Vanity 800 Numbers in Emerging Industries: Effective Branding Strategies for Small Manufacturers

For emerging industries, vanity numbers are an indispensable branding tool, allowing small manufacturers to engage in successful business-to-consumer marketing for a relatively low cost.

How Vanity 800 Numbers Work

Vanity numbers are a business marketing tool, popular for their consumer-captivating qualities and easy memorability. Any business, no matter how big or small, can purchase and use a vanity number. The process is a simple matter of selecting the right vanity number for your company, ensuring its availability, and purchasing it at the right price.

What Makes Vanity 800 Numbers Effective?

According to the Mountain Marketing Group, 90% of Americans use toll-free numbers. Using a vanity number ensures that they use your toll free number. A good vanity number sticks in the mind of the consumer, allowing your company to beat the phone-book competition.

Branding via Vanity 800 Numbers

For emerging industries, vanity numbers offer a quick and easy branding opportunity. Consider the growing international popularity of green products, for example. Does your company use green energy? Market natural products? Could it? Choosing a vanity number is your opportunity to select the best, most marketable aspect of your company, and ensure that consumers associate it with your business.

An important part of vanity number branding is analyzing the competition and determining what your business can do to give it that essential edge. This branding process can be divided into three steps:

1. Identify consumer demand within your market: Let's say you own a small business selling beauty products. You're part of a highly competitive market, and your vanity number will doubtless be competing against a plethora of other “beauty” vanity numbers-- 1-800BEAUTY, 1-800STELLARBEAUTY, 1-800BEAUTYGOODS. So what within the beauty market can increase your sales demand? Well, consider the changing beauty market. Beauty products have been coming under fire lately for their synthetic ingredients, their cancer-causing preservatives, their lack of natural sustainability. Therefore, to give yourself an edge over the local competition, it follows that branding your products as “green,” “free of preservatives,” “safe for pregnant women” might be to your advantage in the current market. Even if you only sell a handful of natural products, include it in your branding. The 2014 consumer is 72% more likely to call 1-800NATURALBEAUTY than 1-800BEAUTYGOODS.
2. Spread your brand: Once you've chosen a vanity number that gives you an edge over the competition, it's essential that you market it to the maximum. If no one knows your vanity number, they're not likely to call it. Try billboards, mobile advertising, preview advertising. And, most importantly, make a jingle. Children sing the alphabet for a reason; music is infinitely more memorable than speech, so if you make a catchy jingle, your vanity number is certain to grab the attention of consumers.
3. If there isn't already a demand for your product, create a demand: Yes, you can do this via your vanity number. If natural beauty has yet to gain popularity in the community you're marketing to, it's important to demonstrate to your consumers why they need your product. Likely, they're not yet informed of the cancer-causing preservatives included in so many make-up products today. In this case, a number such as 1-800SAFEBEAUTY will actually create a demand for your product. Consumers will hear your vanity number and question why their beauty products aren't safe, prompting research on the topic and creating a demand for products that are safe.

Tips for Choosing your Vanity Number

• 800 is the most commonly known and remembered toll free-prefix, so start your number with the traditional 1-800.
• To increase memorability, avoid using a numeric, or partially numeric vanity number.
• Keep your consumers from dialing the wrong number by avoiding unpredictable spellings.
• Make your number catchy and creative.
• Advertise your vanity number prolifically, ensuring that consumers everywhere associate your company with your vanity number.