Never put your phone number in a radio or television advertisement!

One day, the dreams of every advertising writer worth his salt will come true: local advertisers will stop insisting that their phone numbers be in their radio and television ads.

Nobody remembers telephone numbers nor tries to. They don't pull over and write them down. Putting them in their advertising copy 2 or even 3 times (I've heard 4!) achieves nothing except to take up golden seconds of air time that should be used to further advance the sale.

Using names in the number, such as 555-GROCERY doesn't work either. Not even the name of the business: 555-Pete's Diner.

"But if I don't put the phone number in, no one will find me!" Yes, I heard an ad for a store I wanted to go to but the phone number wasn't in it, so I couldn't find the store -- said no one ever.

So what IS the point of contact to use?

For a local brick-and-mortar business, there are two ways you can tell people to contact you (but not both - more in a sec). When we tell someone how to find a business, what do we tell them? We use a landmark. "Just down from the fire station." "Beneath the rusty water tower." We never tell them an address, mainly because we ourselves don't know it. Ever try to read addresses on business buildings? Enough said.

The other point of contact we can use is a company's website address - but only if it's easy to remember. Some addresses are nearly impossible to remember, such as "www.Center4HPT.com" That's a wonderful physical therapy business that has saved my bacon more than once. But it's a tough URL to remember.

So why not use a web address and a landmark? Because when you give someone more than one choice, they get what's called the Paralysis of Choice. It's a thing - really. Give someone two options and they'll choose neither.

So just give them a single point of contact :)

There is, actually, one phone number that has worked in an ad. It was Hooked On Phonics' number: 1-800-ABCDEFG. Everyone can remember it because they already know it.

Other than that - fuggeddaboutit.