One of the beauties of a customized On Hold program is the ability to tell callers about products and services you offer that they may not know about. But be careful of trying to include everything you do in your On Hold program. 

Remember when the Yankees beat the Phillies in the 2009 World Series? Joe Girardi opted for a three-man rotation, even though he mostly used a five-man rotation during the regular season. Part of his thinking was “why use my fourth or fifth best pitchers in the games that matter the most, against the best team in the other league.” 

You can apply this concept to your On Hold program.  

Sure, you can include 15 or 18 topics/messages. But unless you have extraordinarily long hold times like the phone company, cable company, tech support or notorious long hold queues, you don’t really need an extremely long program. In fact, more messages can actually dilute the effectiveness of the messages you do wish to feature.  If your callers are on hold long enough to only hear one or two messages at a time, and you’ve got 15 messages in your program, how many messages are they NOT hearing? Or to put it another way, if you’ve got 15 messages, the odds are 15 to 1 that any message in particular is not being heard. Now, if you can identify your 6 or 8 most important topics, and just include messages on those topics, it’s 8 to 1 that your most important message is being heard. Better odds.  

Not unlike using your three best starters in the World Series. Ask Charlie Manuel how his #4 starter did in Game 4. 

Call us to talk about the most effective number of messages for your On Hold program.

This medical testimonial for our "Patients On Hold" music and messaging service just came in just after one of our valued medical office clients received our newsletter...and was just too good to keep to myself.  Yes, we do occasionally ask for testimonials, but this came in with out us asking. 

To EVERYONE at On-Hold Marketing! Thank you for your continued service and support with our messaging system!We are now entering our 2^nd year as your customer and I can tell you the on hold messaging WORKS!Pediatrics is a busy place and we receive “tons” of phone calls each day…and now with the flu season and H1N1 questions, the phones never seem to stop ringing.  It’s wonderful to know our receptionists canput the parent “on hold” (although we wish we didn’t have to do that!) and they will be listening to helpful information…not just “dead air” or just “music”.   Many thanks again from the entire staff at WEST END PEDIATRICS! We are grateful and thankful for your professional, top notch service! Melanie FrazierBusiness Manager, WEST END PEDIATRICS, Richmond, VA

We’re fortunate to work with quite a few medical practices, and some of the things we’ve learned in writing their scripts we’re able to pass along to the rest of our clients and friends. As America gears up for the coming flu season, and especially the H1N1 or “swine” flu, the advice from our medical practices is practically unanimous. Whether you get a flu shot or not, and whether you get the Swine Flu vaccine or not, remember to always wash your hands after going to the bathroom, before eating, or after touching anything that just doesn’t feel clean. Cover your mouth when you cough, sneeze into the inside of your elbow. Maintain a healthy diet, get regular exercise and drink plenty of water. If you feel bad, stay home. If your kids feel bad, keep them home. Preventing the flu is the best thing you can, preventing it’s spread if you get it is the next best thing.

An ongoing project in 2009 has been the redesign of our web site, which debuted in it’s new form at the beginning of September. If you have visited us lately, please spend a few minutes at www.onholdmarketing.com . We think you’ll find it easier to navigate, and to find the things you’re looking for, especially audio demos, and how to contact us. There’s also a new section on playback equipment, including some close-up pictures that can help new customers understand our players and help existing customers troubleshoot their players.

Do you want to keep your On Hold message fresh but don’t find that you have the time to address it every month or every quarter? We’ve had quite a bit of success in the past few years helping our clients work in advance. Several of our quarterly program clients have found that mapping out a schedule of topics for a year at a time makes the script updating process much easier, and much less time consuming. 

There are several ways you can go about this: 

One way is to review your promotional and sales activities for the past 12-15 months. Determine which of those activities are likely to take place again in the same time period, and allot the appropriate number of messages in each of your On Hold messages to address those activities. If any of your sales or promotional activities are seasonal in nature, this is pretty easy…just map out what’s going to happen in the winter, in the spring, in the summer and in the fall. Even if you don’t have the full details, just knowing the topics is half the battle. Once you know the topics, we can write the messages for you. 

If your company compiles an annual marketing or strategic plan, you can use that as your guideline. Just plot out the activities or sales topics that need to be covered during specific times of the year. These may or may not be seasonal, but again simply putting the topics on paper will greatly save you time and effort during the course of the year. 

Some of our clients update their on hold messages quarterly, even though their business does not really change from season to season to season. Instead, these folks find that they simply have just too much to talk about in one single 6:00 program. What we’ve done for them is divided their product or service lines in five groups: one group runs all year long, while the other four groups each rotate in and out on a quarterly basis. The result is that four times as many products and services are promoted On Hold during the course of the year, four times as many products and services get sold during the year, and the already-overworked marketing directors only had to address this task once. 

Here’s the last point for today: 

A typical update might take up about an hour of your time total: from the time you decide an update is needed to the phone call to talk with us about it to the time it takes you to send us the information to the time it takes you to review the new script and give us changes to the time it takes you to finally approve it. Do that four times in 2009 and you’ve used up four hours, maybe more. Take a little more time, say 90 minutes or two hours, to get the whole year done in advance, and you’ve saved yourself two hours that you might be able to use generating new revenue. 

As I said at the top, we’ve had good success, and good response, doing this for a number of clients in the past few years. We know how to do it, and how to make it easy for you. Want to know more? Just give us a call!

In a strong economy, On Hold Advertising is one of many tools you can use to grow your business. In a weak economy, On Hold Advertising is one of the most essential tools to keep your market share from eroding. The definition of a weak economy, in simple terms, is decreased spending all the way around. That probably includes you, and your customers. The key to surviving a recession is to keep your customers, and to the extent possible, keep them at current spending levels. If your business has reduced spending, say with reduced staff, you’re going to have more callers (including customers and potential customers) go on hold. Your On Hold Advertising is the most effective way…the most precisely targeted and focus delivery method…of talking to those people every day.

