When someone attempts to call your business at a time when you can’t answer the phone, they can be greeted by a voicemail message pre-recorded by you, the business owner. This could be your first opportunity to personally make an impression on a customer, so you should make it a good one.

If your company’s current voice greeting covers the bare basics without conveying a friendly image, you should replace that message with a freshly recorded one that ticks all of the following boxes…

Replicate your firm’s online persona

How your company comes across online is a key part of its branding. When someone who is familiar with the persona you portray on social media hears your voicemail greeting, they should get the impression that the same person both oversees the social media side and recorded this message.

This strategy can pay off handsomely because, as Business 2 Community explains, stories can be more effective when told through a range of mediums.

Recite from a written script

You shouldn’t post fresh content to your company’s social media channels in a spontaneous fashion. Similarly, you ought to resist taking the same approach to recording your voicemail greeting.

Think long and hard about how to phrase and deliver your voicemail message and put the precise words in writing. These tactics will ease your efforts to speak in a manner aligning with your overall marketing goals. You could opt to regularly revise your script at later points, as will become clearer…

Encourage the recipient to feel engaged

As you speak words being recorded into voicemail form, you are creating the opening of a conversation. Yes, there could be a significant delay to when you hear the response – but the point remains that you should foster engagement by posing an open question.

You could opt for a question that is peculiar but, as a result, memorable – such as “What is the name of your favourite TV show?” You could then comment on the caller’s choice when you get back to them.

Portray positivity and friendliness

You wouldn’t expect people to flock to your social media pages if the voice there was unfriendly and cold, so why anticipate a positive response to a voicemail greeting that strikes the same tone?

Even just phrasing can help to turn a downbeat message into an upbeat one. “Sorry, I can’t take your call”,  for example, encourages much more despondency than “I’m currently out of the office, but I will call you back on my return”.

Refresh your voicemail greeting as appropriate

In the corporate sphere, a voicemail greeting doesn’t need to be updated as often as a Facebook or Twitter page. However, leaving that greeting untouched for too long could lose you valuable opportunities to inform potential customers about your latest deals.

Don’t just descend into promotional spiel, however; keep your message informative, such as with office opening times.

Finally, technology can often help make things a little easier. For example, Planet Numbers offers a service allowing you to quickly receive newly recorded voicemail messages in your inbox as mp3 files for your convenience.