SMS Marketing for Small Businesses

Marketing. It is a key ingredient to the success of your business. Without brand awareness, marketing campaigns and other marketing structures in place, your business will more than likely be left in the dark. This is the exact opposite of what you want if you are looking to build up your small business.

In a world of WhatsApp and social media platforms, you might be wondering if SMS (also known as short messaging service) is worth it for businesses? The short answer is yes, and the long answer will be explained in this piece.

Read on to find out why your business should be investing in SMS marketing.

SMS marketing is essentially the same as any marketing, but it is conducted strictly over what we know as text messaging.

SMS has come into its own since the pandemic, as almost everyone has been using their mobiles as one of the only means to connect with each other. Because of this, businesses have gotten straight on the bandwagon and made sure they do not miss their shot at communicating with their customers virtually while they are not able to see them face to face.

The reality of this has not changed, even though businesses have physically opened back up again, and the direct and personal approach that SMS marketing provides looks like it is here to stay.

Mobile marketing is now essential for all businesses, as approximately one-third of all shopping is done through our phones. Delivering marketing straight to the source of purchase will not only help encourage the speed of purchases and enquires, but businesses are allowing everything to be in one place for a seamless experience.

Social media marketing is also prominent on mobiles but offers a less personal approach and relies on someone to be logged in on their account and scrolling at the right time for the campaigns to reach them. SMS marketing enables the campaigns to go straight to their phone whatever they are doing, often containing a direct link to where they need to go next to fulfil an order or find out more information.

Skipping out on SMS marketing will leave a huge chunk in your strategy now the way consumers shop is beginning to change, so it can definitely be considered an essential if you are wanting to up your game, improve customer engagement, and increase profit.

Using SMS for marketing campaigns is a good idea for businesses who want to go the extra mile. Sending a discount code, competition, or deal to the customers directly can make them feel special – bonus points if you can set up the use of personal information in the campaigns such as addressing them by their first name.

Personalised messages work well in engaging customers while offering a higher success of open and click-through rates. By connecting with the customer and understanding their specific needs, you will not only obtain crucial data and patterns that can be used for future campaigns, but you are more likely to make them a returning customer, and returning customers are the bread and butter of a business’s income.

Utilising SMS to contact customers is beneficial due to its simplicity. While many people do have smartphones now, where social media marketing works well, SMS can reach all corners of the mobile communication world with its embedded feature on any phone. It also means that as long as someone has even the smallest amount of signal, your message will go through, which is far more straightforward than any other mobile marketing technique.

One of the useful benefits of using SMS for marketing is that any campaigns go straight to the consumer's mobile. There is no middleman, no hoping that someone is logged into their social media to see a campaign at the right time, just straight and direct to the person you want to communicate to.

This is particularly great for time-sensitive campaigns due to the nature of the medium, as the content has to be short, sweet, and straight to the point.

The engagement factor from SMS compared to other marketing strategies is outstanding.

While social media campaigns do well in their own way along with newsletters and email campaigns, SMS campaigns receive the highest level of engagement out of them all.

Not only are people never that far away from checking their mobile screen, but in the UK, 95% of texts that are sent are opened, which is an impressive difference from email, which only has a mere 20% average opening rate.

Because of the waves that SMS marketing makes when employed properly, the service offers an impressive value for money. Not only is a text message cheap to send, but because the engagement rate is so high, it will also pay itself off tenfold.

Find out more information on mobile phone solutions for small businesses to see how you can optimise your marketing strategies for mobile.

The bottom line is, that if you are looking to stand out against your competitors, then SMS marketing is the niche tool you want to be adding to your belt.