Do you run a small business? If so, you know how important it is to leverage affordable but effective marketing channels. You need to promote your brand without spending more than you can afford.
That’s why you should take advantage of text message marketing. After all, in the United States alone, approximately 96% of adults own a mobile phone. It’s clear SMS marketing represents a smart way to stay in touch with customers.
That’s not to say all text message marketing campaigns are equally strong. To improve your efforts, keep the following tips in mind.
Ask Current Followers to Opt-In
Your small business can’t benefit significantly from a text message marketing campaign if very few of your customers agree to receive text messages from your business. Thus, it’s important to focus on building a robust follower list.
This is much easier to do if you currently have other customer lists to leverage. For instance, perhaps you already have an email newsletter. You could ask your email followers if they would also like to receive text messages from your brand. To entice them, you might offer a special one-time discount.
If you don’t have an email list, you may have collected customer phone numbers already in your store. You could reach out to these customers to ask if they’d like to opt-in to your text message campaigns as well.
It’s also a good idea to ask future email list followers to opt-in to your text messages at the same time they opt-in to your newsletter. Someone who is already taking steps to follow your brand via email would likely be willing to sign up for your text message alerts.
Segment Your Marketing Lists
SMS marketing is very similar to email marketing. It’s not uncommon to have customer lists for text message marketing, with many followers receiving the same messages when they’re sent.
That means small business owners should learn a few lessons from email marketers when beginning to implement text message marketing. Specifically, it’s a good idea to segment your full list into smaller lists. This ensures customers only receive messages that are relevant to their interests and needs.
It’s been shown to boost email open rates by approximately 14.31%. There’s good reason to believe it would have a similar effect on text message followers.
Consider the following example to better understand why this is the case. Perhaps your small business offers a variety of services to clients. They may include web design, content writing, graphic design, and similar services. Not all of your clients may be interested in all the services you offer. If they all belonged to the same messaging list, they would receive too many irrelevant messages from your brand. That’s unlikely to happen if you segment your list according to client preferences.
Give them the option to choose what types of messages they would like to receive when they first opt-in. This will also help you make the right impression on your followers. According to research, consumers have expressed a rising interest in personalized marketing content. Segmenting your messaging lists is key to providing it.
Offer Numerous Ways to Opt-In
You’re more likely to grow a thorough list of followers interested in your text messages if you offer them several means of opting-in.
A pop-up opt-in form on your website is a common method to rely on. Filling out this form should be an easy process. Too many steps can discourage guests from completing it. That said, a website form isn’t the only way you can attract followers.
You could also mention your text message marketing lists in every email you send. In person, you could have physical forms where people can opt-in to your messaging lists. You might also promote your messaging lists via social media.
Quite simply, you want to identify as many ways to attract followers as possible. This will help you boost your overall return-on-investment.
Use the Right Tools
Importing and managing your contact lists doesn’t need to be difficult. Services such as TextMagic simplify the process. They also allow you to send messages online, chat online via SMS, and much more.
Explore the features offered and determine how you can benefit from them. Text message marketing is much more effective when you leverage the rights tools.
Define Your Audience
Knowing your audience is key to knowing how to send text messages that will engage them. That’s why you need to ask yourself certain essential questions when planning a campaign. They may include:
- What demographic groups do my customers belong to?
- How do my products or services provide value to my customers?
- What types of marketing content would my customers be most likely to engage with?
- Why would I sign up to receive text messages from my brand? What would motivate me to do so?
- What tone of voice would my customers respond to?
Asking these questions first makes it easier to develop strong campaigns. For example, you might determine that your customers are hip, young people. Your messages should feature casual language to appeal to them.
On the other hand, maybe your customers are other business owners. You’d want to send messages with more formal language in this case.
Asking these questions also helps you decide what types of messages to send. Do your customers follow your brand because you offer affordable products and services? In that case, you could send them alerts about discounts.
That’s not the only type of message you might send. For example, some customers also follow blogs of their favorite brands. That’s often because these blogs provide them with valuable information.
You could take the same approach with your SMS followers. There might be instances when it would help to send them quick tips they can apply to their own lives or businesses. Defining who your customers are will help you determine when it’s a good idea to do so.
Consider Other Ways to Send Text Messages
These tips focus on ways to grow and leverage a list of followers. However, it’s also important to send messages to individual customers when appropriate.
For example, maybe a customer purchases an item from your website. You could use text message alerts to update them about their order’s status.
You could also use geotargeting to send text messages to customers who are near your brick-and-mortar locations. This is an effective way to boost in-store foot traffic. It also helps bridge the gap between online and offline shopping.
Concluding Points
The advice here can help any small business owner leverage SMS marketing to their advantage. That said, don’t be discouraged if you’re not seeing immediate results. What’s most important to remember is that mastering text message marketing takes time. You shouldn’t expect to see revenue double immediately after launching a campaign. You need to consistently experiment with different tactics. By doing so (and by keeping these tips in mind), you’ll see how text message marketing helps your small business grow. Best of all, this can be an extremely affordable marketing tactic that delivers a strong return-on-investment!
