It took the Internet less than a decade to become a household technology, and all sorts of businesses were forced to take online marketing seriously. The numbers of smartphone users have grown with the same staggering speed, and mobile marketing is fast becoming a must for businesses. And just like it was the case with Online marketing, the sooner you can start off, the better.
If you are an online business looking to take advantage of mobile marketing, the first thing you need to do is to come up with a responsive web design. Once you have the technical aspects covered for your website, you can move on to the more important targets like building your mobile subscribers list, and making the most of SMS marketing.
How to Get the Mobile Numbers?
- To start with, you will need the mobile phone numbers of your target customers for sending the text messages. You might want to opt for the easy way, and that is to buy some of those lists, but that’s an absolute waste of money. Sending bulk messages to numbers or emails that you’ve bought for peanuts is actually Spam, and it will do more harm to your business than good.
- Start from setting up a sign up form at your website. However, you cannot expect the visitors to come and share their contact details for free. The best way to attract more and more subscribers is to give the visitors some sort of incentive. It can be anything from a discount to some freebie. Nobody is going to subscribe to your email or test messages unless you are providing them with some perk.
- Add a mobile number field in the “contact us” or sales query form, as well as the sales page. These are all potential clients, and they are likely to be more interested in the clearance sales or promotions that you will run as compared to some random people.
Creating the Right Text:
- When sending out a text message, it’s best to keep it simple. Avoid using the SMS language (AKA Txtese or chatspeak), unless your target market consists solely of teenagers.
- Start from the action verbs and go straight to the offer, instead of introducing your business or promoting your product range in every single text. Ideally your text message shouldn’t go beyond 160 characters.
- Unlike email marketing, the text messages will take next to no time in reaching your customers’ inbox, so you should keep the time factor in mind. Needless to say, you shouldn’t be sending out promotional messages at night, or busy hours.
- Include a link to your online store at the end of your text message. Make it easy for the customers having internet browsing feature at their mobile phones to visit your online store.
- Lookout for an option to send the text messages from your business name. Messages coming from anonymous numbers will usually be ignored. There are some telecommunication companies that offer an option for businesses to use their brand names instead of random numbers for SMS marketing.
