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For Pete’s Sake, Stop With the Phone Numbers Already

If you are making great use of a phone number as a “call to action” in your marketing, you should probably rethink that. We just don’t use and remember phone numbers the way we used to. Fact of the matter is our phones, which are smart, do it for us.

I was driving by an electronic billboard today and what I saw really made me laugh and then I thought about all the money this business was wasting and it almost made me cry. On this electronic billboard was a huge picture of a rather average looking man with a long phone number under it. Perhaps the name of the business was on the previous panel, but I was only exposed to the pixelated picture and the 800 number, which of course I can’t remember.

As a matter of fact, I can’t even remember my wife’s phone number anymore. The only phone number I can remember is the one we had when I was a kid. Technology has made “remembering” phone numbers irrelevant. All I have to do now is say “Lauren” and the phone connects me to my wife via voice or text. Putting a phone number on a billboard, in a radio commercial or on TV is becoming a very difficult ask. Not only do we not remember a number, we don’t even remember how to memorize it. Asking someone to remember a phone number is akin to outfitting them with a bear skin and a stone knife in the year 2013AD.

I have become so impatient that the mere act of having to “dial” a phone number feels like Hannibal’s trek across the Alps. I get past the area code and start forgetting where I need to go next. Can’t I just click on something or tell the phone to do something? What a drag.

Even in print phone numbers are a tough sell. That’s why you see more layouts that feature elements that can simply be scanned with a smart phone or tablet. The smart marketers know that phone numbers as a recall item are nearly cooked. The world has moved on, get over it.

In the electronic media and billboards a much better call to action is an easy-to-remember URL. A good case in point would be the board with the average looking guy. Instead of 1-800-xxx-xxxx, it should have be www.averagelookingguy.com, I would remember that and out of morbid curiosity I probably would have checked it out.