Photo by Arlington ResearchOriginally Posted On: https://www.clearonhold.com/blog/2020/9/10/3-ways-on-hold-messaging-makes-you-more-money
Companies that provide On Hold Messaging frequently remind businesses how necessary good on hold messaging is for success. Truly effective On Hold Marketing, though, doesn’t treat your on hold messages as a mere necessity. To market, you look for opportunities, and if you think about it, you’ll find that placing callers on hold provides a lot of opportunities.
1. You’re Making People Wait
Every single business in existence has inconvenienced a customer – they don’t have a choice, really. Every customer you have is competing with other customers for your time, energy, and attention, especially when you’re trying to serve more than one at a time.
Your business shouldn’t ask whether you can avoid customer inconvenience – you should be asking how you can turn inconvenience to your advantage. It’s not unusual for a business to employ a model that inconveniences customers; have you ever seen one of those U-Pick fruit farms? They have successfully convinced people to pay them to harvest their crops for them – and their customers happily obliged.
You’re probably not a fruit farm, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make inconvenience work for you. What are those fruit farms actually doing? They took a necessary part of their supply chain – harvesting – and turned it into a marketable reward: they gave people something they didn’t know they wanted.
What do you have that your customers don’t know they want yet? It could be as simple as giving them some entertainment on hold with good while-you-wait jokes. It could be reminding them of a service you offer that customers could benefit from but never ask about. Get creative.
2. You’ve Got a Captive Audience
Well, sort of – after all, you only have part of their attention. “What’s the point, then?” you might say. Consider that you’re guaranteed some of their attention. It’s amazing what kind of difference that makes in sales.
To give you an example, let’s think about cold calling for a minute. In a cold call scenario, the sales person making the call has to give 100% of his or her effort to grab the attention of their intended audience – and that results in about a 1-3 % success rate. Researchers have found, though, that when a cold call comes with a referral – that is, when the salesperson has something that guarantees even a little bit of attention – that success rate jumps to 40 %.
Talk about an increase! Amazing what even a little attention from a potential customer can do when you’re making sales – and make no mistake, what you are doing with your on hold messaging should be selling.
3. Your Caller Already Wants to Talk to You
So get them to listen to what you have to say. This follows from the last two points, actually. Your caller reached out to you because they have a specific need or desire in mind, and you are expected to fulfill that. Placing them on hold makes them wait for that specific need or desire, which forces them to pay attention to you – because they want to talk to your business.
This presents you with a great opportunity to address their need in part – answering questions, for example, or mentioning products they are likely to be looking for. More importantly, this time offers you a chance to cross-sell and upsell products and services.
”Looking to buy a lot of pipe for a construction job? Did you know we deliver? Ask about pricing!”
“Taking your cat to the vet? Do you have a regular check-up schedule? We have a plan that help you pay for that…”
“In a hurry? Be sure to sign up for our text-your-order service today and save yourself time!”
What do they all have in common? All of those messages use something your customer already wants from you and turns it into a sales opportunity – whether it’s a product, a service, or merely the fact that calling was the easiest and most convenient option.
The trick to making all this work, of course, resides in the quality of the ad copy – since you’ve got the marketing savvy, make sure your writing matches it. The best way to do that is to hire a specialist, preferably one who understands writing, marketing, and on hold messaging. Always go for the full package – it saves you time and money, so you spend less and make more.
Article written by:
Clearonhold
119 N Sage St Suite 201
Toccoa, GA 30577
(888) 465-3661
https://www.clearonhold.com/
