Last updated - April 13, 2023
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is a rapidly growing industry. Millions of companies worldwide use VoIP services to help them in their business ventures. The growth rate of VoIP system sales over the past few years has only ever seen an upward trajectory, and this trend shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon! While VoIP has been around for a while, it has only in recent years matured into a competitive communication system.
In this article, we will take a look at how VoIP services can help your company succeed with your social media marketing plan and reach new audiences. But first, let us start with the basics!
What Is VoIP?
Voice over internet protocol, also known as VoIP, refers to a type of communication system that, rather than using traditional landlines, can make and receive normal calls through an internet connection.
The majority of consumers think of VoIP as an alternative to their traditional landline telephone service.
If you have access to the internet, you are free to make phone calls to anyone in the world without the need for conventional local phone service or actual copper wires. You will just require high-speed internet and a VoIP service provider in order to make and receive calls using this method. The best aspect is that you are not restricted to an individual desk in any way. You can make your computer or any mobile device into a phone by downloading a business phone app and using a VoIP phone number through the app.
What Benefits does VoIP Bring to the Table?
VoIP is quickly becoming the preferred method of customer contact for businesses worldwide. One of the practical reasons is that VoIP is easier and cheaper to set up than an ISDN.
VoIP is flexible enough to meet the needs of businesses of any size and flexible enough to be tailored to their specific needs, all while providing significant savings. And VoIP is very adaptable, allowing for instantaneous changes and freedom from a physical location. VoIP eliminates the need for physical wiring and equipment.
Given these very obvious reasons, which can easily be taken advantage of, it should come as no surprise that VoIP technology is becoming more and more essential for companies. But what advantages do they gain from it? We’ll look into that next.
Ways to Improve Your Social Media Marketing Strategy with VoIP
There are plenty of benefits that VoIP services bring to a company, but what specifically does it do for the marketing department? Let’s take a look at these ways in the following section
1. Greater Customer Satisfaction
If you’re a social media marketer, you know that it is extremely important to always stay in touch with what your followers are saying on social media platforms to make sure your products or services are meeting the needs of your target audience. On top of this, consumers will want their problems solved quickly and have access to support that is available round the clock.
When you use VoIP, you can provide your customers with the exact assistance they require, which in turn increases their satisfaction and shows them that you actually care about them. How does this happen? Usually, this involves harnessing a few features of VoIP:
- Controlling wait times
- Call processing
- Forwarding calls
Your company can better serve its customers’ informational needs by utilizing these tools. You also make sure they get in touch with an expert who can help them with their problem. Let us take an example. Getting questions answered on social media is always a long shot if it ever happens. Using a VoIP service that enables instantaneous communication can speed things up and wow your customers!
2. Better Client Conversion
Due to the widespread adoption of social media, businesses have a greater opportunity to promote their products to new consumers and convince them to try the said product.
Quality content and eye-catching visuals posted on social media aren’t enough to convert casual browsers into paying customers. Here’s where VoIP comes in handy. However, you will need to monitor mentions of your brand across various platforms first.
People usually do this when they have queries or want to give an opinion about the product. Therefore, it’s highly likely that some of these mentions come from genuinely interested buyers. If such a situation arises, you can take advantage of a VoIP service to call potential customers one by one to help them take the next step in the buying process. You can offer free samples and demonstrations of how your products (or a specific product) function.
It is not necessary to wait for customers to grow your company. They can also be encouraged to check out your wares by personal invitation. However, use this proactive approach sparingly since you don’t want to annoy potential customers by ringing them repeatedly and getting tagged as spam.
3. Serving International Customers
Interacting with international customers is essential for the success of any global business. Everyone can serve the needs of locals, but if you as a company really want to grow and expand, you will need to find a way to do this. However, because it is so costly to establish a local presence in a foreign country, most brands do not put in the effort. This creates an opportunity for you.
A VoIP provider offers an affordable solution to this problem by allowing you to create a virtual phone line accessible only from within a certain country and make use of the internet to do so. Thus, your company’s reach is increased, and it is now possible to conduct business anywhere in the world.
New customers will appreciate a local phone number. Since they don’t have to dial across long distances to get assistance, they won’t have to fret over increasing phone bills. They can reach your company at any time by dialing the number they see on your social media profiles.
4. Built-in Analytics
The success of a social media marketing campaign depends on data. The VoIP service you choose must provide detailed information on the efficiency of your call center.
