Media Messages Australia Blog - Page 3 of 11 - Professional On Hold Specialists!

Audio Advertising for your Phone Lines

Posted on November 14, 2013 by mediagro

Your phone lines are a pivotal piece of technology for your company. Not only does it connect you to your customers, but it creates airwaves for you to promote your products and services to customer who already have an interest in your company. Media Messages explores just a couple of ways that you can use audio advertising on your phone lines.

Telephone Messages On Hold

Our personal favourite is the telephone message on hold program. Basically, a message on hold program is a mini-radio station broadcast directly to your callers. Audio advertisements written, voiced, mixed and manipulated to promote your products and services, and to keep your callers entertained while they are on hold. And if done properly, can also help increase sales.

Voice Messages

Companies often overlook voice messages, but in essence they are a great reflection of the brand and the people who work for you. A voice message is basically ‘speaking’ to your customers. So make sure your staff constantly update their voice messages, have the correct information and keep the message short and concise. Better yet, invest in a professional audio production and help your brand sound bigger.

IVR Announcements – Voice Prompts

Are you a bigger business with multiple departments? Then make the telephone experience an easier one for your callers and install one of these nifty audio navigation systems. An Interactive Voice Response will ask your callers which department they would like to be put through, and then your callers can answer either through speech or through the phone keypad. Once the department they are searching for is identified, then the caller is automatically redirected to them. An IVR system sounds professional, and saves your callers from going from one department to the next.

Audio advertising for your phone lines is a great way to promote your products and service, reinforce your brand and sound much bigger and a whole lot more professional.

Give your company a much savvier edge, and invest in an audio production for your phone line today, simply contact the audio specialists at Media Messages on 1300 796 694.

Posted in Audio Productions, Interactive Voice Recordings, Media Messages, On Hold Messages, Voice Messages | Leave a comment

Corporate Christmas Audio e-Cards

Posted on November 11, 2013 by mediagro

Can you believe it, it’s almost the season to be jolly again. And this time of year gives business owners the opportunity to acknowledge their customers with a Christmas greeting. Media Messages want to help you stand out from the crowd, and get your message out with an audio e-card.

Our very professional team of copywriters, voiceover artists and audio engineers will use their expertise to produce a stand out audio production wishing your customers the very best for this festive season. And whilst we can help with a powerful audio production, below are just a couple of additional suggestions to make your e-card stand out.

Vibrant Image
Lucky for you Christmas is celebrated with a range of bright colours – get behind the celebrations and ensure you have captivating artwork – this will act as the feature piece that will hopefully draw your customers in and encourage them to press play and listen to your Christmas audio production.

A Clear Message
Don’t overload your Christmas message with all the bells and whistles about your company; instead make this one message about them. Wish them a Merry Christmas and a safe New Year and possible promote one of your products or services – but do so wisely.

Professional Audio Production
A professionally produced audio production will stand out much more than merely taping your own message. We have creative copywriters who will cleverly put all your messages into one clear and concise script, our voice actors will use their voice to captivate your audience and our audio engineers will mix and manipulate the voice recording with Christmas jingles and sound effects to really create that Christmas experience for your customers.

Distribute it
Host your Christmas Audio e-card on your website, social media accounts and of course, don’t forget to send it to your customers far and wide. Show your appreciation and get into the Christmas spirit. You’ll not only draw attention to your brand, but you will also help with your SEO efforts and make your customers feel appreciated.

A corporate Christmas audio e-card is an inexpensive and effective way of reaching your target market. Media Messages is one of Australia’s leading providers of high quality audio productions, used in a number of applications to promote Australian businesses. Call us today.

Posted in Audio Productions, Creative, Marketing, Media Messages | Leave a comment

Tips for your next Telephone Message on Hold Script

Posted on November 1, 2013 by mediagro

Congratulations on taking the first steps to enhance your internal communications by investing in a Media Messages’ telephone message on hold program. Telephone on hold messaging is truly an effective way to promote your business to a group of people who are already interested in your product – thereby giving you a chance to reinforce the benefits of your products and services and the promotion of secondary products and services.

Our aim is to see you get the best return on your investment, so below are a couple of tips to help you compose an effective message on hold script.

Keep it Short and Sweet
Don’t waffle on – you will lose your audiences attention. Rather keep your audio messages short and sweet, clear and concise. You have 15-30 seconds of their time, MAX – so make sure you get straight to the point and identify “What’s In It For Them”.

Don’t Speak in Riddles
Ever heard the saying, “Keep it simple stupid”? It couldn’t ring more true for your on-hold audio advertisements. Don’t try to use humour that the bulk of your customers are likely not to understand. Again – Get. Straight. To. The. Point.

