Take a vanity number Test Drive

Our lookup tool on the top of the page at TollFreeNumbers.com gives you hundreds of alternatives for most searches. The goal isn’t to just pick the best number from the lists of numbers it finds for you. The smarter goal is pick a handful of the most interesting numbers. Doing a few searches probably gives you a thousand options all together, which is probably overkill. It has to be extremely thorough to come up with all of the really creative options, but it’s too many to sort through and focus on. So just try to make a semifinals list.

Take this “Semifinals” list and if it’s more than three or four trim it down a little more from the short list. After you’ve narrowed your creative options down to three or four or less, you’re ready for a TEST DRIVE! You test drive a vanity phone number by pretending its already yours. What’s the first thing you’d do if it was yours? DO IT!

If you were getting it to use in an advertising make a separate mockup of the ad with each of the numbers in it. Make each of them a little different, based on the slant of the number or just different versions of the add you were thinking of. Maybe make a logo of the number, whatever you might do if you had the number. Then take each of those versions with different numbers and show them to people outside your bubble.

It's important to expose the different versions of your ad and different numbers to people outside your box, that don’t think about this every day. You and the people you work with (if any) tend to think about things the same way if you’ve been talking about this a lot or for a long time. You want people outside that circle that don’t have your preconceived ideas about it, and you have to really listen to them as you show them the ads. They weren’t expecting it to look a certain way and they’ll see it more like your prospects do. That’s what you’re looking for.

You’ll get a feel for them as you play with the ads and try to adjust them a little based on the numbers, but the input you get from the informal focus group you get by sharing it with people outside the box helps you get into the heads of your prospects and see it less through your preconceived expectations. It’ll probably be even easier to pick the best one than you thought it would be, and as a bonus your ad will come out better and be mostly done too!

Also don’t think you necessarily have to throw the rest away. Did one of the other numbers give you an idea for a different campaign or even a different product or program? You’re not limited to just one number. If a second one came out almost as good, get that too! You can use it for tracking purposes, or a wholesale program, or some alternative use. You could even keep it in your pocket as a kind of ‘spare tire,’ or backup for the things you can’t foresee at this point. Or just point it to your cell phone directly instead of your main business line and write that by hand on business cards when you hand them out to make people feel special. There’s lots of great uses for a second number if you liked one of the others too.

This process might sound harder than just jumping straight to the one you like best by the seat of your pants but this is the SMART way to pick the right number by seeing it in context and getting outside your box and seeing it from the customers point over view!