A foolproof marketing strategy is essential to all businesses—that’s how they get their brand out there. One rookie mistake budding entrepreneurs make is undermining competition.
Even established brands know that the minute they start acting complacent, they can expect the market segment they are trying to tap to begin looking elsewhere, in the direction of those who know better than to rest on their laurels. Remember, it’s difficult to recoup a lost market share.
However, that all-too-real possibility can be mitigated. Buff up your marketing plan and compete at your highest level, but stay fair and square—remember the 10% marketing rule. Experts suggest that businesses use 10%, on average, of their annual revenues on marketing. Depending on the industry your business belongs to, you may need to spend less or more.
However, do not worry if you don’t have big bucks to spend on marketing. These days, digital marketing and provides cost-efficient options to businesses. You no longer have to pay exorbitant amounts for traditional marketing such as an ad spot on TV or a national newspaper.
One digital approach that does not get the attention it deserves is SMS marketing. And it’s high time you do something about that. Here’s everything you need to know about reaching your audience via old-school text messaging.
What is SMS marketing?
You have probably received a text message from a brand before, informing you about their latest offers. It likely caught you by surprise, but still, you opened the message and read its content. That’s SMS marketing in a nutshell.
Also known as mass texting or a text blast, SMS marketing seeks to promote a brand’s products and services using old-school text messaging. The method also aims to build brand loyalty and engagement.
Think of SMS marketing as the less flashy and dubious cousin of email marketing.
Between the two, you’d probably rather hang out with SMS marketing. One reason is that it’s safer to open a text message from a four-digit number than click a link from an unsolicited email. At worst, the latter might expose you to a phishing scam. Only 10% of SMS marketing messages are spam, compared to 50% of “marketing” emails.
SMS Marketing Overview
In the United States, SMS marketing’s market size was valued at $3.5 billion in 2018. Its estimated growth rate from 2019 to 2025 is at 20.3%. Experts forecast that by 2023, there will be 3.5 trillion text messages sent for the purpose of marketing a business.
These numbers are by no means surprising. While not many brands choose SMS marketing as their go-to when promoting their products and services, those who do can vouch for its efficacy.
There are 5 billion people worldwide who send and receive text messages—that’s a huge market right there. Most of these people will willingly open a text message from a brand. The open rate of SMS messages is 98%, and 90% of the time, they are opened within three minutes upon receipt.
SMS marketing offers businesses a host of benefits, including the following:
- Relationship building
- Customer engagement
- Leads collection and
- nurturing
- Excitement/hype generation
- Sales growth
And these benefits are just a text away, too. The process streamlines marketing into the barest essentials. A short message can reach a vast market from a variety of demographics.
Why try out SMS Marketing?
An agile business has stable and fixed foundations. However, it does not shy away from swaying with the times. As an entrepreneur, you must always look for new ways to do things while staying true to your brand’s vision.
SMS marketing can seamlessly align with your existing business paradigm. On top of that, the rewards you may reap from this marketing approach are legitimately noteworthy.
Fast message delivery
Hourly, 10% of Americans check their phones at least 20 times. And within five minutes of waking up, 33% of consumers will check their phones. That right there is a captive audience. You no longer have to go the extra mile to catch their attention. You hit send, and your message reaches a wide demographic fast and easily.
High read and response rates
Only 21% of marketing emails are opened. The clickthrough rate (CTR) for opened emails is under 3%. That means a very small segment of email marketing targets see what brands send out.
Meanwhile, 98% of marketing text messages are opened, with a CTR of 17% on average and a conversion rate of 45%. While these figures seem insignificant, when you factor in the sheer number of recipients, you can consider it a triumph on your end.
A semblance of personalization
Americans are exposed to between 4,000 and 10,000 ads a day. Most of these are impersonal despite being algorithm-based. However, with a text message, you are opening a direct line of communication with your target audience. That is as good as personalized customer service.
Your message recipient will appreciate you reaching out to them. In fact, six out of 10 consumers either positively respond to or don’t mind receiving text messages from businesses.
You might argue that the same could be said with email marketing. However, remember that people are more attached to their phones’ inboxes than their emails. Those emails often end up in the folder or are buried deep in an inbox of unread notifications from different online subscriptions.
Budget-friendly
Given its high open and CTR rates, you get the most bang for your buck with SMS marketing. Your ROI is assured, and the bigger the volume of your sent messages is, the higher chances you’ll get of a bargain deal. You may ask for price quotes from various providers and see who offers the most cost-efficient service.
When to carry out SMS Marketing?
Any day is a good day to send out an SMS marketing. Any season is a good season to get in touch with your audience. But there are specific instances when text-blasting your existing customer database comes in handy. Here are some of them.
Promotional deals
Via SMS marketing, you can inform your customers about upcoming promotional events and unmissable deals. For better CTR, include a link to your time-sensitive offers’ landing pages. The operative word is time-sensitive—all things limited prove enticing to consumers. They won’t delay seeing what you have to offer.
Couponing
This marketing strategy has existed for a long time, but these days, you have SMS coupons as viable alternatives to traditional printed coupons. The former has higher redemption rates, and you get to save on paper costs, too. Your vouchers will reach many customers at the same time, boosting physical and digital store traffic.
Games and competitions
These are fun marketing strategies that work two-fold. If you have an existing database of customers, sending out interactive SMS marketing allows you to keep your audience engaged.
On the other hand, if you need to build a database from scratch, simple prizes can motivate your customers to give you their contact details. It’s a win on your end, no matter how you slice it.
Flash sales
If your inventory has gotten out of hand, you could have a flash sale. Dispose of old stocks ASAP to give way to fresh goods by sending out text messages with a sense of urgency. Incorporate phrases like “Until supplies last” to make your recipients know they can’t afford to bide their time. The gist: the best time to buy is now.
Loyalty programs
While it’s true that you should treat all customers the same way, your most loyal patrons deserve a little something special from time to time. Create a segment from your database comprising your most loyal customers. Via SMS, inform them about exclusive rewards and deals.
Alerts and notifications
Use SMS marketing to let your customers know how your business is doing. Do you have newly-arrived products? Do you have an event planned? You can use these alerts and notifications to remind customers about abandoned online carts or ways to shop safely online, among other specific scenarios.
Customer service
There’s nothing more frustrating for a customer than to wait and wait for a customer service representative to reply to their queries. Via SMS marketing, these responses will be in real-time, thus eliminating the risk of irate clients.
Who receives your SMS Marketing?
The audience for your SMS marketing campaigns comes from your database. That is something you have to build from scratch. If you have a physical folder of past clients with their contact details, you can collate these numbers, which will take too long. Alternatively, you can fashion your database-building efforts into a marketing effort unto itself.
For example, you may advertise games and competitions where you give out awesome prizes. To join, customers must send a message or reply to your SMS account. The number of opt-ins you’ll get will depend on how tempting the terms of your campaign are.
Another approach is to collect numbers digitally via web forms after check-out, mobile sign-up widgets, and click-to-text buttons. These portals may be incorporated into your website.
However, the most favored and acceptable approach is via keywords. You can promote a specific keyword via traditional marketing, such as a TV commercial, newsprint ad, billboard, etc.
Interested customers must send the keyword to your number to opt-in to your SMS campaigns. This is the least intrusive and misleading approach, at least compared to click-to-text buttons and sign-up widgets whose workings not a lot of people will easily grasp.
Where to look for SMS Marketing inspiration?
There are many ways to carry out your SMS marketing campaign. You may choose to personalize the content that you send out, or you can even segment your recipients depending on their demographic details, such as gender, age, and location. Your campaign’s success will rely on the system you put in place. You can get a few ideas from these inspiring stories.
