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SMS marketing is a great way to connect with your customers and grow your business. It’s a simple, cost-effective way to reach out and connect with people who are interested in what you have to offer. This article will discuss the basics of SMS marketing and how you can use it to grow your business.
There are so many different ways to market your business, it can be a little overwhelming. As a small business, you may not have the resources to invest in expensive advertising campaigns or hire an outside marketing firm.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t get your business out there and drive sales. In this blog post, we’ll go over everything you need to know about using SMS marketing for your business. This is a strategy that’s commonly used by businesses of all sizes because of its low cost and ease of setup.
How To Use SMS Marketing To Grow Your Business
1. Send Promotions
This is the best way to notify existing and potential clients and customers about a new promotion you’re about to have. The people working at messente.com know that everyone pays more attention if they’re reached out directly about these things. Whatever you’re planning on doing, getting the word out this way is going to be beneficial.
This can be anything from sending out coupons or discounts, to sending reminders for appointments or events.
You can also use SMS marketing to run contests or quizzes and to gather customer feedback. For example, you could send out a survey to gauge customer satisfaction with your product or service.
Related: What is the Role of Push Notification in Marketing?
2. Make The Messages Concise
Don’t go into too much detail when writing the message. Keep it short, sweet, and to the point. This will ensure that people actually read the message and are more likely to act on it.
People are more likely to respond to a call to action if it is clear and concise.
SMS marketing can be a great way to grow your business, but only if you use it effectively. By making sure your messages are concise, you can make sure that they are read and acted upon by your target audience. Give it a try and see how SMS marketing can help you grow your business!
Conciseness is key when writing SMS marketing messages! Keep them brief, so your target audience will actually read them, and make sure to include a call-to-action.
3. Write Personalized Messages
The reaction of each individual will be better if they receive a personalized message. To write these, do the following things:
- Get to know your audience
- Find out what messaging will work for them
- Write the message in a way that is natural for you
- Make sure the message is from you, not a company or brand
- Be friendly
- Keep it short and sweet
- Thank them for their time!
Once you have written the message, send it out and track the response.
Doing this will help you determine whether or not SMS marketing is right for your business. If it is, then continue writing messages that are personal and relevant to your audience. If not, then try another marketing tactic.
4. Use The Right Language
The language you use in your SMS marketing campaign will determine whether you succeed or not. Using the right language is a key to using SMS marketing successfully.
When using SMS marketing to promote your business, it’s important to use language that will appeal to your target audience. The language you use should be clear, concise, and easy to understand. Avoid using jargon or technical terms that your target audience may not be familiar with.
It’s also important to keep in mind the tone of voice you’re using in your SMS marketing campaign.
The tone of your messages should be friendly and helpful, not sales-y or pushy. You want your target audience to feel like you’re providing them with valuable information, not trying to hard-sell them on your product or service.
5. Ask For Feedback
Be sure to ask your customers for feedback after they receive your text messages. This will help you to understand what they think of your SMS marketing campaign and allow you to make necessary changes. You can also use this feedback to improve your product or service.
Asking for feedback is a great way to use SMS marketing to grow your business.
For example, you could send a text message to your customers asking them to rate your product or service on a scale of one to five. You could also ask them to leave a review on your website or social media page.
6. Offer Incentives
Incentives help a lot when you want people to sign up for something, and that’s no different when it comes to SMS marketing. Offering a discount or coupon code is a great way to get people to opt-in to your text messages.
You can promote your incentive on your website, on social media, or even in print materials like flyers or posters.
Make sure your offer is something that people will actually want, and make sure it’s for a product or service that you sell. Make sure it’s valuable enough that people will want to take advantage of it.
7. Mind The Timing
The right timing can make or break an SMS marketing campaign. No one wants to be woken up by a brand at midnight, but being the first to send a message in the morning can make someone’s day.
Depending on your product or service, you’ll need to find the right balance of being timely without being intrusive.
For example, a restaurant could send a message at lunchtime reminding people of their specials, while a retailer might send a sale alert in the evening.
A Step-by-step Guide for SMS Marketing For Your Business
Before You Start Your SMS Marketing Campaign
Before you start any SMS marketing campaign, it’s important to pay attention to the legalities. Not only are there regulations on how many texts a customer can receive without opting in, but there are also laws dictating what you can and cannot do with your recipients’ information.
There are some restrictions on when and how businesses can send out SMS messages to their customers.
Some of these include:
- You must have your customer’s express written consent before sending an SMS message
- You can only contact someone once per week for the first three months unless they opt-in for further communication
- You must provide a ‘stop’ option at any time
Step 1: Decide on a goal
First and foremost, you need to decide on a specific goal for your SMS marketing campaign. Are you trying to sell a product? Get people to attend an event?
