for troubleshooting and account advice. For new customers, you can assign a virtual number dedicated to nurturing new contacts. To boost the quality of your leads, you can offer a private line of virtual phone numbers for more dedicated service (i.e. B2B, large enterprise contracts). 

Creative Uses for Virtual Phone Numbers in Marketing

The truth is that creative uses for virtual phone numbers in marketing depend on appealing directly to customers, especially those who are located abroad. There’s nothing more off-putting than being unreachable by listing an out-of-country phone number, where callers will expect long distance fees, service blockages, and the hassle of dialing outside of the country just to reach your business.

There are a number of creative uses for virtual numbers in marketing, including:

  • Vanity Phone Numbers
  • International Appeal
  • Business Cards
  • Social Media

Virtual Numbers in Marketing: Vanity Phone Numbers

Vanity phone numbers are virtual phone numbers that contain a visually appealing set of digits that can be spun into your business’ advertising campaigns. By aligning your brand with a particular word or memorable sequence of digits, customers are more likely to remember what products and services you offer, as well as reinforce your brand’s message each time they are exposed to the vanity phone number.

One place that you’re likely to encounter vanity phone numbers is billboards. Large volumes of drivers can see your creative virtual phone numbers in marketing that other businesses might not be bold enough to attempt. By coupling billboard advertising with other forms of marketing, your brand will appear to be everywhere – which is the goal of every advertising campaign.

Creative Virtual Numbers for Marketing: International Appeal

If you had the choice of comparing two businesses side-by-side with all attributes being similar except for the fact that one had numerous phone numbers geared towards processing international customers, which business would you say has more of an international appeal?

virtual phonhe numbers in marketing
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Virtual Numbers from Global Call Forwarding

Luckily, Global Call Forwarding offers virtual phone numbers in more than 140+ countries worldwide, with countless cities and regions at your disposal. These virtual phone numbers circumvent typical barriers to open communication globally, which means that your advertising efforts aren’t stymied by challenges of traditional telecommunications.

Furthermore, Global Call Forwarding enables you to choose between a variety of phone number types, including toll-free numbers that work internationally. These include ITFS numbers and UIFNs, both of which project a professional image. Normally, when a domestic toll free number is offered, international callers are out of luck and must pay fees just for the privilege of calling your business. However, with Global Call Forwarding’s vast array of ITFS numbers and UIFNs, your business can fully optimize its marketing efforts worldwide.

Creative Uses for Virtual Phone Numbers in Marketing: Business Cards

When you’re networking with potential clients in-person, every detail must be on-point and allude to the fact that working with your organization is the right choice for mutual success. That’s why one of the most important creative uses for virtual phone numbers in marketing is including them on your business cards. From staff members to your sales team, virtual phone numbers listed on business cards show that your organization is able to tailor its in-person marketing efforts for clients of any country and calling preference.

Because of the cost-effectiveness of virtual phone numbers, it is possible to subscribe to multiple phone numbers that appeal directly to your wide customer base and post them on your business cards as needed.

Creative Uses for Virtual Phone Numbers in Marketing: Social Media

Global Call Forwarding understands how pivotal a social media presence is in your marketing efforts. In addition to obviously listing your phone numbers, Global Call Forwarding offers a popular add-on that bridges the gap between customers scrolling through your posts on their smartphones and actually contacting your business.

The solution? A popular add-on called “CallMe Click.” CallMe Click enables users a one-click option to initialize a phone call on their device, whether that’s a smartphone or any other Internet-enabled audio-equipped device. By placing this add-on via links on your websites and social media presence, your potential customers can immediately seize the opportunity of your efforts and speak to your company instantly. This immediacy can help take advantage of the reach of your social media content and build a customer base quickly.

As you can see, these creative uses for virtual phone numbers in marketing can help aid your business when it wants to reach a wider audience. Of course, with some imaginative thinking in your advertising efforts, you can adapt the power of virtual phone numbers in a myriad of other ways that can expand the appeal of your business.

Toll Free Numbers for Social Media Marketing

If you are crafting a new marketing campaign, you may be trying to come up with new ways to affordably boost the success of your campaign and also involve social media tools. If this is indeed the case, you should consider using toll free numbers for social media marketing as a key tool in boosting the success of your campaign.

A customized toll free number fits well into a marketing campaign because it enables you to use the phone number of the company to define the brand. When you think of a vanity toll free number, such as 1-800-FLOWERS, you know specifically what the company offers when that number is dialed. If you dial 1-800-FLOWERS you are able to order flowers for any number of occasions.

Generally speaking, you can use a custom toll free number to do a number of things, including sharing the name of the business, communicating a benefit the business provides, and tracking marketing efforts for a specific campaign. Either way, whether you use toll free numbers for social media marketing or toll free numbers to advance your business in any other way, the toll free number should reinforce the brand’s image and clearly indicate how the company differs from its competitors.

