I am acquiring status now, I've been doing this for years. I am a member of Angie's List affiliate program, where I have been approved as many phone numbers as I need for my "offline" campaign. I am stuck as to what I should do with these "toll free 1-888 phone numbers". I live in the 13th largest city in the USA. I do not have a ton of money, not many of us do...
You can setup a call center. And hire some people to help you answer call. Or you can try offline marketing by calling customer to drive sales.
Mentos suggestion about calling customers to drive sales is very good. We use five toll free lines and among our strategies we also do thank you calls to both buyers and inquiries as well. Creating a short call time for answering questions or product/service support might be an option too.
I'm sorry for the miscommunication, something I do a lot on here, the toll-free numbers are already linked to Angie's List call center. It's only open from 8-5pm.
Sorry, I still don't really understand. You have 1-800 numbers to promote for local services, right? People call in, leave a message for a local service, and you get some kind of commission when the deal goes through? If that's the case, one way to promote locally is to use the well known brand of AngiesList to your advantage. Have you ever heard of "hot pocket" advertising? It involves creating little fliers you put in pouches that can fit on signs, posts, basically anywhere. You can either purchase those little pockets in bulk along with the little fliers that fit inside, OR, if you're low on cash, you can print out little fliers yourself, cut up envelopes, and use them as pouches. Then seriously just go around town everywhere and post those pouches on every pole you can find. In front of stores, in parking lots, ask local businesses if you can put them up by their counter. Tell them abotu AngiesList and if they are a business which can benefit from it and sign up with them, they'll probably agree to putting those fliers up around their business.