Step 2: Determine your audience
The most important question to answer before you get started is who you are targeting with your campaign.
If you have a wide customer base, pinpointing one specific segment of your customer base for this SMS marketing campaign can make your life easier.
So for example, if you are targeting customers between the ages of 25 and 45 living in the city, it will allow the SMS campaign to be more effective as it will be able to specifically target that group.
Once you have determined who your target audience is, it’s time to figure out how many customers are in that group. To help with this, use an Excel spreadsheet or some other type of program for simple calculations.
Step 3: Pick your tool(s)
To help you make the most of SMS marketing, we’ve compiled a list of some of our favorite tools. The first step is to pick your SMS/Text Marketing tool.
There are tons of different tools out there that specialize only in text messages. These are all great tools for sending out texts and managing campaigns, but they don’t offer much else.
You may want to look into other platforms that can send out texts and integrate with other apps to better manage your customer base.
We recommend using Facebook messenger- it has been designed specifically for business purposes and integrates seamlessly with your Facebook Ads account so you can target leads that have responded positively to your ads.
Determine your messaging platform
The first step to any SMS marketing campaign is figuring out which messaging platform you want to use.
There are a few different options, including:
- Using a traditional mobile carrier like AT&T or Verizon
- Using a text message aggregator like Twilio
- Using an app for your phone like GroupMe or Whatsapp
Which one you choose will depend on the needs of your business. If you have a lot of customers with iPhones and iPads, then using Apple’s iMessage would be the best option.
If you have many Android users, then Google Hangouts would be the best option. Chances are that your customers will be more familiar with these apps, and they’re free to download and easy to use.
Step 4: Write your ad copy
The ad copy can be the key to your success. If you have a strong, persuasive message, your subscriber will be more likely to respond.
SMS marketing is more than just sending out messages for the sake of sending them out. You need to build an audience and convince those subscribers that they want to keep hearing from you again and again.
As such, it’s important that your message is both compelling and on-point with what they’re interested in.
Step 5: Select Your Timing and Dates
SMS marketing is a cost-effective promotional strategy. You can send out as many text messages as you need for the price of one text message.
But, before sending out any messages, it’s important to consider when your target audience will be most receptive to receiving them
For example, if you’re trying to target mothers with young kids, it might not be a good idea to reach out on the weekend.
On the other hand, if you’re trying to promote an upcoming event or sale going on at your business, it might be best for you to send messages during that time period so people know about it ahead of time.
Keep In Touch With Regular Updates
One of the great ways to use SMS marketing effectively is to keep in touch with your customers on a regular basis. Take the time to send out monthly updates about your company, new products or special deals you are running.
This will not only make you stand out but also give them an incentive to stay in touch and come back again.
Step 6: Send your ad campaign live
After having set up your SMS campaign, it is time to let it fly. Launch your campaign with a bang and send those first few messages out.
If you are marketing to the masses, you can use an autoresponder so that your audience gets bombarded with texts from you without any further input from you.
Just be careful not to overwhelm them with too many messages at once! In order to avoid this, we recommend sending one message at a time for the best results.
The first one should go out as soon as possible after setting up the campaign. Follow up with another message every day or two thereafter until you see real results coming in.
Once things start happening, you can increase the frequency to one text per week or so. Once people start responding positively and make contact with your company, keep them engaged by sending content like coupons or special offers via text message on a regular basis.
You should also send important alerts such as shipping notifications and order confirmations directly to their phones as well!
Drive Sales With SMS Marketing
To drive sales with SMS marketing, you need to use the methods described above. Some of the important pointers to remember include:
- Texting is the most direct way to get in touch with customers.
- Offer exclusive deals to your subscribers.
- Use your text marketing to create urgency around a sale or promotion.
- Ask for feedback from customers and offer an incentive for their input.
Conclusion
SMS marketing is a very effective way to advertise your business, but you need to know how to do it. Send out notifications on every promotion you do and write concise and personalized messages using the right language.
Make sure to ask for feedback and always offer incentives. Finally, always send the messages at the right time depending on your business!
Whether you’re trying to get in touch with customers, drive sales or keep them coming back again and again, SMS marketing can help you achieve your business goals.
However, setting up an SMS marketing campaign isn’t easy. There are a lot of moving parts and potential roadblocks, ranging from whether or not your target audience even has access to text messages to the cost of sending out that many texts.
It’s a complicated process that requires a lot of upfront legwork. If you have read our previous article on the importance of SMS Marketing for your Business, you must know by now that it is one of the most effective ways to connect with your customers directly through their phones in a personal way.