Research has repeatedly pointed to the benefits of incorporating toll free numbers for social media marketing or any kind of marketing into a company’s marketing campaign plan. In addition to offering a way for the company to communicate something specific, incorporating toll free vanity numbers in a marketing campaign can provide additional meaningful benefits, including:

Increased Interest and Calls

A greater number of inbound calls and referrals. Because toll free vanity numbers are expressed with a word or words instead of a string of random numbers, vanity numbers are much easier to remember than a number that is composed of digits exclusively. This means that it is more likely that customers and potential customers will use these types of toll free numbers and also share them with their friends and family. In fact, research indicates that vanity toll free numbers have a rate of recall that is approximately 75 percent higher than the rate of recall for phone numbers that are exclusively numeric. Custom toll free numbers also generate a much higher response rate than regular phone numbers.

A Social Media Credibility Boost

Having toll free numbers for social media marketing or for all of the company’s marketing can improve a business’ credibility and enhance sales efforts. A toll free number shows customers that the business owner and marketing team have taken steps for them to contact the business with more ease and without having to incur any long distance charges for calls. Vanity toll free numbers and regular toll free numbers also make a business seem more established and larger than it actually is, which will help people to have more confidence in the company’s offering of goods and/or services.

Tracking Capabilities

When a company uses toll free numbers for social media marketing or any other marketing efforts, there is ease in tracking key performance indicators. These key performance indicators can help in analyzing the success of an ad campaign overall and allow for a company to adjust their message on an as-needed basis. Having the ability to do this is critical in aiming to generate the best results for a business. Tracking calls linked to a campaign is an affordable and effective way to identify what is working and what is not. The information that is gathered through the tracking of campaign efforts can help a business to improve in every way, whether it is social media marketing, sales campaigns, print ads, or other forms of marketing efforts.

Toll Free Numbers for Social Media
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Superior Customer Service

Depending on whether you use toll free numbers for social media marketing or for other types of advertising, toll free numbers can help a company to offer better customer service by helping the business owner determine why a customer or potential customer is reaching out to the business before anyone even answers the phone. When a company has an idea of why a person is calling, it allows customer service representatives to be better prepared to offer superior customer service.

Global Call Forwarding offers toll free numbers for social media marketing or any other type of marketing that a business would like to include in their marketing efforts. Global Call Forwarding has been offering quality products and superior customer service to each and every client worldwide for over two decades. With a knowledgeable and professional staff, GCF customer service representatives are able to best serve each client to ensure each and every business takes advantage of the most advanced services and features available to support business success.

Types Of Digital Marketing For Your Small Business

Small businesses are known for being creative and finding organic approaches for expanding their company. Most times, those small companies became big once they harnessed the power of digital marketing and shifted their focus to the worldwide web to build a loyal customer base.

The return on the investment of time and money into digital marketing is highly favorable when considering the reach and affordability of digital marketing services in competition for new clients.

In the following article, we’ve listed four digital marketing avenues every small business should explore. You can substantially reduce the time you invest into these methods by teaming up with digital marketing experts.

Not only are these types of digital marketing for your small business affordable, they are also scalable, which means everyone should be taking advantage of them!

An Optimized Website

A website is the most critical aspect of digital marketing. Your website is how you share the most details about your business and products. A fully integrated website also serves as the source of your blog posts and should link to your email marketing campaigns.

But your website needs to act as more than an information source. Many times, small businesses make the mistake of creating a website without optimizing it for consumers. The internet offers an endless source of information. It would be difficult (and almost impossible) to bring a high amount of traffic to your website if you relied solely on word of mouth.

Another valuable type of digital marketing for your small business is search engine optimization (SEO). Integrating multimedia content, such as podcasts produced by a B2B podcast company, can improve user engagement and contribute to better SEO rankings. Search engine optimization is a strategy that ranks your company higher in search engine results based on your industry and specific keywords. When your company shows up on the first page of Google, you’re likely to get more leads and close more sales. Reaching out to industry and expert bloggers is another effective strategy to improve your website’s reach and build a network. By connecting with influential bloggers, you can drive more traffic to your site and enhance your online presence. Just be sure to avoid common blogger outreach mistakes.

Optimize your website for viewing based on current technology and consumer trends. Tablets, cell phones, and personal computers are the primary sources for web browsing. Personal computers are still a mainstay, but 63% of people are now visiting websites from their cellular devices.

This means your website must be fully functional for mobile browsing because you could lose business if your website is only compatible with laptops and desktop computers.

digital marketing
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Social Media

Social media is one of the most popular types of digital marketing for your small business, and research continues to prove that it is much more than a fad. Today, business marketers working to stand out in the digital space must take social media seriously and acknowledge the fact that most consumers are now online and using social media to research brands. Customers are also sharing personal experiences with businesses on social platforms.

