To understand the effectiveness of any marketing campaign, including SMS marketing, you have to look at its performance from the marketer's perspective as well as consumer perspective. What consumers are thinking about SMS marketing and what they have to say are critically important to understand as it would help to tailor your marketing strategy accordingly. To reach out to a wider section of consumers with more captivating content, you have to consider the consumer's perspective of SMS marketing by judging the way they look at it. That makes easy to understand consumer expectations that help to set up the most befitting messaging campaign capable of producing the desired results.
When you put all the pieces together, it translates into better ROI and helps to see the highs and lows of the campaign that point to your strengths and weakness with scope for improvement. Indeed, SMS marketing drive sales and the figures are quite encouraging as it is likely to reach the 50% mark very soon. SMS marketing is a critical component of mobile marketing that helps to reach out to the largest section of consumers since the number of mobile users keeps growing at a very high rate. Therefore, there is enough reason why you must focus on SMS marketing just as you do for any other digital marketing mode.
For the intelligent marketer, numbers do matter in taking decisions but to have enough reasons to back the decision for choosing SMS marketing, and one has to understand the modality of working of text messages for improving sales. By going through this article, you will come to know why texting is so powerful and how you can compose useful marketing messages.
The working modality of texting for business
Text messages are part of any strategy in business communication that boosts marketing, and it touches buyers at various points in their buying journey. To launch a campaign in SMS marketing, you can get in touch with companies like simpletexting.com that specialize in the services. From lead generation to lead follow up, text messaging plays an important role.
- Lead generation – Texting helps to generate quality leads without the need for installing apps as you can do it just as you do when communicating with others at a personal level. The process of lead generation comprises of allowing consumers to opt-in for receiving coupons and promotions and offering them free quotes for products and services. You can also message them some invitation to schedule a demonstration or appointment. The channel of interactive communication paves the way for encouraging consumers to ask questions that you should be ready to answer.
The golden rule of texting for business is to text only to people who show interest in communicating with you. As soon as you get some leads, the next step is to qualify those leads.
- Qualifying leads–While obtaining leads is a significant encouragement you have to check its potential by qualifying it. That is necessary to ensure that you pursue only genuine leads that are likely to result in conversions. Firstly, ensure that the lead is correct and right for you. Secondly, gauge the business potential of the lead to decide how much fruitful it would be to pursue it by devoting time and effort. Thirdly, judge the possibility of interacting further and closely with the lead in the future. These actions are necessary to chalk out plans for nurturing leads and closing sales.
The first step in qualifying leads is to ask for a response by sending out a verification code. You can also send out a question or acknowledge the potential needs of leads. Sending out a question or a link to a survey can help to gather lots of information. After qualifying the lead, you have to follow it up for driving it towards sales.
- Follow up–Following up leads is the most challenging part of marketing because it is impossible to gauge how much follow up would go well with consumers behind the leads. Too much follow up could annoy people and too little follow up could delay or damage the prospects of conversion. Moreover, not receiving responses to follow up text is a primary reason for abandoning leads.
Sending reminders for upcoming events, informing about exclusive offers and product releases, sending out limited period offers, and sharing information about products and blog posts are some of the ways of following up leads.
Types of business text messages
To make the text messaging work in your favor, you have to know what kind of text would be appropriate to generate the desired response from consumers. You have to learn about the triggered text, and individual followup text generally used for SMS marketing.
Triggered texts are automated yet personalized and useful for encouraging consumers on the path of buying to take affirmative action. Most importantly, you can use the texts at any point in time regardless of which stage the buyer is on his/her buying journey. You can send the text when buyers contact you for qualification. The text is also helpful if you send it as a late response after some time has elapsed and the text helps to reconnect you with the buyer.
Individual follow up texts have to be created by some person and not automated by understanding how you should approach buyers depending on their needs. It is typical one-to-one communication as you would do for personal reasons and usually most relevant when answering some questions raised by consumers. It can lead to an interactive communication session where you can not only reply to questions but also use the opportunity to influence their decision. Since feedback is essential, you can use text messages to ask consumers for reviews and rate your products or services. You might even invite them to participate in a consumer survey.
Business texting can boost business. Text messaging for business is as powerful as you can make it because your communication skills and understanding of consumers contribute to a successful SMS marketing campaign.
Guest post courtesy of Barrack Diego