Learn all about what a vanity number is, why and how to get a vanity number and all things vanity phone numbers.
Vanity numbers are great for branding your businesses by providing easy-to-remember phone numbers for your customers.
What exactly is a vanity number, and how is it useful for your business?
Want more information to determine if a vanity number is a right solution? Look no further than this vanity phone number guide.
This guide will show you how a vanity number will help your business, and how to choose the perfect vanity number.
What is a vanity phone number?
A vanity phone number is an easy-to-remember phone number that either spells a word or phrase or has an easy repeating number frequency.
Types of Vanity Phone Numbers
In short, a vanity phone number is a custom phone number that you can choose for your business with an easy-to-remember numeric sequence.
What is a toll-free number?
A toll-free phone number is a free number to call from any area code. The business incurs any charges instead of the caller. Toll-free numbers can work in specific areas only such as local numbers, or work from a number dialed anywhere nationwide.
Local vanity numbers
Some businesses may want a local vanity number for their business rather than toll-free. Though some sources do not offer local vanity numbers, local call tracking numbers are still available. If there is a specific local number that you want for your business, it is possible that they have that number available.
Vanity numbers are easier to remember.
Why get a vanity phone number?
Vanity phone numbers are a great option for businesses looking to brand their business and have an easy-to-remember phone number for specific ads such as TV, billboards, radio ads, and more.
Vanity numbers are not only easy to remember, but they also stand out amongst other regular numeric numbers and are great for branding to match your number to your business or website domain.
Consumers won’t forget you when your business branding matches across all mediums.
Having a memorable, recognizable phone number helps your brand seem more established and can generate more leads.
Where to advertise with vanity numbers
Some of the most popular ads to use a vanity phone number in include radio ads, podcasts, TV ads, billboards, and business trucks. Anywhere that a consumer would see a phone number in passing, or only hear it is a great use case for a vanity phone number. An easy-to-remember number will stay in someone’s mind much easier than a random sequence of numbers in these instances when someone cannot write a number down.
The allure of vanity numbersVanity numbers does not need to be used only in these types of ads. Depending on your goals, you may want to place it in other ads, too. Having a vanity number on other types of ads or in places such as your website also helps for branding purposes, so that when viewers see or hear that number anywhere, they can emotionally connect it to your business.
Vanity number features
There are additional features that come along with your number.
Most vanity numbers come equipped with call tracking, which has several features to help prove not only the performance of your ad but the true ROI of your custom phone number. Below are some of the features that you will gain with a vanity number.
Caller Information
Some vanity numbers can achieve caller demographics by using the most recent census data by zip code to help you target specific markets and see who is calling into your vanity phone number.
Total Calls and Missed Calls
When consumers dial your vanity phone number, your call tracking reporting will show how many total calls your number receives in a certain time period, as well as how many missed calls happened. This way, you can make sure that you are answering all calls and not missing out on any opportunities.
Total calls vs. missed calls with a vanity number.
Call Recordings
Listen to conversations that happen with incoming calls to your vanity phone number. All calls are recorded so that you can listen and make sure you are getting the right types of callers and productive conversations happening on people calling into your vanity number.
Conversations that happen with incoming calls to your vanity phone number are recorded.
Call Volume
With reports showing call volume, you can determine which times of day and days of the week you get the most dials into your vanity number. If you know that your commercial or ad only runs on certain days of the week or times of day, pay attention to any spikes in incoming calls.
Calls by day of the week.
These are just a few of the features included with your vanity number.
More robust reporting, such as how well your vanity number converts leads into prospects and missed opportunity alerts for when call handlers do not convert a vanity lead for your business are available as well.
Vanity number coverage options
Although some vanity numbers are all toll-free, since they are shared-use numbers, you can choose coverage for your custom phone number based on the area that you want coverage for.
Most sources have vanity numbers with coverage in the United States and Canada. Below is a breakdown of the coverage options available for vanity numbers.
Statewide Coverage
A vanity number can be licensed with coverage only for a specific state. Keep in mind that only phone numbers with a local state area code will be able to dial the number with this coverage.
Multi-State and Regional Coverage
Similar to statewide coverage, you may choose to have coverage only in a few states or a region. This is a better option for businesses in a tri-state area where people may overlap or travel state-to-state often.
Nationwide Coverage
Nationwide coverage is the most full coverage option available and ensures that your vanity phone number will work across all states.
If your business has multiple locations across the country, nationwide coverage (and nationwide coverage with geo-routing) is a great option. Nationwide coverage is also recommended for businesses that want to ensure they are the only one who gets to use this number in the country, or for businesses in a state with a lot of transplants.
How to get a vanity phone number
To obtain a vanity phone number is quite simple. They have a straightforward vanity number search tool to aid in your vanity searching needs.
Vanity number search
Vanity number search tool is the best way to find your perfect vanity number.
Vanity Search Tool
In the tool, you can search for keywords, specific toll-free prefixes, and more filters to narrow down your vanity number search.
Once you choose a few options that you are interested in, you can request a quote and expect to hear back from our vanity specialists within 24 hours (but usually much sooner).
Buy vanity numbers
Because of FCC regulations, vanity numbers cannot be sold. Rather, they license the use of vanity numbers on a monthly basis. Vanity numbers can be leased month-to-month. You can choose to end your contract at any time or keep the number as long as you’d like.
Cheap vanity numbers
While a number of factors play into the cost of obtaining a vanity number, there are some options that make certain vanity numbers more cost-effective than others.
Repeater vanity numbers, which have an easy-to-remember repeating number sequence, are usually quite cheaper than their vanity number counterparts that spell a specific word or phrase. Another factor that plays into cost is the coverage for your vanity number. Having a vanity number for only one state versus nationwide coverage, for example, makes a difference in price.
Where to get a vanity phone number
While there are many options to get a vanity number, we, of course, recommend CallSource for your vanity number needs.
We’ll help you find a great vanity number that suits your needs and drives more leads to your business, just contact us!
By Cassie Ciopryna