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Telephone -- like other tools -- can be used in a variety of ways. Unfortunately, most people settle on mostly one phone-based marketing activity -- cold calling.

I know there are training programs out there teaching how to fall in love with cold calling. Perhaps you enjoy interrupting people, trying to speak as fast as you can so that you can squeeze in your entire sales pitch before they hang up on you. Frankly, I prefer to chew on nails for a week than to make one cold call. But hey -- that's just me. Besides, the best cold call is when a prospect calls you -- but that's a subject for another article.

So here are my top three tips for using phone-marketing effectively.

Top Tip 1 - Call existing clients or prospects.

Remember the saying "don't preach to the choir"? Well, it's wrong! You should only preach to the choir!

Instead of bothering strangers, connect with your existing customers or people who have indicated interest in your services or products.

Top Tip 2 - Have a specific reason to call.

Make your message relevant to the person on the receiving end. If you are not sure what you have to offer that's valuable to your clients and could be shared by phone, you should be looking for a job... But if you insist on running your own business here are a few tips:

- Call to say thank you! Yep, that simple. I just spoke to an internet marketer who makes it a point to call all new online customers within one day. With a bit of clever technology he often makes a live, personal call to the new clients within minutes of them placing an order. Can you imagine how blown away his customers are?

- Educate customers how to better use your product or service. If you help them get the most out of working with you, they will be more successful and more likely to recommend you to others.

- Introduce them to a new resource you found helpful. By the way, could you see an opportunity for making this recommendation a strategic alliance?

- Invite customers and prospects to a special event and tell them to bring a friend or business associate. It doesn't even have to be your event. Are you planning on going to a workshop with a great speaker? Why not bring along a few clients and prospects?

- Make current customers aware of exclusive offers available only to them. Hey, they pay your bills, why not put something special for them once in a while.

- Remind them about attending an event. Yep, sometimes inviting people is not enough. So call to refresh their memory -- they will thank you for it.

- Use your call in conjunction with other marketing tools to build anticipation. For example you could make a call to announce that a special mailer will be arriving in the mail-box and email-box thus increasing your chances of your written marketing message actually being noticed...

I'm sure you are now asking: "couldn't I just use email to do all of that"? You certainly could, but... If you relay on email alone you lose a very person aspect of using your voice. Plus, with a click of a button -- puff -- and your email is gone! Your call has a higher chance of making it through.

Which brings me to my last point...

Top Tip 3 - Use technology to automate your calls.

Yes, I'm talking about pre-recorded messages -- like the ones that interrupt your dinner. Well, actually not quite like that... Before you rush to judgment that this stuff doesn't work, let me explain a couple of reasons why it does work.

Unlike those annoying calls from strangers pitching new credit cards or better mortgage rates I'm suggesting to leave messages for people you have already done business with in the past or who specifically requested you send them more information. That's a big difference!

In addition, the technology today makes it possible for the call to disconnect if a live person answers so you don't alienate people by making them talk to a computer!

Finally, distributing a pre-recorded message makes it possible to contact hundreds and thousands of people with just a fraction of the time it would take to make personal calls.

Let's just say that you are billing a $100 per hour of your time. Assuming that each call could take about a minute (and that's a fast call!) you could make about 60 calls per hour. Your cost is $1.66 per call! And you will get more and more tired and less and less energetic with every call -- decreasing the quality of your message.

As an alternative an automated phone broadcast can cost you about 14 cents per minute. And every message is your BEST MESSAGE!

For example, sending a 30 second message to 2000 customers would cost you $140. (half a minute x $0.14 per minute x 2000 customers). What a bargain! It's fast, it's cheap and it gets through! By the way -- imagine personally leaving 2000 messages... That would take you over 33 hours... Good luck trying!

Bottom line to this long winded explanation is this: making THE RIGHT TYPE OF CALL THE RIGHT WAY in conjunction with modern technology and other marketing tools can make a huge difference in your business.

BONUS GIFT Want to hear four sample marketing recordings and read my comments what makes them effective? Listen to them here...

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