Chase Musser: Next up, we’ve got Stuart Sandweiss. He has a question. Hey, Stewart.
Andy Stickel: Hey, Stuart. What’s up?
Chase Musser: Andy, Stuart asks; “In this internet age, is there any advantage to getting a local vanity number?”
Andy Stickel: Maybe. It’s good if you’re going to be running TV ads and stuff like that. The reason that you have a local vanity number, truly, is so that somebody remembers your phone number. 1-800-ILOVEBRANDNEWCARPETS is better than 1-800-2784196. If you’re running TV commercials, if you’re doing billboards, if you’re doing something like that, then a vanity number is probably necessary.
However, I would also say that if you’re running billboards or TV commercials, you should probably have a different phone number on each one so you can actually figure out where the phone calls are coming from. Because if you can’t track it, then you can’t measure it. If you can’t measure it, then you don’t know anything about it, and that’s one of the biggest problems with TV and billboards and radio and all that type of stuff. So it’s give or take. Are they going to remember the phone number and call you? Or are you not going to be able to figure out where the phone calls are coming from? That’s why I like Facebook. Because they don’t necessarily have to remember the phone number.
There’s a lot of different options. Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn. Social media. And then email also. Basically, you can have different phone numbers for different things. If you actually do a good remarketing campaign and a good remarketing strategy, then if they forgot your phone number, then it’s okay because they’re going to see you again in five minutes. I mean, that’s the whole thing. I don’t even put my phone number out there. Most people probably don’t even know my website address because I’ve got so many different ones.
By the way, we just launched andrewstickel.com three hours ago. You guys should check it out and let me know what you think. Chase actually worked pretty hard on that. But that’s the thing. Pretty much anyone that’s on this, if you needed to get in touch with me and you didn’t know my email address, you can pretty much just go onto Facebook or go onto YouTube and wait a couple of minutes and you’re going to see me. That’s the whole thing. If you’re going to use the mediums that I talked about, then maybe. But it’s also a catch-22 because if you have that number, then you’re not going to be able to track it, especially at multiple places. If you’re running one TV ad on one channel or one billboard or something like that, then maybe that would work. But on the internet, it’s probably not as necessary.
