Why Small Business is moving to text marketing

By Ron Goldblatt, Owner/Founder NorthShore Loyalty

Text marketing is strangely appealing and is becoming a bigger part of the marketing puzzle. Many other marketing methods are much more complicated, even though they deliver inferior or results. What’s more, text marketing is exactly what it sounds like—a marketing strategy that relies on text messages to deliver advertisements and promotions to users.

We now live in a mobile-first world with more ways than ever to reach potential customers. In 2013, there were 6,880,000,000 mobile phones in use, which roughly corresponds to 97 connections per 100 citizens.

Text marketing allows you to directly engage with your prospects in a very direct and extremely effective fashion. Just how effective? “95 out of 100 of your customers who have opted into your text messaging program OPEN and READ your mobile messages within 3 mins,” states Steve Olenski in his Forbes article.

The reason why text marketing is so effective is the fact that around 70 percent of consumers want to receive applicable SMS marketing offers from brands they’re interested in. Imagine that, millions of potential customers who actually want to hear about your promotions, new products, and special offers.

Small businesses are the perfect target group for text marketing, as the very nature of text marketing allows you to level the playing field with the larger companies. It’s only you and the 160-character limit—if you don’t want to, you don’t need to concern yourself with expensive graphics, detailed proofreading, or promotional videos. Every mom and pop shop can successfully launch a text marketing campaign that’s virtually indistinguishable from what the big boys do.

To link all your other marketing program to text or including images or your website information is now even easier! For example, Apple has recently opened a wealth of new mobile notification options, with the release of iOS 10, which supports rich media content. Rich media means you can now deliver compelling content that includes images, GIFs, and videos directly to your users without them ever leaving the message app.

Benefits of Text Marketing

Approximately 98 percent of marketing texts are opened, and statistics say that 90 percent are read within three minutes. That’s because most 18- to 44-year-olds spend almost all time with a phone nearby. Compared to email marketing, which generates just 3 percent response rate, text marketing fares a lot better.

According to researchers at eMarketer, “Consumers are ten times more likely to redeem a brand offer made via mobile versus a traditional print coupon. “This is significant, especially considering that there are 54 million consumers responding to SMS offers every year.

As you can imagine, automated text marketing can lead to dramatic time and cost savings, when compared with other marketing methods. This means that small business owners can maintain a sharp focus on their core business without neglecting their marketing efforts.

To summarize, text marketing is engaging, quick, cheap, interactive, and extremely effective. It allows you to develop closer relationships with your customers and level the playing field with larger companies.

Conclusion

We at NorthShore Loyalty offer a reliable text marketing system that captures a customer's phone number and tracks visits. If a customer does not check in over a set period, a friendly text message is sent to invite them back. We also create an ongoing relationship with their customers with messages sent on events, new products, and specials to bring a customer back.

Visit our website to learn more about our services and sign up for a risk-free demo. Our mobile punch card will help you connect with customers and bring them back during your slower times of the week to drive more sales when you need them.