You need to be creative if you want to grow your business. New marketing strategies have proven to be tremendously cost-effective. Text message marketing is among them.
A growing number of small businesses have discovered the benefits of text message marketing. If you are still skeptical, then you should keep reading to learn more.
Why Should Your Company Invest in Text Message Marketing?
Text messaging has become perhaps the most popular form of communication, even more so than social media. One study found that, in just a three-month span of time, cell phone users collectively spent 85 billion hours — or about nine million years — sending text messages.
As a business owner, you should capitalize off of this communication medium. You won’t be alone. It should be no surprise that more and more companies are turning to text messaging services for SMS- and MMS-based marketing campaigns and customer engagement. Customers appreciate the opportunity to engage with their favorite brands via text, because it’s easier for them, and they place value on the marketing text messages they receive from brands. You could see much better returns on your marketing investment from using a text message service to engage with customers than you get from more traditional channels, like print or TV or even email. Here’s why it’s time for your company to embrace text message marketing.
Customers Want to Text with You
While some people might still insist that voice calls are the better mode of communication, the vast majority of people prefer text messages over calls — especially those born since 1980. People send twice as many text messages as they make telephone calls, and they don’t just want to text with their friends and loved ones.
Customers would much rather text with their favorite brands than engage with them via any other means, even phone calls (perhaps, for some customers, especially phone calls). Ninety percent of sales leads prefer a marketing text message to a phone call, and using text messages with a lead can boost sales conversion by as much as 100 percent. And customers know that they have to give their permission to companies in order to receive marketing texts, so they trust the texts that they receive from their favorite brands. Ninety-eight percent of marketing text messages get opened within 15 minutes of receipt, and response rates for texts are 209 percent higher than they are for phone calls.
Text Message Marketing Aligns with Eco-Friendly Business Models
Are you committed to running an eco-friendly business? Mobile marketing can be a great way to lower your carbon footprint, since mobile communications don’t require as much energy as paper or driving to face-to-face networking events. You may want to develop a sustainable mobile marketing strategy, which can include text message marketing. You can discuss it in your marketing literature and emphasize how your mobile marketing strategy contributes to your sustainable business model.
You’ll Deepen Customer Relationships and Boost Engagement
Your customers have their phones in their hands, on their person or within arm’s reach most of the time. That’s what makes a text message service for business such an effective way to reach customers and boost engagement. Customers are almost always willing to open a text message, and most will opt-in to receiving texts from your brand because they like the perks. You can use text message marketing to reach out to customers with special promotional offers and discounts, and that’s primarily what most customers sign up for when they opt to get text messages from you.
However, text message marketing isn’t just for handing out coupons. Many brands use it to deepen customer relationships, grow brand loyalty, and boost engagement by offering the ability to make or cancel appointments and reservations, or even just contact someone and ask questions. Customers also love insider news about the brand. They want to get texts about events you have coming up. They’re eager to engage with their favorite brands regarding their preferences, dislikes, and likes, and text surveys, polls, or comment forms give them a format through which to do so.
Text message marketing also gives you the opportunity to learn more about your existing customers, and deepen those customer relationships to strengthen your brand. Text messages are much more relaxed and less intrusive than phone calls, which is why everyone seems to prefer them over voice contact. That means you can use business text messaging to carry on one-on-one conversations with individual customers via text. They’re also pretty much instantaneous. That means you can send last-minute texts to groups of customers advertising, for example, a special at your restaurant or some other urgent promotion that requires a quick response.
You can also use text message marketing to draw in new customers with the appeal of regular discount offers, insider information, contests, and other perks. You can use your brick-and-mortar storefront, website, and more traditional media channels to advertise your text messaging program. Once you have permission to interact with new customers via text, you can draw them in further with individualized service on a level that’s only possible when you can send messages to your entire customer base and have them read at high rates.
Text Message Marketing Can Do Wonders for Your Brand
If your company hasn’t yet started a text message marketing program, it’s time you did. You can get astonishing returns on your investment in text message marketing, and customers will love having the ability to engage with your brand using their favorite mode of communication. It’s a great choice for all concerned, and one that can help your business grow and thrive long into the future.
Ryan Kh is an experienced blogger, digital content & social marketer. Founder of Catalyst For Business and contributor to search giants like Yahoo Finance and MSN. He is passionate about covering topics like big data, business intelligence, startups & entrepreneurship. Follow him on twitter: @ryankhgb.
Text message stock photo by Branislav Nenin/Shutterstock
