17 Cheap and Simple Ways to Use SMS to Market Your Small Business
As the most effective mobile communications strategy to reach your audience, it’s important to know how to use this tool to grow your small business.
Knowing how to use SMS to market your small business is quite a specific undertaking and can be daunting to businesses with little or no experience with mobile communications or using SMS platforms. Luckily, the hardest part is done for you: your customers are already mobile-first consumers, meaning they pick up their phones dozens of times a day.
The trick is creating enticing, rewarding, or educating interactions with them because even though SMS has an open rate of 98%, its contents can be easily forgotten if it’s not effective.
Here are 17 short and to the point tips on how you can use SMS to market your small business effectively:
1. Share new products
SMS marketing strategies always include promotional texts informing customers about new products added to the shelf or exclusive new services on offer. A simple SMS will get customers moving (and hopefully shopping!):
“Adam! We don’t want you to miss out on our latest products. Follow the link to our newest products exclusive to our online shop.”
2. Send promotions
You can reach customers immediately by encouraging them to take advantage of unique offers, from discounted in-store deals and website-only deals to scannable QR codes that unlock great savings or spot prizes.
3. Ask for feedback
Another benefit of using SMS to market your small business is getting feedback. Whether the customer has just signed up, or whether they’ve just made a purchase (in-store or online), asking them to rate the service or share feedback on areas to improve shows that you value your customer and is a cheap and efficient way to embark on two-way SMS communication with them.
4. Thank them
SMS is a great way to thank customers — whether they completed a purchase, downloaded a whitepaper, or emailed you a suggestion — it’s an informal and immediate form of communication, one that hopefully incites trust in the brand and proves that you value their opinions on improving your business.
5. Welcome them back
If your digital remarketing efforts include being able to track returning customers, then sending an SMS welcoming a returning customer could encourage another potential sale. At the very least, it shows them you value their time and will leave them impressed that you know that they’ve been ‘window shopping’.
6. Invite them to events
From hosting a public talk at a local university to having a prestigious business person give a presentation at your office — SMS is a great way to share an invitation. It’s cheap, immediate, and the form of messaging is short and sweet — including only the necessary information to drive the message home.
7. Share blog articles to market your small business
As you’ll discover, SMS for remarketing is very effective. One simple example is sending a text with a link to your latest blog post and an inviting message to encourage your customers to read the article. The long-form article includes important information your customer needs to read, and the SMS will get them there.
8. Share a reminder to subscribe
If you’re needing to communicate with your customers who haven’t yet subscribed, why not send an SMS to that database saying something like:
“Hey, we noticed you’re not keeping up with the latest… Why not subscribe so you don’t miss out on our next promotion? Subscribe now and get 30% off your first purchase!”
9. Send them coupons
Although the days of carrying around a coupon binder are over (thank goodness), coupons, like SMS, are still popular and effective ways of keeping customers in your sales pipeline. Send them something exciting that will make it hard for them not to opt in, like:
“We’re keeping the season sizzling with summer’s hottest deals. Save 50% with this exclusive deal, and activate it in-store at any branch!”
10. Invite them to follow
If you’ve started a new social media account, let customers know by sending a bulk SMS — it’s a cheap, immediate, and effective way to communicate with your audience and will allow you to expand your communication channels with them.
11. Use it for confirmation
While you’ll probably offer a printed confirmation, an SMS to confirm a purchase, sign up, or appointment, is a paperless and cost-effective communication style. Plus, the customer will always have the details of the transaction in their inbox for reference.
12. Ask for permission
To communicate with customers who’ve interacted with your business but haven’t followed through — why not send them a bulk SMS to ask for permission to be able to send them more information about your exclusive deals or promotions?
13. Tell them they’ve got mail
In case you didn’t get it the first time — SMS for remarketing is hugely effective. If you’ve sent them a message via email or social media, a great way to get them to check their inboxes and respond is by sending them a reminder text. It’ll definitely have a positive impact on your email open rate.
14. Don’t send too many text messages
It’s a common and inexcusable aspect of SMS marketing that many businesses deal with: sending too many text messages. Be sure that your databases are kept up to date and that messages to customers aren’t duplicated. There’s nothing worse than receiving three messages from a company on one day.
15. Be short and to the point
Even though SMS has limited characters available, it’s important to craft an enticing message for customers. Grab their attention quickly, and concisely.
16. Make it clear what you want them to do
Be clear in what you want to achieve with your text, whether it’s to invite people to an event or encourage foot traffic to your business. The shorter your message, the more effective it’ll be.
17. Keep it simple
Like the point above, make sure the reason you’re messaging your customers is to either inform them or ask them to do one thing. Don’t overload the message to say too many things at once as customers will be put off by this.
By now you should have enough SMS tactics up your sleeve to market your small business. It’s obvious that SMS is an effective way to create personalized, real-time engagement with consumers. To put these new SMS marketing ideas to the test, why not try out Clickatell’s bulk SMS platform and two-way messaging tool which can seamlessly SMS-enable any app, desktop or web platform.
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