Over the holidays, I found myself talking to family and old friends about what I've been up too lately. I'd mention this website and they'd get a puzzled look on their face and respond, "VoIP what that"? Almost everyone had no clue what VoIP is or how it works.
So then, I'd ask them if they'd seen any Vonage commercials on TV. Still many thought they might have heard of
Vongage, but weren't sure if they had. So, then being the musically inclined person I am started singing the Vonage theme song "Woo Hoo" by the 5,6,7,8's (a band).
It was like watching a light bulb turn on in each individuals head. They had seen the Vonage commercials, but the commercial was only being remembered for their theme song not their services. From an article at (
www.CIO-Today.com), "VoIP might be one of the fastest-growing sectors in the tech industry these days, but that doesn't mean Americans know what the term means. In a recent poll by Harris, for example, one in five think VoIP is a European hybrid car. Another 10 percent of the 1,006 people questioned by Harris said they thought VoIP was a low-carb vodka."
Perhaps that is because VoIP marketing is confusing customers. Why might I be saying this you ask? Well, some newly released data for September's traffic on Yahoo! Search Services show The Top 10 searched-for keywords dealing with VoIP in Yahoo!'s September search traffic:
- VoIP 1,407,465
- IP Telephony 558,847
- Broadband Phone 306,048
- Internet Phone 272,213
- Voice Over IP 160,642
- Internet Telephony 125,885
- VoIP Phone 91,445
- VoIP Solution 81,667
- VoIP Service 80,766
- Business VoIP 78,558
Unfortunately, "internet phone technology doesn't go by one name the marketers can agree on. If it did, you wouldn't have the wild variety of searchers who are using related terms to look for more or less the same thing."
Would marketing "VoIP" be better off if everyone was singing to the same tune? Only time will tell.