I've heard several places that it's ALWAYS good to test your advertisements so you know which work and which don't. It's useless to waste your money on ads that don't work, and it's foolish to not increase your ads that DO work if you want to grow.

What's the challenge?

How can you track which ads work and which don't without carry around a dozen cell phones?

What's the proposed solution?

Have a simple VoIP phone number which forwards the call (with optional "announcement" of where the lead came from).

Example Customer:

Let's say Joe has a flooring business and wants to try an ad in the local newspaper - He's unsure if the return on investment will be good or not and doesn't know how to test it.  Our solution proposes a distinct phone number for his ad, this number can ring in, have a brief announcement like "Thank you for calling about our special in the ____ paper, please hold whlie we connect you to Joe who will personally take care of your questions".. Then we forward the call to your phone number.

What's the cost?

This is why it's a gadget, right? What's the business model that works for you? I did tihs as a proof of concept for someone I know, pricing from BitShop is $5/month for up to 20 phone numbers and up to 2 simultaneous calls (i.e. 2 channels, 20 DIDs if you understand the terms)  - This includes real time reports online of activity upon the competion of each call.  The phone charges however come from a third party and we have partners in place to get you numbers quickly and cost effectively.

What's the cost per call from the third party? This depends on who we can source a local number for you from, but most major cities the cost is around $3/month for your first phone number and $2/month for each additional number. There is also a per minute fee of (usually) $0.04/minute (some phone numbers are costlier to call).