Seattle Sun Tan
This business is a tanning salon with 35 locations spread across the Pacific Northwest. They employed SMS marketing to promote offers and discounts. However, they lacked an existing database of clients’ contact details, so they built a database from scratch via in-store, digital, and traditional campaigns.
In 30 days, Seattle Sun Tan’s database of SMS subscribers reached 4,774. This led to sales peaking at $196,100. Another impressive takeaway is how the SMS subscribers who conducted business with the salon in response to the discount offer spent $500 more than walk-in clients who did not participate in the campaign.
4theCultr
This online superstore has an admirable business proposition: to connect consumers with products from black entrepreneurs. Their SMS marketing database mostly comprises customers who opted-in upon check-out (86%). 4theCultr sends out notification texts to customers within 30 minutes of them abandoning a cart. They compose their messages as sensitively as possible, using social engineering not to rub customers the wrong way. The result is 18% CTR with a 100% conversion rate.
Eu Natural
This herbal supplement brand employed SMS marketing to gain repeat business from walk-in clients via exclusive promos. Their initial text blast gave customers a keyword to redeem a free bottle upon their next purchase. This simple offer quickly grew the brand’s customer base. Eu Natural also used SMS marketing for time-sensitive campaigns, such as Black Friday promos, which resulted in a whopping 563% increase in ROI, and for community building and conducting loyalty programs.
Dreamland Baby
Tara Williams, a mother of four, founded this brand. Their flagship product is a weighted blanket. Dreamland Baby’s first SMS marketing effort generated a 2000% increase in ROI, with sales peaking at a rise of 300% in the first couple of months. This was a considerable step up from their failed social media marketing efforts, which helped drive traffic but not actual customer conversion.
How to best practice SMS Marketing?
One of the major setbacks of SMS marketing is inadvertently turning off your customer base. You can easily fall into the trap of bombarding your audience with messages that your recipients end up annoyed and disinterested in whatever you have to say. However, you can avoid SMS spamming your target market by following the following marketing best practices.
Never forget to ask for permission
Give your customers the freedom to opt in or not to your messages. Just because you have their number does not mean you can start sending them messages without their consent. So, for your first message, ask your customer’s permission to receive your messages now and in the future. If they reply in the affirmative, good for you; if not, move on to other leads.
Be time-conscious
This is for the benefit of you and your target audience. No one wants to receive a text message about a pair of shoes at an ungodly hour. If you commit this grave mistake, your recipients might block your messages. Also, paying attention to which part of the day you send out your messages will ensure that you are not wasting your efforts. For example, lunchtime during weekdays is great timing. People are normally predisposed to check their phones and potentially engage with whatever message they receive during these hours.
Get personal
Address your recipient using their name, not some generic honorific. Customers like to feel as if they are on intimate terms with the brands they patronize.
Clearly state your value proposition
Do not send out generic messages that don’t accomplish anything. Instead, clearly outline what you have to offer a customer. Your SMS recipients do not have the time to decipher what you are selling. Here the key is proper message structuring—you only have 160 characters to work with, so compose your message so that no space goes wasted and all the nitty-gritty of your offer is mentioned. End with a persuasive call to action.
Stay on-brand
Do not confuse your audience. Your message should sound the same way across all media or platforms. Get your branding right, and it will be easier for your messages to resonate with your customers.
Now, text away
Whenever people talk about digital marketing, they usually ignore the usual suspects, such as Search Engine Optimization, Content Marketing, and Pay-Per-Click. SMS marketing has been in the backseat far too long—that’s a sorry situation for something that delivers just as well as its better-known siblings in terms of ROI.
You must be willing to try out new things if you are determined to get your brand message across to the right audience. After all, being adaptable is a trait vital to the success of any business-minded individual. So, be willing to take a risk—calculated, that is—with a new marketing method that may not be that familiar to you.
Take a cue from the SMS marketing success stories cited above. Learn the ins and outs of the method. Find the most reliable and competent SMS marketing partner. And once you are ready to be heard and remembered, text away.