You can learn about patterns in consumer behavior by examining statistical data. People who discover your business’s contact information via social media platforms may tend to call around the same time each day. During that time, you need as many service reps as possible available to help customers.
If you have access to these metrics, you will know exactly what needs fixing. With this in place, you can rest assured that your customers will receive nothing but the finest service.
5. Measured Campaigns Success
The easy way to do it is by populating your social media pages with different kinds of ads for different products. Just make sure that each of these ads features a unique phone number. You’ll be able to tell which advertisement they saw by the number they called. By keeping track of this data, you’ll be able to see for yourself which campaign is doing better than others, and which ones need work.
Armed with this knowledge, you will now be able to make compelling, effective online advertisements that will hit the mark every time for all your social media followers and customers. Sure, it’s a little trial and error-y, but it works.
6. Lower Costs
The one benefit that the vast majority of companies are most enthusiastic about is the reduced cost of making phone calls. The financial benefits are evident for organizations of any size, but enterprise level businesses find it particularly fascinating. A company’s finances may be put under unnecessary stress if they are required to handle an excessively high volume of calls on a daily basis.
This is especially true for calls made to other countries. VoIP is not only an inexpensive solution to this problem, but it also offers the potential for multiple users to be included in a single service package. Therefore, developing companies, franchisees, and small business unions can make use of this low-cost alternative at a price that is even more reasonable.
7. Better Choices for Your Customers
As a marketer, you know better than anyone the importance of analytics. It is by studying the data points that you can understand what your market demo wants from you, and how you can hold their engagement as a brand.
Customers have varying preferences, which is why it’s important to start communicating with your audience in an omnichannel manner. Make sure your customers can contact you via any method they prefer instead of sticking to just one. For those times when they need fast answers to their problems, your brand will be there for them because they don’t have to stop and download an app, make an account, and then call you–all because you don’t support the one they usually use.
The vast majority of VoIP suppliers today provide round-the-clock assistance to their clients via every available channel, keeping this specific scenario in mind.
A customer, for instance, encounters your ad campaign on LinkedIn. They are intrigued by the advertisement but would like more information. Now, if you were in their position, would you rather send a message and wait for hours for a reply, or just pick up your phone and make a call? Exactly. Make their lives easier by publishing your phone number on all of your social media pages.
The Future of VoIP
VoIP was initially developed as an economical alternative to conventional landline and private branch exchange (PBX) communication systems. In the early days of VoIP, the call quality was poorer than that of traditional landline calls. On the other hand, the quality of digital technologies has never stopped improving. Over the course of time, trends in VoIP will come to give corporate benefits that the early adopters of VoIP could only have dreamed of having: calls of extremely high quality, complete integration, security, flexibility, and intelligence.
If you want to harness the power of VoIP going forward, you will need to understand these trends. In this section, we will discuss a few of these in detail.
The Rise of Omnichannel
The flexibility of VoIP and future VoIP systems will assist enterprises in breaking down silos and delivering a communications strategy that is focused on the consumer. Due to the fact that VoIP calls contain data, new technologies will transform that data into an element of an omnichannel strategy for providing a unified customer experience.
The next-generation VoIP will promote consistency no matter from where customers interact with an organization because it can transform the data from calls into text that is both searchable and actionable. Additionally, it can make customer inquiries from social media platforms, text messages, websites, and other channels available to the call center. This makes it possible to gain visibility on all past contacts with a customer across all channels, making it possible for the consumer to continue the conversation without any interruptions.
Customer experience initiatives will increasingly concentrate on VoIP as this technology evolves and becomes more capable of integrating enterprises around the quality of service.
Security
As voice communications become another program running on your data network, VoIP security will become an increasingly important consideration. Comparing this technology to landline, VoIP is largely more secure. However, don’t rely solely on default security. If your organizations intend to use VoIP, then you need to be aware of encryption. With this layer of security, even if hackers can get to the calls, they won’t be able to figure out what they find.
Beyond passwords, multi-step authentication, encryption, and biometrics, the future of security trends in the VoIP sector may rely on blockchain technology to decentralize control over the system. This would be in addition to other security measures such as passwords. If cybercriminals are prevented from using a single-entry point, it will be far more difficult for them to break into the system.
Summing Up
VoIP is a great asset to have on your side when you’re growing your company. By using it well, you will be able to succeed in the market flawlessly. VoIP is adaptable enough to suit the demands of organizations of any size. It can be customized to your individual requirements, all while saving money. The technology is extremely versatile, allowing for immediate modifications and freedom from a physical location. Get started today!
