Fact: On-hold messages persuade callers buying decisions, and can help boost revenues more than 20%! ...Callers remain on the line 3 x longer! ...Nearly 90% of callers prefer on hold music & messages!
On-hold messages have already proven their worth as being one of the most effective ways to market your brand without having to spend too much money on advertisements. Telecom providers even mentioned that 20% of the callers who listen to messages will definitely make buying selections basing from what they heard while they were waiting on the other line. If you think about it, on-hold messages serve as infomercials to your company. You see, instead of hearing nothing on the other end, you can actually have on-hold messages playing while your callers are waiting. This way, they get entertained by listening to some music or maybe get informed about the updates or latest offerings of your company.
Like any other advertisement, music on-hold & messages should never jump the shark. This means that messages should always be fresh and relevant. It shouldn't lose its quality of being attractive to customers. Thus, it should always provide significant information on seasonal items, promotions and news about your products and services. When you begin to notice that the script is getting old or the music used as background is close to being forgotten, then it's about time to have a new one.
If you think about it, listening to the same old story, or in this case same old on-hold script, over and over each time you call can be boring and tiring. Instead of customers looking forward to news about the latest happenings, they get to listen to the same thing that they heard over a year ago. Remember that on-hold messages are not just created because you want to entertain your callers while they are on-hold, but to influence them into using your products and choosing your services.
On-hold Marketing shouldn’t be considered a one shot deal. Like any other type of advertising, if the marketing message gets old, then after a while, it doesn’t work any longer. While every business has different needs, the secret to on hold advertising is to keep message content fresh, timely and relevant. This means that from time to time you need to update your on-hold messages, depending on the news that you need to tell your prospects and customers. Companies that do not provide updates to their on-hold messaging are falling behind their competitors in terms of promotion and marketing (something you never want to happen with your brand).
So the real truth behind how to continuously create new sales opportunities for your business using messages on hold is to have a strategy in place on how often and when you will update the marketing message. Don’t subject your listening audience to the same old message over and over! If you allow this to happen, frequent callers will tune-out your marketing message, thus wasting precious marketing moments.