Marketing and Demographics: Help with Phone Numbers

[Tyler Cooper]

Hey guys, I have a question about how to integrate some things into our brand's visual marketing. To start, i'll give you a bit of a brief.

I work for a non-profit travel group that advertises for a county. We focus on natural beauty and try to keep our ads clean and uncluttered. Our main marketing director has been getting some complaints about our ads from some people in our older demographic (I imagine 65+) that they can't contact us. Within the last 3 years, we went web based, since most of the services are informational and simply promote the county. We still run print ads, and I imagine this is where we are running into issues.

We now believe it is in our best interest to include the phone number of our office on the print ads. I am not 100% on board with this, since we don't really have people dedicated to the phones, and most of the people who would be calling us would be in need of extensive travel information, which would take any part-timers time to answer, especially if they are not as well versed in the area as a full time position might be. Previously, we had a manageable number of phone calls, and could simply direct people to our website if they were just looking for general area information.

My question for anyone invested in the marketing side of things is this: How would adding our phone number to nationally published print ads affect our business? If the people answering the phones are pretty much just going to look at the website anyways for information, how effective would a phone campaign be?

For all you graphic designers, what tips might you have for including a phone number on a minimalist ad? The ads themselves are simple beauty shots of active models doing stuff in the natural environment offered around the county. (trail hiking, standing by waterfalls, etc.) We include a brief tagline, and where the photo was taken, the then the webpage and logo. I REALLY don't want to clutter things up with unnecessary lines or boxes, but I feel like the phone number will push out some of the more simplistic elements.

I attached an example of our ads, for reference. Keep in mind there is a .25 bleed added around the outside.

 

[Paul Murray]

With regards to the query about the value of the phone number, it depends on whether the revenue earned from all calls would justify the time taken to answer the calls. How is revenue or conversion measured? Can it even be measured?

One option is to offset the cost and hassle by perhaps sending out information packs in the post on request. I know this directly counters the purpose of the website, but there is still a lot of people out there without internet access for whatever reason. A small run of leaflets or brochures may work out easier and cheaper (in terms of time) than vital volunteers manning the phones, and you can always charge them a small fee to cover postage (maybe let them reclaim the cost via a voucher at a facility or choice of local businesses in the county?).

From a design point of view, I'd probably just add a line below the domain name, saying something like "or call THIS NUMBER to order an information pack". This states that the call is solely for placing an order for information so would hopefully go some way to filter out the people just calling for general information. If there's a demand for it, and your business is about driving custom to the county, then I'd suggest it's worth having the number, though I'm assuming your business doesn't charge a client for time in the same way a for-profit organisation would and your company would end up covering the associated costs?