I was reading a story on Yahoo about a florist that is getting pounded by phone calls about cash for clunkers because General Motors is using an identical phone number, minus the prefixes in advertising! 877 Not 800!
When I read the story, it nearly instantly reminded me of a .net domain name being advertised and people visiting the .com domain because it’s more common.
GM is advertising with the 877 prefix but people are calling the 800 number instead, which ends up leaving the caller at a flower shop and not the clunkers hot line! This is very similar to what happens when companies advertise with something other then .com domain names.
1-800 numbers are the .com of phone numbers with 1-877 being the .net’s of domain names!
The reason GM had to go with an 877 phone number is because of a shortage of 800 numbers…. sounds familiar to me!
Patrick McDermott
“When I read the story, it nearly instantly reminded me of a .net domain name being advertised and people visiting the .com domain because it’s more common.”
Jamie,
There are two one BIG differences.
One, that Florist has to pay for each and every call that comes in.
800 #s are Toll Free only to the caller.
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Two, unlike a .COM that might have similar content
to the .NET and might be able to capitalize on the misdirected traffic, the Florist pretty much has zero chance to sell flowers to the callers looking to unload their junk cars.
BullS
If I were her, I’ll make the number a porn #.
Jamie Parks
I just blogged about this story too. There’s undoubtedly some relation here between the instinctual nature (in America at least) of 800 #’s and .com’s. Question is can the florist find a way to quickly monetize that traffic like a .com owner could? I doubt it.
I’m sure we haven’t heard the last of this story… especially considering somebodies gonna have to foot the bill for the clunker traffic.
Jamie Zoch
@Jamie,
I agree with you 100% . It would be hard to be able to convert as well as a domain can or as easy as it would be to make it convert.
Jamie Zoch
@Patrick,
I agree with you as well but my main point was that if you go away from the norm, people make mistakes and visit the norm. Not all, but several do. Also, in a way a website owner pays for each visitor as well (Hosting) but it just doesn’t cost as much as the phone calls. I totally agree with your second point, but I’m sure they might be able to figure a way to turn it into a positive thing. Like now a lot of people know the flower shops phone number