For many companies' marketing strategies the choice has always been to advertise via print, audio or visual media. Thanks to the current status of the global economy the costs of using these media has grown exponentially and has as a result locked out many SMEs – establishments that usually have small marketing budgets. However, such small businesses now have an effective reprieve in mobilemarketing and there is a strong case for this strategy considering the fact that nearly every adult the world over owns a mobile device. Sending out marketing information SMSs to this enormous populace will surely give your business the much needed visibility it needs.
The cost of distributing SMSs is far less compared to that of running an advert on TV, radio or newspaper, and this is definitely very reassuring for low-budget businesses. The beauty of mobile marketing lies in its definition of ‘being mobile' in that people carry their mobile devices everywhere – wherever you go you are assured of seeing a cell phone. There may be TV, radio and newspaper coverage in most places – the question is really about how much time people can spare nowadays with regards to using these mediums of communication. On the contrary, it is estimated that 98% of people will look at their phones immediately they ring or beep; for a business doing SMS marketing it means that your message has a 98% chance of being noticed immediately by recipients in the intended market.
Research also shows that 90% of the message recipients will reply to the message within an hour of receiving it in an effort to get more information about the goods or service you are offering. In this we see that your company will also be able to estimate the effectiveness of the marketing campaign and also make more accurate ROI estimations as compared to using other marketing channels.
In principle SMS marketing looks very easy but several challenges take form when implementing it with the major one being the development of a database to which the marketing information will be sent. In the marketing world it is said that no marketing channel can totally work on its own; this observation can be truly appreciated at this juncture. One cannot just start sending marketing messages to random numbers and that is why in mobile marketing we have what is referred to as an SMS Opt In.
An SMS Opt In is whereby you display a code on TV, radio, print or even online, to which people will send a particular quote so as to get more information about an offer, product, coupon or service you are providing. The responding numbers are what you will use to build your mobile marketing database that will also be used for subsequent marketing. There must also be an opt-out-facility should the customers not like or become disinterested in your products or services. You should also craft your SMSs such that they are interesting as well as informative. Their distribution should also be well spaced in terms of frequency otherwise bombarding your customers with marketing messages every given hour may cause them to opt out of the service.
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