With a strong social media presence, you’re more likely to inspire new customers to reach out to you. Being active on social media also allows you to research your company name and see how consumers feel about your products and services. Build loyalty by directly sending offers and thank you’s to users mentioning your business. Likewise, you can generate more positive feedback by publicly responding to customers with problems or questions. This shows that you are willing and ready to help.

Pay-Per-Call Marketing

Pay-per-call marketing is similar to pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. The only difference is as a business you pay for every call made, instead of every click. Pay-per-call ads have call buttons giving viewers the option to call the business. The goal of this marketing strategy is to drive phone calls directly from digital campaigns. In other words, to quickly connect with interested customers on the phone. You can even use a toll-free number for this marketing campaign to make it even easier (and free) for callers to contact your business.

Success in pay-per-call marketing requires a clear understanding of target audiences, strategic ad placement, and crafting compelling calls to action that prompt immediate phone responses. Furthermore, it is vital to track and analyze call data to optimize campaigns continuously. Pair this with strategic outbound calling to connect and follow up with prospects and customers, providing responsive care and support.

Free Webinars and Podcasts

Ebooks and guides are well-known for attracting quality leads, but webinars continue to move to the forefront. Webinars are valuable types of digital marketing for your small business because they allow viewers to learn valuable information quickly at no cost. Furthermore, webinars help you stand apart as a thought leader in your field. Furthermore, a webinar can place you above competitors because potential customers will appreciate that you were willing to provide them with value at no cost.

You don’t have to share valuable information for a fee online. Just inviting newcomers to learn something new can inspire them to learn more about your business. Provide real value and you’re far more likely to gain email subscribers who look forward to updates from your company. Keep them engaged after the webinar with email newsletters, blog posts, and insider deals.

Email Marketing

Email marketing has picked up where traditional mail brochures left off and offers much more convenience. Email marketing is among the most effective types of digital marketing for small businesses. The average return on investment into email marketing is 122% and more than 20% of people check their emails more than five times each day. Add your company email to marketing business cards and share at networking events, conferences, and exhibitions.

Combine email marketing with a webinar or email course series to keep readers intrigued and looking forward to the next email. Let emails serve as an outlet for readers to get to know you. Further engage them with personal stories and business-related lessons. These tactics will increase the likelihood of purchases when new products are announced.

Not sure if you‘re ready to invest in digital marketing? We’ve got a solution: there are usually interns who are looking to learn by working for recommendations or as a trial for a long-term position. Another option would be taking the time to learn the fundamentals of digital marketing and try it without assistance.

Call To Action As An Art Form

Whether your main advertising platform is the internet, television, or printed publications, a call to action (CTA) is necessary to inspire audiences beyond viewing your materials to becoming active participants who are willing to make a connection with your brand.

When you think of a call to action in its simplest form, you likely think of terms like:

  • “Call today”
  • “Click this link”
  • “Buy now”

These calls to action are well-known, but a CTA has to be much more to be impactful. Business owners can’t rely on CTA’s with a cut and dry approach because the internet now connects competing businesses on a global scale. Your business is unique and every element of your messaging must stand apart from your competitors.

We should view the call to action as an art form instead of treating a call to action as a command or instruction. To help you along the way, we’ve compiled some of the most valuable tips to note as you strive to approach your call to action as an art form.

Humanize The Language

Advertisements are everywhere, and many are ignored. The ads with call to actions that go viral and gain organic traction share common traits. The content is interesting and doesn’t rely on robotic language.

Treating your call to action as an art form means it should resonate with viewers. Strike an emotional chord by adding the human element of personality through your wording because consumers are more likely to take action when they can relate to a brand.

For example, instead of saying “BUY NOW,” change the wording to “GIVE US A CALL. WE’RE ALWAYS HERE TO HELP.” No one wants to feel as if your primary purpose is to profit by selling them a product. Buyers want to know you have something valuable to offer. The way you use your words relays that message.

Paint A Picture With Your Content

Buyers must believe your business is worth the investment before they take action to support your company. The CTA should be part of a body of content that translates beautifully through words, imagery, or video. If your call to action is an art form created for your target customers, it can be effective on any advertising platform.

Are you looking to sell a new product? Don’t just say how valuable your product is, show it. Review written content and scripts to find the strongest adjectives and replace them with full descriptions. When using television or coverage radio, let personality, design elements, and quality lead the way.

call to action
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Embrace Transparency

Some of the most iconic artists lived a life of mystery and intrigue. But today’s artists and business owners must display their artistry through their social prowess. The art of business requires high-quality services and transparent business owners. One of the best ways for a business owner to show transparency is by being accessible.

Potential customers shouldn’t have to work to find you or connect with you. Strategically using your call to action as an art form should always include convenient means of communication, such as your phone number and email address.

