Businesses of all sizes and industries use all kinds of marketing strategies to make their brand visible and drive sales. Without any marketing effort, it can be hard for a business to penetrate the market, which translates to no growth and no profits.
Text message marketing is now being integrated into marketing strategies by most businesses. The integration results from stats that show a huge percentage of people own smartphones and prefer texting over talking, thus making SMS a more desirable marketing solution.
SMS Marketing
Text message marketing is digital marketing involving the communication of coupons, sales, promotions, and even news updates through short messaging services on mobile phones.
Whereas the SMS strategy works pretty well, it is best used as a component of a bigger marketing strategy that the business has. In this type of marketing, targeted consumers receive promotional messages on their phones, usually designed to stir certain reactions.
By delivering the messages, the business can direct the interested parties to the official website or landing pages where they can complete the sale.
SMS marketing has the potential to boost marketing efforts when it is handled the right way. So, how does this digital marketing help businesses boost sales?
1. Immediate And Direct Message Delivery
Text messages are the most direct marketing channels in the digital world. This is because they are delivered straight to the phones, and their chances of being opened and read are very high.
A person will likely read a message within the first three minutes of its delivery. Since text messages need no internet connectivity to be delivered, they are more direct, even when compared to emails and other social networks.
The other advantage of using the SMS strategy is that your targeted group does not even need to own smartphones to receive the messages.
The immediate and direct message delivery puts your company in a better position to push exclusive offers, sales, contests, promotions, and even surveys with ease. The reaction you get from recipients will depend on how you have packaged the message, but it is definitely a marketing effort that will reap great rewards.
2. Personalized Messages
Text messages have more impact because they tend to be more personal than other communication forms. The fact that they are delivered to personal inboxes and that you can also personalize them as much as possible makes them very good marketing strategies.
Through the messages, you can use friendly and casual language that appeals to the individuals receiving them, making it possible for you to build personal relationships with your consumer as a business.
You can further improve the SMS results by customizing them to create that personal feel that soothes the consumers to take the necessary action. You can incorporate features such as videos, audio clips, emojis, and GIFs in a multimedia message to stir a targeted reaction.
3. Brand Awareness
The other way text messaging can boost marketing efforts for your business is through brand awareness. Before reading a message, people check to see who has sent it.
The more you send the messages, the more the users become familiar with your brand and what you have to offer them. Mass texting can help you attract and engage customers throughout their buying process, and the results are good for your business.
When you are consistent and personal with the messages you are sending out, you will be able to foster loyalty and trust among your target audience.
Loyal customers, on the other hand, are more likely to recommend your brand to their friends, easily expanding your awareness as a brand. It all takes a carefully structured strategy, so you do not end up becoming an irritation with constant messages.
4. Quick Customer Feedback
In text messaging, customer feedback is as quick and direct as the message delivery. Such feedback is helpful for any business because it can help you know which areas you can improve on and what needs the customers have.
Feedback can also help you discover market trends and understand customer preferences better. Even when the customer feedback is not positive, it can go a long way in helping you improve the SMS strategy you are implementing to get more positive results.
A simple way to get customer feedback to weigh how your strategy works is by initiating polls and surveys via text messages. The more you know, the better equipped you will be to create a marketing strategy with high winning potential.
5. High Conversion Rates
Conversion rates in SMS marketing seem to be higher than in other channels, such as emails. It is probably because of how simple the messages are. SMSs are usually short and to the point; therefore, they do not bog down the recipients.
A few lines let the consumer know what products and services you sell and send them right into the call to action, concisely and clearly. The truth is mobile users respond more to the call to action in messages than other marketing channels.
Including text messaging in your marketing strategy will therefore prove beneficial and greatly boost your results.
6. No Spam Filters
Unlike email marketing, text messages do not have the chance of ending up in the spam folder and going to waste. Email marketers are constantly dealing with filters that direct their efforts to spam, and this makes their efforts less effective.
SMS marketing eliminates the possibilities, thus assuring you that the efforts you put in will at least reach the targeted group, even though it might not result in a sale.
With text messaging, there is no need to constantly remind customers to whitelist short codes to ensure messages land where they are intended. This text messaging feature is very helpful in boosting marketing efforts.
Summary
The SMS marketing strategy you put together as a business can largely determine the results you get from your efforts. You can use many features and angles with the messaging to improve the results you get.
But whichever you choose, ensure it is direct and concise. You should also make it possible for consumers to opt-in or out so you are left with a genuinely interested group you can engage with constantly without becoming an irritation.