Think about it…aside from your employees…who are the people that matter most to the success of your business? The people who buy from you. And your On Hold Advertising talks to them every single day. Sure your print ads, newsletters, brochures and web site all reach them. But those media also reach a lot of other eyes that are NOT buying from you. Much of your printed material winds up in the recycling bin. But messages heard by your callers while On Hold hit the exact target you’re aiming for every time.

 

So make sure your On Hold Advertising is current and up to date. Make sure whatever you’re doing to help your customers with their business in 2009 is included in your On Hold Advertising. If you’re not sure if your On Hold Advertising is on target, just give us a call. We can help.

I received a script from a client before Christmas that they wrote. Each of the On Hold Messages was over 200 words long. You probably don’t deal in word-counts every day, but we do, so let us give you a tip regarding On Hold Messages. 

First it’s important to understand how your On Hold Messages are heard. For the most part, your program plays continuously in the background, whether a caller is on hold or not (some phone systems do start from the beginning every time a caller is placed on hold, but for this discussion that distinction is not particularly important). So when you place a caller On Hold, he/she is going to hear your program wherever it is playing at that particular time. Could be between messages, could be in the middle of a message. And depending on the length of the hold time, he/she might hear one or two or three complete messages, or they might only hear part of one message. 

Individual On Hold Messages that are 200 words long will easily run over a minute and a half long. Which means there’s over a minute from the beginning of the message to the end of the message. Most businesses we work with try to keep their hold times as short as possible. Which means the average caller would likely never hear one of these On Hold Messages from start to finish. 

When we write On Hold Messages, we aim for 65-85 words, or about 18-25 seconds. Our 20 years of experience has shown that this time frame makes for the most effective messages. It gives your On Hold Messages the best chance of being heard in their entirety… the beginning, middle and end. When your callers ARE placed On Hold, and are hearing your On Hold Messages, you want them to get the complete story on each topic as often as possible. And you want to there to be a “call to action” wherever possible – usually “ask us to tell you more when we come on the line,” or “pick up a bag the next time you’re in the store.” But what you don’t want to have is On Hold Messages running close to two minutes long where your hold times are 30-45 seconds. 

Oh, one more thing…remember we’re happy to do the writing for you. Don’t feel as though you have to do it yourself. It’s part of what we do every day.

A customized On Hold Marketing program is, in reality, your best and most reliable employee. It shows up for work every single day (actually, it never goes home), it never has a bad hair day, or a bad attitude, It never skips work to go fishing, play golf or go Christmas shopping. It’s there from open to close, and if you’re open every day, it works seven days a week. And not only that, a customized On Hold Marketing program is your most cost-effective marketing tool, especially in a slower economy. Why? Because it talks directly to those people you value the most…those callers, customers, prospects and suspects who have already made the decision to pick up the phone and call your company. Once you’ve got‘em on the line, your On Hold program can reel them in by telling them more about your products and services, especially those that they didn’t know about when they first picked up the phone. For mere pennies per call, you can have your own in-house broadcast network. No other advertising or marketing program can give you a more focused delivery, offer you better cost-efficiency, than a customized On Hold program.

A recent caller wanted to know why they should choose On Hold Marketing instead of another provider. My natural response was because “we provide a better product and a better service.” Of course that’s easy for me to say because I truly believe that we do. But if you’re shopping around, you need a more objective point of view. So here are a few questions to ask a potential provider:
1. How long have you been in business? You want to invest your time and money with someone who’s experienced in our industry, and who’s going to be here to serve you next month, next year and for five years down the road.
2. How long are your On Hold programs? Some providers will quote you a lower price, but they don’t tell you that you’re only getting a four minute program with just one voice. 6:00 has been the industry standard for over a decade, and a good provider will offer you alternating male and female voices on just about every program, unless you specify a different preference.
3. Do you have voice talent samples on your web site? As good as any scripts might be, bad voice talent will ruin them. And not everyone has the same level of talent available. Make sure you’re able to listen to the talent available before you make final decision on an On Hold provider.
4. Does your staff have experience or a background in telecommunications? While there are still plenty of old-fashioned PBX and KSU telephone systems out there, today’s newer systems offer many more features, and can also be much more complex. This can impact what you can play On Hold in a number of ways, including whether or not you need an external player, and if so, how it might connect to your phone system. Make sure your provider is familiar with your phone system before moving forward.
5. Do you write and produce your programs in-house? Those providers who farm out the writing and/production aren’t really in the On Hold business. They’re in the sales business…selling something to you that somebody else produces. They typically don’t have very much invested in your success, or in the quality of your On Hold programs.
There are a number of other questions you can ask, but these are probably the most important. Please don’t hesitate to call us if you want to know more about choosing an On Hold provider, even if it’s not us…although we hope it will be.

A couple of times in the past few weeks, I’ve gotten a surprised reaction from existing clients when I’ve been talking with them about updating their program and have told them that “I’ll do the writing, just point me in the direction of where to get the information.” In today’s self-service world, many on hold providers make you “do it yourself.” But at On Hold Marketing, we offer a total turnkey service. That service starts with the process of gathering information for your script, and doing the actual writing. While we may not be experts in every industry, we are experts at writing succinct, effective On Hold messages. We’re smart enough, and experienced enough, to know how to ask the right questions that will lead to effective messages…messages that will spur your callers to make inquiries when you pick up the phone. Please don’t delay updating your On Hold program because you don’t have time to write the script. We KNOW you don’t have time…but we do. Just call us and we’ll make it happen.