Don’t Use too many Sound Effects or Character Voices
It can be really exciting to be creative and come up with fun ways to promote your products and services, but sometimes what you’re thinking in your head, won’t work over the phone. Whilst it is nice to spice up your telephone message on hold program with the odd character voice or sound effect, too many can just be, well, annoying.

Focus on ONE Product or Service
You don’t need to fill every message with all your products and services. Instead carefully select one, and then focus on educating your customers on the benefits of the product and why they need it.

Select Appropriate Music Beds
Think of your business. What image are you trying to portray? Who are your customers and what will appeal to them? We really wouldn’t suggest playing techno music if you are a professional services company for instance (well for most anyway).

Call to Action
And don’t forget to tell your customers what you want them to do. If you’re a tavern and promoting a special night of entertainment, tell your callers to book when you return to the call. If you’re running a competition, get them to ask how to enter.

Just as you would with any other marketing campaign, make sure you plan your telephone message on hold script, and make sure you have relevant messages playing to your customers. Be clear and concise, yet entertaining and informative.

Posted in Audio Productions, Media Messages, On Hold Messages | Leave a comment

Updating your Telephone Message On Hold Program

Posted on October 23, 2013 by mediagro

Just like you would with any other marketing collateral, it is really important to ensure that you continuously update your telephone message on hold program. Think of it as part of your internal communications’ strategy. As the telephone on hold message experts, Media Messages explains why it is so important to update your message on hold program.

Keeping it fresh and interesting
Whilst you will have an abundance of new callers, you probably also get your fair share of repeat callers. An updated telephone message on hold program, with fresh messages and a slight change in music will be sure to capture their attention. Programs can get old, and the last thing you want your customers to do is switch off and ignore your messages.

Advertise Seasonal Promotions
Depending on the type of business you run, you may have weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly promotions, and if you are a smart business, you are more than likely going to want to promote them in a timely fashion. Modern day message on hold programs allow you to do this, and can be time specific – ask the creative team at Media Messages for more details.

Ensures all information is Correct
By updating your telephone message on hold program regularly, you can check to see if all the information is relevant and correct. As you are not hearing this piece of advertising directly it is easy to forget, but when you are reminded (Media Messages will send you a reminder to update your program), then chances are you will look to ensure all details are up-to-date.

A telephone message on hold program is an integral part of your internal marketing strategy and should be monitored on a regular basis. Don’t let your messages on hold get stale, update them regularly and really impress your callers.

Posted in Marketing, Media Messages, On Hold Messages | Leave a comment

Audio Blogs

Posted on October 21, 2013 by mediagro

We’ve all heard about the written blog, but did you know audio blogs are just as effective? Commonly referred to as ‘podcasts’ an audio blog can really mix up the content on your website, and hopefully enhance your customers’ experience.

Extra Exposure through Audio Blogging
Audio blogging is also a great way to really maximise your audio. Think about it, whilst you’re playing your professional message on hold audio productions on your telephone lines, you could be getting added exposure by promoting it on your website. If you’ve got six messages on your telephone message on hold program, then that is effectively six audio blogs for you to post. A double whammy when you think about it – extra exposure for audio and also content for your website. It’s a win win really!

On Hold Messages for Blogging
The team at Media Messages would be more than happy to break your advertisements into single messages so that you can audio blog. From there, all you need to do is upload it to your website.

ORRRRRRR

How to Distribute as a Blog
You can get even more exposure for your audio productions, and set up a YouTube account and upload your audio production there – use your logo as the visual and your message on hold program in the background. Once you’ve uploaded it to you YouTube – just copy the coding and put it on your website, and voila you’ve got yourself an audio blog, promoting your business, and also content on your website and YouTube channel.

Get smart with your audio productions, and reach a larger audience through blogging and social media.

Posted in Advice, Audio Productions, Media Messages, On Hold Messages | Leave a comment

Avoid Frustrating Callers On Hold

Posted on October 20, 2013 by mediagro

I will admit, I can get easily frustrated, and recently when I was put on hold by a rather large company my patience was put to the test.

It is important to note, that before I was even put on hold, I was put through a good two minutes of trying to yell into the phone to a recorded message trying to let them know I wanted to speak to a customer service operator.

Anyway, back to the story at hand, when I was put on hold in the first instance, I heard a click and then … nothing. I didn’t know what to do. Had they put me on hold or hung up on me? I was starting to get a little irate, because seriously, I didn’t have time to go through the whole process again. Then all of a suddenly, a recorded female voice came on the line and said “We appreciate your call, but “Business” was experiencing a large number of calls and on hold times are longer than expected.” She then gave me the choice to hold on or call back later.