Will you be prepared to quickly respond when someone takes action and contacts your business? Always make sure your hours of operation are clear for callers and respond to written inquiries and voicemails within 24 hours. If you’re working with a team, ensure that they are well-trained and have the necessary tools to assist customers.

Viewing your call to action as an art form is the first step to connect with customers. Exceptional customer service is what will lead to sales and business expansion. This is so many small and large businesses use virtual phone numbers.

Business owners can forward virtual phone numbers to mobile phones and create extensions for team members, allowing everyone to work remotely and in an organized fashion. The response rate is even faster through additional options such as transcribed voice to email service.

When using your call to action as an art form, know that everyone who contacts won’t be in your local calling area. Consider a phone number that is not specific to one area code. Using a local phone number often results in fees and confuses long-distance customers, deterring new callers from contacting you.

Have A Consistent Style

When famous artists releases new work, their fans can spot it before the name of the artist is announced. Such artists have a strong presence through their recognizable style. Your call to action must also have a style of its own, but that style must be in line with your branding.

Consistent branding will keep your business relevant – even when your brand is not the star of the show. Being recognizable will naturally attract new clientele and maintain the interest of your loyal customer base when partnering with another company, attending events, or working with sponsors.

How to Tweet-up Your Business

What do you mean you don’t have time to Tweet? If you are a savvy business owner, you should already have a Twitter account and know how to use it for marketing and networking your company. Here are just a few reasons why you need to Tweet-up your business:

  • Connect with your customers: Sending a potential customer a tweet after they have begun to follow your business is a very good way to increase customer appreciation and trust. You will also benefit from the fact that you can keep an eye on what your customers are tweeting about your business. This feedback is invaluable.
  • Access to free marketing: It takes but a few minutes for you to create a 140-character pitch for your company. At the click of a button, your message can instantly reach every single one of your followers who is online. And best of all, it’s basically free.
  • Keep customers updated: Of course, you know how important it is to keep your customers updated. Twitter is one of the best platforms to use for this because its messages are short and clear. So, it’s easy to use to keep your customers posted about your latest promotions, sales, and special offers your business is having.
  • Market your heart out: If you don’t think that Twitter is a great marketing tool you are very mistaken. In case you didn’t know, all tweets are indexed by Google, this means that they are a useful means of search engine optimization.
  • Build a community: Twitter is not only good for marketing and customer retention, but you can also use it to build a strong community. Use Twitter chats to connect with customers while also increasing your chances of getting favorites and retweets. These will boost your company’s visibility and give you the opportunity to get more customers.
  • Tweet-up your sales: Marketing surveys show that up to 60 percent of a brand’s followers are more likely to recommend products or make purchases after following a brand on Twitter. Twitter followers are also more likely to sign up for services or buy from the brands they are following.

If you haven’t started tweeting about your business yet, or you want to make sure you’re getting the most from Twitter, here are some tips to help you out.

customers shopping
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Check Out the Competition

Search Twitter for companies similar to yours and start to follow them. Check out how often they tweet, what they tweet about, and what other content they post links to. This will give you a reference frame from which to choose how to manage your own account, and it will also help you get an edge on your competitors by staying one step ahead of their game.

Setting up your account

Make sure you use a good profile picture of yourself or your company logo. Many people will not follow users without one. Fill in your biography details as most new followers check out bios. If you don’t take the time to make it interesting, why should anyone follow you?

Use Twitter Lists

Twitter Lists are a neat built-in tool that enables you to organize your followers and their tweets into specific groups. You can also sort your lists into public or private groups that only you can view. Lists allow you to use Twitter to deliver information globally to everyone and locally to your target groups. You can also automate tweets to match specific time zones.

What to Tweet About

Post crisp and concise sound bites that are 100 words or less, so that followers can read them quickly and remember them. Use hashtags (#). A hashtag which directly precedes a word or phrase has a number of beneficial uses. Place one before the name of your company or brand (#mybusiness) to improve the chances of other tweeters finding it via a targeted search. You can also ask users to include them in their tweets as part of a marketing campaign.

Monitoring Your Competitors

You can use Twitter search to check up on your competitors and see what people are saying about them. But bear in mind, if you’re on Twitter, your competitors are probably keeping an eye on you and your followers too.

Making the Most of Marketing

Twitter is also a great way to get feedback about your business. Don’t be afraid to ask questions and always answer promptly when you are asked for information. As well as talking about your products and services, promote those of others, as this can help get retweets from other people to expand your network. Post links to interesting information and news relating to your business. Don’t forget, Twitter helps you maintain a global human connection; share some information about yourself to develop strong connections.

Don’t sweat too much about your number of followers. If you keep your posts regular, informative and honest, you should soon develop a steady following that benefits your business and marketing efforts all around.