Turning Your Music On Hold Player into a Guerilla Marketing Machine

Your Music On Hold Player.

It’s a catch-22. Customers are your life-blood, and marketing is a primary tool for attracting customers, but in times of “fat-trimming” and “cost-cutting” the marketing budget often seems to be one of the easier places to cut back. Because marketing is not an obviously non-optional cost – such as payroll or the electricity bill – and because its “return on investment” is not always easy to quantify, it is sometimes perceived as “non-essential”. Consequently, many businesses make the mistake of eliminating marketing and advertising altogether during lean times. As a result, the door is left wide open for competitors to pick up market share. Even if they don’t, a business that is “out of sight” quickly becomes “out of mind”. When customers are in the market for your products or services, don’t expect them to think of you first, unless you’ve taken steps to ensure that they do so. How can you reduce your marketing expenses without turning off the spigot altogether? “Guerilla marketing”. Simple translation: Get creative. I.e., look for ways to continue to communicate with customers besides traditional, high-cost venues such as radio, television, print, or even direct-mail.

One of the easiest and cheapest guerilla marketing tools may already be hanging on the wall in your phone closet this very minute. That is, your music on hold player. “On hold marketing” has much to commend it. Connecting with the customers who are calling you right now may be one of the most cost-effective ways to maintain “top of mind awareness” – not only with the customers who are calling you today, but with your customers generally. Effective on hold messages can plant seeds that bear fruit in the future. The cost is a fraction of most other marketing channels, and the audience is warm and thinking about your company and your products or services. You’re not interrupting them or asking them to “change gears” to consider your message. Customers of Holdtime Studios typically pay less than five hundred dollars per year and receive regularly updated, custom written, professionally produced messages each season – i.e., several times a year. Customers calling you this season can be targeted with ideas and information that translates into action next season. Holdtime customers have even been known to pick up “word of mouth” and referral business as customers tell other customers about messages they heard while “on hold”.

It’s a matter of keeping the momentum going. Or, as the old saying goes, “a bird in hand is worth two in the bush”.