SMS Marketing – A Beginner’s Guide

Our beginner’s guide to SMS marketing is aimed at small businesses that are looking to use this method of marketing for the first time and would like more information about it.

What is SMS marketing?

SMS stands for Short Message Service and SMS marketing is just another name for text message marketing. SMS marketing offers a great way for businesses to target their customers on the move.

Just like email marketing, SMS marketing is a low cost way for companies to communicate with existing or potential customers, and can be a very powerful tool if used correctly.

How does SMS marketing work?

As with email marketing you need to have permission to send SMS messages to someone’s mobile phone and you can do this via collecting data via your website through a signup box or asking for permission when people have placed an order.

You would then upload all the data you have to a specialist SMS platform such as CardBoardFish and enter your message which will then be sent out automatically to all of your subscribers.

There’s a real art to composing an effective SMS message as you only get 160 characters to write an effective offer or promotion.

The amount you’ll be charged for each text message depends largely on how many you send at a time, but you shouldn’t pay any more than a few pence per SMS, which is similar to the costs associated with email marketing.

Why should I use it?

Below are just some of the main reasons SMS marketing could be beneficial for your small business;

• SMS marketing is almost instant
• SMS marketing is very cost effective
• It’s easy to send automated SMS messages
• SMS marketing can give your business a more professional image
• SMS marketing is viral – it’s easy for people to forward messages to others

The role of SMS in your overall marketing strategy

Depending on the nature of your business, SMS marketing could have a critical role to play. For example, if you’re running a nightclub you could send SMS messages to your list at 10pm on a Friday or Saturday night to encourage them to come to your venue by offering free entry before 11pm.

Just like any other form of marketing, people will get bored with SMS messages from you if you spam them all the time.

SMS marketing can be used to reinforce email marketing promotions as well as running stand alone offers to target people when they’re likely to be out and about. You can also use SMS marketing to complement your social media strategy on sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

If you liked this article you may also want to read my top 10 SMS marketing tips

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 16th, 2010 at 1:00 pm and is filed under Guides for Beginners, SMS Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.