Vanity Phone Number Advertising is More Memorable to Car Buyers than URLs Listed in Offline Advertising

http://www.automotivedigitalmarketing.com/profiles/blogs/vanity-phone-number

Consumers have a 45% higher recall of toll-free, vanity 800 telephone numbers than they
do of many car dealer website addresses, and those that do remember web URLs
often go on to research a dealer’s competition, finds a recent survey..

The first-of-its-kind consumer research (pdf), commissioned by 800response, tested
recall of both vanity 800 numbers and URLs in advertising and found that in six
out of seven tests, car buyers have an overall higher recall rate for vanity
800 phone numbers.

As an example of one recall test, a sample radio ad for a fictitious car dealership,
Bayside Auto Sales, featured 1-800-NEW-AUTO as the vanity number, and
BaysideAutoSales.com as the mock URL. Survey respondents had a 52% higher
recall of the vanity number compared with the URL, despite the fact that the
URL was an exact match to the dealership name.

Recall data also demonstrate that vanity 800 numbers are also more memorable than URLs when
used in print, outdoor, and broadcast advertising formats.

Researching Competition is First Step

When asked what steps they take when visiting an advertisers website, the majority of
consumers surveyed cite “Research the Advertiser” and “Research the Competition,
while 800response’s research showed similar results to what J. D. Power and
Associates has been reporting for Automotive Internet Users (AIU) for the past
5 years,.. Fewer than 10% of car buyers that see a dealer’s online advertising
say they would communicate with the dealer prior to physically visiting the
dealership. J. D. Power and Associates also has been reporting for the past 5
years of studies that fewer than 21% of car buyers who visited a dealer’s
website before arriving in person on the showroom floor, contacted the dealer
in any way prior to their physical visit.

Moreover, 800response’s examination of multiple industries (auto, home improvement,
education and health care) reveals that as many as 40% of consumers research an
advertising company’s competition as their next step after they leave from
their first visit to the advertiser’s web site. It is important to note that
multiple car shopping behavior research studies show that when a consumer uses
certain types of features within a dealer’s website, they are far more likely
to show up at the dealership in person… These known pre-showroom visit
activities are called Key Buying Activities (KBA) by some automotive marketers
and others refer to them as Key Performance Indicators (KPI) when used to
evaluate advertising campaigns and media placements.

(click on chart to view full size)

“The results suggest that advertisers who use their websites as the exclusive
consumer response tool risk losing potential customers right from the start,
with about one-fifth of consumers citing ‘research the competition’ as their
first step,” said Laura Noonan, VP of Marketing at 800response. This brings us
to the obvious “Best Practice” conclusion that all dealership
advertising should prominently feature BOTH the dealership’s easiest to
remember toll free phone number, AND a unique and easy to remember URL
dedicated and assigned to that campaign. This is further enhanced by placing a
different 800 number prominently displayed on the targeted landing page so that
marketing managers can differentiate between call volume from the ad itself and
call volume generated after consumers visited the dealer’s designated campaign
landing page.

“The higher recall for the phone number over the web address is significant for a business
when they look at return on advertising investment. If companies aren’t
including a phone number in their ads, then they are losing that valuable
direct communication with consumers who are already beyond the research phase
and ready to buy,” said Noonan. Again, the obvious correlative to Noonan’s
statement is that the phone number used in the dealer’s ads, regardless of
media channel, should be an easy to remember vanity number for best results.

About the study: The survey was conducted online among 1,000 customers by independent
research firm InfoS. The advertisements shown to respondents represented
multiple industries including automotive, home improvement, wireless,
education, and health care.