Promote with your hold button
Delivering sales and marketing messages on hold is an idea
that’s been gaining momentum lately among small
businesses. Sure, you want to avoid putting anyone on hold. But
if you must, you might as well try to make the most of it. Why
waste that time with sleepy music, radio stations (which carry
someone else’s ads) or silence. Might as well use the
opportunity to “tell and sell.”
Ads on hold can make a small company sound big, with the right
combination of information, voice and music that can help
transform “dead time” — however brief —
into sell time or customer service time.
In today’s fast-paced, highly competitive markets, music
just doesn’t cut it. It leaves the marketing potential of
your hold button untapped. Do customers on hold just want to be
entertained? Most say no. Cute and funny messages get stale
quickly. Providing informative content benefits both sides.
Not just any on-hold message will do. Professionally written
and produced messages are essential to gain the proper balance
of interesting, helpful information about your company and
phrases that encourage callers to keep holding.
Add professional voice talent and specially licensed music
blended in, and on hold messaging can really work. Callers are
less agitated and more likely to show interest in a product or
service mentioned. And most callers say they’d rather
hear information than music or nothing.
Studies show that the average hold time is about 45 seconds
— a more than adequate opening for your business to pass
along information helpful to building customer relationships. A
strategically written on-hold marketing message can also reduce
hang-ups.
Some businesses use hard-sell messages, while others are
soft-sell or no-sell. A few examples:
HOURS AND LOCATION:
Your message can include business hours and your website
address — the very information some callers may have
wanted.
CROSS-SELLING AND IMPULSE
BUYS: A caller on hold to a hair salon could hear about
a new hair care product just in, or a weekly special.
BRANDING: Tell callers
what your business is all about — things you do they
might not know.
TESTIMONIALS: Let
customers hear what other customers are saying.
Dozens of service providers and vendors populate the on-hold
messaging industry. Their trade association, the On Hold
Messaging Association (OHMA), is a good place to learn what
questions to ask before making your choice.
Prices vary greatly depending on the number of messages you
want and the type of service or equipment you choose. You can
install your own equipment or use the vendor’s. A single
four-minute on-hold music and voiceover production costs about
$300-$400. Be sure to consider how many messages you’ll
need during the year. If you expect to change often, look for
package pricing to lower your cost.
— Daniel Kehrer,
BizBest Media
