Internet Marketing Tips, Tools and Strategies

Recently, I was introduced to the power of Google Voice and decided to sign up and give it a try. I heard about the launch of this new service by Google awhile ago, but really haven't had the time to check it out to determine what exactly it was and how I could use it in our business and how people could use it with their internet marketing strategies.

At this time its a 100% FREE service provided by Google. I can see where they might charge for this down the road, but right now their is no charge to use the service. My only concern with the free service is privacy issues, but I haven't heard any complaints yet. So the question becomes, how do you use Google Voice and how you can incorporate this into your online & offline marketing strategies?

Google Voice essentially gives you a free local phone number in all states in the US. You can use this number and Google Voice account as your primary number on your web site or landing pages for call tracking purposes. Have an office in Maine but located in California? No problem, setup a Google Voice number to target any state you do business in.

Using a specific Google Voice phone number, you can find out how many leads are being generated from your web sites by using that phone number only on your web site. Any call that is generated using this unique number will be stored and tracked in your Google Voice account. If you are a small business and out of the office on a regular basis, this would help improve your lead response time as well (set it up so that calls placed on your site are automatically forwarded to all your phones).

Not only can you use it for call tracking and lead measurement but you can also use it to do the following:

- Setup call forwarding or "Find Me" for all your phones (cell phone, office phone, home phone, etc). When someone calls your Google Voice phone number, you can set it up so that it simultaneously calls all of your numbers. Never miss an important call again. Google Voice can become your virtual receptionist if setup correctly.

- Voicemail Simplification - all voicemails from my Google Voice account are stored online, transcribed, and sent to either my Iphone as a Text or email. You can set it up either way. I prefer to have it transcribe the message and send me a text. That way I get the voicemail in real time and don't have to spend time opening my email and playing the message or logging into a voicemail account.

- Replace your office phone - we are now using Skype VOIP to make outbound calls. We tested a few VOIP services and found that Skype works just as well as any and much more flexible as far as using it wherever we go (coffee shops, moving between multiple offices, travel, etc). We setup our Skype account to use our new Google Voice number as the caller ID. You can also get a Skype phone number as well, but I recommend setting up the caller ID settings to show your Google Voice number to make things more simple. This is a great setup for a small 1 or 2 person office. If you have multiple extensions there are solutions through Skype for this, but I am not going to get into that in this post.

- Make calls online - Google Voice also allows you to send calls online, but in my opinion, Skype is a better solution for this for $30/year.

Google Voice also allows you to personalize voicemail messages for certain people, block callers, call screening, easily share voicemails via email or text, place international calls, send out free texts (SMS to Email feature is really neat), and make conference calls.

The key here is to use technology to help reduce costs, improve communication, and expand your online marketing tracking abilities. I suppose you could even use Google Voice as a tracking number in your offline marketing campaigns as well, but I am not sure that its really intended for that use. Make sure to read Google's Terms and Services before using it if you are not sure about your intended use.

Learn more about Google Voice: http://www.google.com/googlevoice/about.html