Toll-free numbers allow customers to contact your business without them having to pay for their call.  Studies have shown that consumers are more likely to call a business with a toll-free number than those who only have a long-distance number, and 90% of Americans say that they use toll-free numbers.  By following these five easy steps, you can discover for yourself how a toll-number can help your business grow.

1. Expand your market.  Toll-free numbers allow you to use the same number for receiving local toll and state-to-state calls.  This gives you the opportunity to market your business nationwide.  Even if you don’t provide service in certain areas, toll-free numbers have the flexibility to block calls from those areas.

2. Advertise your number.  Toll-free numbers lend an air of legitimacy and professionalism to your business.  By using a toll-free number, your business may appear larger and more established to the consumer which will make him/her trust you more.

3. Initiate a direct response mechanism for impulse buyers.  By allowing your customers an avenue to immediately react to your company’s efforts calling for their action, this prompts significant increases in phone orders.  It has been found that these buyers generally order more merchandise and higher ticket items nearly every time they call.

4. Qualify your buyers.  Toll-free numbers enable your business to use time more efficiently and effectively.  With a toll-free number, you know that someone who has called your business is already interested in what you have to offer.  You spend less time trying to find interested prospects and let the number find them for you.

5. Analyze your call detail.  Toll-free numbers allow you to track calls and access all of a call’s details such as the number, time, date and duration of every call.  This information cannot be blocked and is an excellent tool for generating leads which can lead to more sales.

New marketing and promotional ideas! Free! Most are related to internet-based businesses, but even those can usually be adopted in some way to other businesses. Here are half a dozen marketing ideas to get you thinking.

A one-hour coupon. Offline businesses that want to increase the traffic to their websites can announce an “internet coupon” good for a free drink (or whatever). The coupon would be up on the site for an hour, sometime on a Friday, say. Visitors will return again and again to try to be there at the right time to get the freebie. If you collect pay-per-click advertising fees, this repeat traffic might be especially profitable.

Free gift article teaser. A free gift is certainly not a new marketing idea, but it hasn’t been done much in internet article “resource boxes.” My click-throughs from articles increased when I started putting in the author’s resource box, “For more information and a free gift, visit…” The gift is usually a short course, or an e-book. If you don’t want to write an e-book, you can find one with free distribution rights.

Word links for sale. Maybe you have heard about the entrepreneur that sold a million pixels on one web page for a dollar each. Advertisers could buy a minimum of 100, and the image would link to their site. I’ve seen many copycats, but I haven’t yet seen anyone selling words. This could be even better for advertisers, because they could buy the words that are relevant to their products. A page full of random words isn’t pretty, but these things get publicity and traffic for their novelty.

Product user contests. If you have a product that’s used in many ways or many places, this is a great promotional gimmick: a contest to see who has used their cell phone, watch, or whatever in the wildest place or the most unusual way. (“I took my walkman to the north pole!”) Customers could post their stories and photos directly to your company web site. They wiould return repeatedly to see new stories, and the results of the competition.

Advertising on cereal boxes. A lot of time is spent staring at cereal boxes. Perhaps you could get a good rate on advertising on them. There have had some advertising, but no boxes covered in ads yet. Brokering ad space on cereal boxes could be a good business to get into.

Pay for article placement. Many of us distribute articles to generate traffic to our web sites, and many also pay to advertise. Since articles are especially good marketing tools, why not pay to have other webmasters put them on their sites? This is done for free now, but not often enough. Maybe offer a small one-time fee, with a minimum time commitment. Explain that leaving the article there forever can generate search engine traffic.

Put ads on private cars, advertising on sidewalks, have a contest to see who can get your product mentioned on and seen on TV – there are endless possibilities for new marketing and promotional ideas.