As I really needed to speak to a customer representative at this company I stayed on hold, but I was then placed back on hold to silence. Again I wasn’t sure if they had actually placed me on hold, or if I had been disconnected. I waited for what felt like a good 10 minutes (in real time it would have only been 20-30 seconds – but silence can drag), the female voiceover came back on the line with the same message. Again I waited – and repeated this process another three times.

By the time I actually reached a customer representative, I was pretty annoyed, and my perception of the company wasn’t a positive one. I felt like I had been on hold for ages (and I had), and most of the time I was second-guessing whether I was really on hold or if they had disconnected.

As an employee of a message on-hold company I can see many faults with the way this company conducted their telephone on hold communications. This business could have used this on hold time much more wisely. I had been on hold for a good 5-mintues, but because I had been on hold to silence, I thought it was longer than that – so I was pretty annoyed by the time I got to where I needed to be. Furthermore, this company could have promoted their other products and services to me during that time, and used a professional audio production to distract me from the fact that I was waiting.

Silence on hold is not good for any business, let alone a business that does put their callers on hold for long periods at a time. Imagine listening to a radio station playing dead-silence – they’d go broke. Shouldn’t businesses think the same about their phone lines? Telephone on hold time is valuable airtime to promote their products and services to core customers.

Posted in Media Messages, On Hold Messages | Leave a comment

The Importance of Sitemaps for your Website

Posted on October 17, 2013 by mediagro

The online marketing team at Media Messages love everything and anything to do with search engine optimisation. And trust us, this practice certainly keeps you on your toes! Whilst our copywriters specialise in writing compelling telephone message on hold scripts, our voice artists bring those scripts to life and our audio engineers turn them into pieces of audio advertising art, our role is to ensure our website comes up high in the Google rankings.

And we’re going to share some of our wisdom with you. Sitemaps are an extremely important component to your website. Think of your sitemap like a directory for the search engines – but a far more advanced one. You are basically supplying the search engines with a roadmap of your website – a roadmap that can be updated as your website changes.

A sitemap is especially important for new websites, as you can help the search engines like Google find and index your pages. A sitemap allows the search engines to find you without the need for internal or external links pointing to that particular page (however, links are extremely important for getting your rankings higher).

Creating and Submitting a Sitemap

Basically, you need to generate a sitemap, upload it to your website and then let the search engines know about it.

There are a number of ways to generate a sitemap – you can use a plug-in (great for WordPress websites, use a free online sitemap generator or download and install a sitemap generator. Simply do a search on Google and there will be a number of solutions to suit your website. Once you have created your sitemap – it is best to add it to your website. The footer is quite a popular place to put the sitemap – this way your audience can also access it, and the sitemap will effectively help with the navigation of your website.

Once you have generated your sitemap, simply log-in to your Google Webmaster Tools – and under crawl you will see a link called ‘Sitemaps’. Click on this link and add your sitemap. It’s as simple as that!

This is just one technique that can help your website rank better on the search engines – which will hopefully result in more traffic, which means a bigger chance of conversion.

Good luck peoples.

Posted in Media Messages, Online Marketing | Leave a comment

Google Webmaster and How it can Help your Website

Posted on October 16, 2013 by mediagro

In the modern world, you need a website; and if you have a website, you need to make sure that it is optimised and prepped for the search engines to find it and rank it favourably. In fact, if you are serious about seeing your website rank well, then you have probably already heard the term ‘Search Engine Optimisation’ (SEO).

In today’s blog, we are going to talk about one of the tools that will help you in your future optimisation of your website. Google Webmaster’s Tool is a great way to upload sitemaps for Google to crawl, analyse backlinks to your site; check internal links, identify best ranking keywords; stop certain pages from being crawled and to determine any errors on your site (such as duplicate titles, meta descriptions). Here we will give you a brief overview of Google Webmaster’s Tools

Site Messages
Just like an email system, this is will Google will contact you to notify you of possible errors for your site, for instance if GoogleBot cannot access your site, they will send you an email to let you know.

Structured Data
This is a great feature for websites who have information that would be handy for the searcher – for instance, if you are a holiday resort and want to show your high customer ratings. Or if you are a restaurant and you might like to show a snippet with the average price of your meals. Maybe you’re holding an event and like it to come up in the search. With this functionality – you can set up your site, so that Google can display the relevant information.

Search Queries
As the name suggests, this section of Google Webmaster tools identifies the queries made to find pages on your website – and what sort of traffic it’s generating. This is a great tool, as you can see backlinks to your site and your internal linking system, plus you are able to identify search queries that are benefiting your business.

Google Index
For your site to rank well, Google needs to be able to find that page. The Google Index shows you how many of your pages have been indexed by Google, what keywords are most prevalent on your site and (now this is a handy tool), you can delete old pages that no longer exist or that are lost from being indexed by Google; a great way to clean up your site – if you are unable to do it yourself first.

