Marketing wordnumbers for use with GOOG411

As automated voice-based search directories grow in popularity, businesses with exotic and hard-to-pronounce names may be at a disadvantage. For instance, if you call a typical automated voice search directory and want to find the phone number for a restaurant called 'Oaxaca' or 'Ame' or perhaps a nightclub called 'ThéâtrO' or 'Babalúu', you may have a pretty hard time getting the voice recognition software to understand you. 'Voice searching' instead by generic categories such as 'restaurants' or 'nightclubs' might also be a lost cause since it may be too onerous to listen through the long list of results.

Goog411 - Google's free voice search service for business telephone directory information - is the only automated (sans a live person to help you) voice search directory with a unique feature that provides users with the ability to search for the name of a business by entering its wordnumber. A wordnumber is constructed by spelling a word using the numbers on your keypad, such as 9256278 for Walmart or 8294 for taxi.

Businesses with hard-to-pronounce names might circumvent voice recognition obstacles by marketing their wordnumber for use in combination with Goog411. (This is assuming that customers know how to spell the names of the businesses they frequent.) How would this work? Since Goog411 works by first narrowing the search to within the user's preference of city and state, a restaurant or club named 'Babalúu' in a certain city will likely be the first, and possibly only, result if the user entered its wordnumber, 2222588. Goog411 conveniently offers to connect the user to the telephone number and also to 'Map It' (receive a SMS message with a link to a map).

Babaluu's customers don't even need to memorize the wordnumber - customers only need to know what to do after calling Goog411. "For reservations, call 1-800-GOOG-411 and press the numbers that correspond with the word Babaluu" might be part of the restaurant's marketing message on advertisements. Certainly branding the wordnumber might even work if the wordnumber is easy to remember. Registering the dotcom wordnumber at 2222588.com, which would redirect the user to the business homepage, would be a natural extension of this idea.

There are literally thousands of companies in every country that may lose business because automated free voice search directory services will be stumped by callers who - for a myriad of reasons - are stumbling with the articulation of business names. The wordnumber is the perfect solution.