There are few cases when a business can’t capitalize on a giveaway. When one receives a free mobile number with its new phone plan, it can use that gift to make sure its operations remain flexible.
Whether a business is in the early, maintenance, or expansion stages of its development, phone numbers play a pivotal role in its being. Today, this blog will take a look at how free phone numbers can help startups bootstrap and give established entities room to plan and grow.
Early Stage
Startups aren’t always as flush with cash as headlines might make them look. Your Series A round of funding probably isn’t the whopping $5 million you read in the tech news this week, so you’ll need to be more thrifty when it comes to early growth.
Anything of a high-quality nature that’s also free can help your startup make the most of its situation. When you sign up for a VirtualPBX Phone Plan, you get at least two free phone numbers, either local or toll-free. This is a feature of every plan.
While you’re focusing on huge tasks like obtaining financing, opening a storefront, product manufacturing, hiring employees, and other early-stage business tasks, marketing can get lost in the fray. You already have a lot to focus on; you already see a lot of places where you’ll need to spend money.
Taking advantage of a free mobile number can assist your burgeoning marketing efforts by letting you, first, get a number for your business. Then it helps you complete work, for instance, through the VirtualPBX Softphone app so your personal number isn’t tied to your business and your phone plan features remain accessible at all times.
At least, the free number gives you one less thing to worry about.
Maintenance Stage
Eventually, your business will find success and enter a time of maintenance. You’ll have hired your team and have a steady stream of customers returning for your goods.
Perhaps you accomplished all of that without the services of VirtualPBX. How can free numbers help you now? Switching to one of our phone plans at this stage could help you plan for the future.
You already know how to grow. You’re just not ready for a second round. Gaining a new free mobile number or phone number for your office at this point will let you spin up your extended marketing with enthusiasm.
You can port your existing numbers to your new phone system and continue using them as you please. The free phone numbers included with the plan can lie in wait until you’re ready to expand.
When you reach the tipping point, you can rely on the VirtualPBX system to keep detailed call logs for all your communications through all your phone numbers. You can see specific information like inbound and outbound call duration and caller ID to help track the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.
As just one method of differentiating your multiple phone numbers, you can prepend caller ID fields in your logs with specific messages related to the campaign a number tied to. A phone number used in Houston could prepend the tag “HOU-TX”, or any other appropriate message, so you can easily sort your logs and search for specific campaigns.
Expansion Stage
Startups may outgrow their bootstrap stage but continue to expand; established companies may wish to grow after a period of stagnation. Whichever the situation, there’s a point in successful businesses’ lives when they will expand beyond their virtual and physical borders.
A free mobile number at this stage could let your business take advantage of something like VirtualPBX Mobile, which uses a nationwide cellular network (including voice, data, and texting) in conjunction with our VoIP platform. By having a mobile service tied to the rest of your business phone plan, you can consolidate all your communications costs into a single invoice and manage all your business devices from a single dashboard.
Consider, for instance, that part of your growth is to hire a group of contractors that are spread across the country. They work in their local areas with customers, who need to get ahold of them directly. You could separate your physical location, in one state, from your contractors, in several.
The numbers used in this way would allow for a logical separation of entities that are part of your operation. Yet your entire collection of numbers would be accessible through the same online dashboard.
Get Your Free Mobile Number
Think about the current state of your business. Regardless of your holding pattern or growth status, you may have room for a set of free numbers.
They can help you hold steady and prepare for the future. They can assist with your growth as a startup or enterprise.
We hope you’ll look at VirtualPBX if your phone system could use an update.