Crawl
If you want your website’s pages to show on Google, then the Google bots need to be able to ‘crawl’ your site. This functionality will brief you on crawl errors (not found pages or server errors) so that you can go back and fix them. You will also see how often Google is crawling your site (the more the merrier). You are also able to add site maps, which is a really important aspect for your SEO (another blog – watch this space) and you can also block certain pages from being crawled by Google – ones that you don’t want coming up in the search results – ie member log-ins and so forth.

Malware
Google will notify you in this area if your website has been affected by malicious software. You will then have to clean up your site and then request that Google conduct a malware review.

If you are serious about getting your website to rank well, then it is important that you utilise Google Webmaster Tools. Not only will it give you incredible insight into how your site is performing, but it is also a free application.

Media Messages uses Google Webmaster Tools on a daily basis that is how important our SEO is to our telephone music and messaging on hold business. Even though we specialise in the production of high quality, professional audio productions, we also have to ensure we maintain a good online presence.

Posted in Media Messages, On Hold Messages, Online Marketing | Leave a comment

Celebrating 9 Years of Telephone Messages On Hold

Posted on September 20, 2013 by mediagro

This week was quite a milestone for the team at Media Messages, as it was the business’ 9^th birthday. That’s right, nine fabulous years of producing the most professional, modern and compelling telephone messages on hold for hundreds of businesses.

Over the past nine years we have had the best time, signing up great Australian businesses and helping them launch their internal telephone music and message on hold campaigns; which has proven to be a great branding exercise for all concerned.

And we certainly have had fun in the process! Whilst many of our clients opt for corporate and professional productions to suit their company’s culture, we have had many other businesses who prefer to take a more creative and fun approach.

Voice Artists
Our voice artists have really had a chance to show us the versatility of their voices. Character voices, impersonations, accents and stylised voices. We’re proud to say we have a diverse team of voice talent, located both locally and internationally.

Copywriters
Writing for audio is a specialised area for copywriters, and our team of creatives have plenty of experience writing for broadcast. Thinking outside the square is all part of the job! No two scripts are ever the same, and our copywriters aim to produce a compelling script that will captivate your audience and hopefully increase caller inquiry.

Audio Engineers
The Media Group is led and run by two very capable and experienced audio engineers who have worked throughout Australia for various radio stations recording, mixing and editing A-grade audio productions some many of Australia’s big brands. They have a large network of contacts and the know how to really help you get the most out of your audio advertising.

Media Messages has accomplished a great deal in the last 9 years, and we’re happy to say that our accomplished team will not only provide you with a supreme service, but we also offer the most competitive prices in Australia, and fast turnaround times. Call us today and get a message on hold program for your business.

Posted in Media Messages, On Hold Messages | Leave a comment

Bad Excuses not to Install Telephone Messages On Hold

Posted on September 12, 2013 by mediagro

So you’ve had someone contact you recently about a telephone message on hold program, and well you’re just not quite sold. I mean why would you need a telephone message on hold system when you have staff answering your phone lines? Here are the top 4 bad excuses we hear from companies about why they don’t need telephone messages on hold.

1. We don’t put customers on hold
Really? Come on, think about it … you never have to transfer your callers to another staff member, or ask them to wait while you go and find out the answer to their question? Seriously guys, we all at some point need to put our customers on hold, and why not use this valuable air time to promote your business, even if it has to be done in a subtle way. If you were smart, you could leave them on hold slightly longer, just so they do hear your message.

2. Our callers don’t want to be sold to
Really? Then why are they calling you? Potential customers are calling to find out about your products and services, existing customers are calling about your products and services; and suppliers could be potential customers. Australian businesses spend a fortune on external marketing, and it really blows our minds that they don’t continue to do so once the phone has finally rung.

3. Our customers are happy with the radio or chimes?
Your customers might be happy with the radio, but what if you are advertising your competitors and lose out on a sale? Chimes are just extremely annoying, and make you feel like you have been waiting a lot longer than what you actually are – so we just simply don’t believe this argument. Furthermore, if you’re a commercial enterprise, you are expected to pay for the right to use the radio on your phone lines – if you’re going to do this, wouldn’t you prefer promoting your OWN business rather than your competitors?

4. Telephone Messages On Hold is Too Expensive!
At Media Messages, our telephone music and message on hold packages start from a very low $14.95 / week. You wouldn’t even get one radio commercial, print advertisement or a week’s worth of Google AdWords for this; and your message on hold system plays 24 / 7.

If you are serious about promoting your brand and sounding professional, then you must ensure your marketing continues once your phone starts ringing. Music and messages on hold is a relatively inexpensive way to promote yourself to your core customers. As a marketer, I just don’t understand how businesses (both large and small) don’t see the huge benefits in installing one of these packages.