LOCAL ADVERTISING JOURNAL

October 8, 2007

Ring-To-Number looks like an interesting service: Bear in mind that I haven't used the service.

It's fairly new. But it does look like it might have some useful application for local businesses.

There are two service levels. One is free and the other costs $4.99 per month. I'm not sure why they've priced it that way, but it's interesting.

If you do business over long distance or think you might attract customers from outside your local area then you can use the free service. You get an anonymous phone number to place on your website and site visitors can call you at any phone number you specify. It's essentially a phone transfer service utilizing Internet technology.

The second level of service is the paid one. You get a local phone number. I'm not sure why this one costs $5 and the other one is free. It seems like it would be the other way around. Nevertheless, that's the way it's priced. If you want a local anonymous phone number then you can have people in your local area call your anonymous number and ring to you anywhere. This looks like a great service to maintain your privacy.

I can see at least one practical use for this technology beyond the blindingly obvious. If you want to test your Internet marketing campaigns then you can set up more than one number - one for each website or online ad. You can promote one product or service in two different ways, assign each one of them an anonymous number and see how many people call based on those two ads. It's the old-fashioned split-testing model.

Ring-To-Number has a pretty good list of FAQs, but the one I didn't see was, “Can I have more than one number?” If this is a service you might be interested in then feel free to send them a message and ask.