by Ryan McKeen
I love Google Voice.
I work in a small firm. We do very little in the way of any sort of advertising. We’re also not so great at tracking where exactly our business comes from. I suspect we’re not alone.
We’re a little old school in that respect. Our days are spent practicing law. Technology tends to be very expensive and all too often time consuming.
I’m always on the look out for free technology that requires little effort and works. I can think of few things that are free and more useful to a small or solo practice than Google Voice.
I’ve written posts about using Google Voice as a quick and dirty transcription service, to allow office staff to contact me free of charge via text, and as a tool to keep in contact with clients.
Today I’m writing about using Google Voice to source business. Say I want to place an ad in a local paper to inform the public about my growing real estate practice. Traditionally, I’d have my firm’s number placed in the ad. That’s fine but a little short sighted.
When you get a Google Voice number you can make it ring at your office phone. A caller would have no idea that he was calling a google voice number. Office staff would also not have a clue that the caller dialed a google voice number. To both staff and the caller it would be as if the office number had been dialed.
The cool part about Google Voice is it operates like an email account. It keeps track of calls, the dates and times they were received and the phone number the call was placed from.
If I only used my Google Voice number to promote my real estate practice in a newspaper – I would have some idea of the effectiveness of the ad. Doing this would not add cost to my firm’s overhead nor would it create work for staff.
Again, I love Google Voice. Do you use Google Voice in your practice? If so I’d love to hear from you because I’m sure there are really cool uses that I haven’t thought of.