SMS Marketing

Written by Marketing Team on February 15, 2010 Categories: SMS Marketing, Services

SMS Marketing

SMS Marketing – Cheap and Effective • Got empty or unfilled service slots filled in your appointment book today? Here’s how you can use the power of instant messaging to get instant results

Why You Should be Using SMS – Before it’s Too Late!

I’m often asked, “What’s one way to get a hundred new customers?” And the answer I

always give is “There is no ONE way to get a hundred new customers. There’s a hundred

ways to get ONE new customer, and you’ve got use as many of them as you can!”

No matter what type of business you’re in, marketing has always been about delivering the

right message, to the right market, and the right time.

The more closely matched your message is to the list you’re marketing to, the better your

response is going to be. And the other huge variable that affects the response you get to

your message (or offer) is timing.

The same principles of compelling direct response marketing apply, no matter which

media you choose to deliver your message. Direct mail, TV, radio, email, a website, the

sandwich board outside your business…or text messaging…it doesn’t matter.

So remember this vital point:

“It doesn’t matter how I’m delivering my message…1 still need to give my clients and/or prospective customers a compelling reason to respond right NOW!”

And that comes down to your offer. Without a compelling offer, you’re wasting your time.

Now, hear this: SMS – jargon for Short Message Service, delivered to an individual’s cell

phone – is just another tool that’s available to you to deliver your message.

Just because it’s easy to use, doesn’t mean it’s the only one you should use . Like anything

else, text messaging should be nothing more than ONE of the many, many methods of

delivering your marketing message that you should be using. And using as much as you

possibly can.

How to Plan Your SMS Marketing

Like any other form of marketing, SMS marketing needs planning. Here’s an outline of the

process you need to go through. It’s not complicated – in fact it’s very, very simple – but

without it, you’ll be flying blind.

Remember how I said that marketing is about the right message to the right

market?

Well, that’s your list. In this case, not a mailing list, but an SMS list. It’s the names

of the clients you want to market to, with their cell phone numbers in the adjoining

column. That’s the easy bit.

The clever bit is this:

The better matched your market is to the message you’re sending to their cell phones, the

better is going to be your response. So, when you craft your offer, part of the sales thinking process is ‘who among my list of clients is the group that’s most likely to respond to this offer?’ You see, even the most clumsily-written sales message (offer) will get a better

response if it’s sent to a well-targeted list than a great message sent to a lousy,

inappropriate list.

The quality of your list matters. Much more than the number of people on the list.

Sales Thinking. Do this before you do anything.

First, you’ve got to think… “What am I going to say to these people to get them to

pick up the phone right NOW?”

You need to do some sales thinking – the kind of thinking you should always be

doing before you so much as book an ad space, plan a direct mail campaign,

or…send an SMS!

The key to the sales thinking process is your OFFER. In other words, what’s going

to get them phoning in right now.

And we will take care of this for you !

a) Give your client massive perceived value

b) Limit the offer in some way…either by time, or numbers

c) Call to Action… “Call NOW” works better than just including your phone number and hoping they’ll understand what you want them to do!

2) Timing. There’s good timing, and there’s bad timing.

The message is clear; the more instant the technology, the more attention you have

to pay to timing.

And there is simply no media more instant than SMS. Not email. Not direct mail.

Not press advertising. Only SMS can deliver a razor-sharp, targetted message right

now to your specified audience. To one prospect, or a thousand.

Now, a couple of things about timing. First, things to avoid…

Similarly, sending a text that arrives at dinner timeis almost certainly a recipe for being ignored or forgotten. People are busy, tired, grumpy or all three at that time of the day. Give them, and yourself, a break.

a) Sending a text message that arrives in the wee small hours of the morning and wakes the entire household is not cool. True, people should turn their phones off when they go to bed…but they don’t. Assumption is the mother of a foul-up.

b) Depending on your specific target market, a certain time of the day may be more appropriate than another time. E.g., if you’re texting all the mothers of school-age children on your list, timing a message to arrive on their cell phones as school finishes probably isn’t very clever.

Sending a text message at an inappropriate time is a sure way to annoy your clients…not get them to buy from you!

Then there’s the kind of timing you should be taking advantage of. Decades ago,

famous advertising man Robert Collier talked about ‘entering the conversation

that’s already going on in their heads.’

That’s a concept perfectly-tuned to marketing using text messages. Because with

text messaging, you can time your message to co-incide with, and take advantage

of, events that are happening that your target market is interested in.

Something’s happened that gives you a ‘hook’ to market a particular product your service . It’s everywhere in the news; it’s a subject on everybody’s lips hard enough

Client Management System

All businesses should have a computer CSM program: