March 30, 2010

Various forms of mobile marketing, text messaging, mobile ads, mobile apps, and location aware services, are getting lots of buzz currently. 

Marketers large and small are coming around to the reality that those little hand held devices are increasingly significant parts of every day life for consumers.

While some of this technology and the marketing plays it will produce is still a bit out of the immediate picture for small businesses, I believe that text messages or SMS is here now and should be a part of every marketing plan.

SMS stands for Short Message Service. It is a technology that enables the sending and receiving of messages between mobile phones and is a standard feature on all modern mobile devices.

Recently, some carriers started adding Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), an upgraded version of the SMS through which you can send and receive multimedia messages such as texts, pictures, video clips, audio clips, etc., with any other compatible cell phone, but for this article I will focus only on the more commonly used SMS. 

There are two primary ways that marketers are using SMS. The first is what might be referred to as bulk sending – you have a database of opt-in mobile subscribers and you send them messages. The second is a mobile generated request that relies on what are called short codes – text “get more info” to 22345.

Using both of these approaches in various combinations provides the greatest flexibility.

The fastest way to get up and running with text campaigns is by employing one of the growing list of mobile SMS providers like these below: 

• EZ Texting
• Text Hub
• Mobile Storm
• Involve Mobile
• Cellit Mobile Marketing
• 4INFO

The following examples may give you some ideas on how to integrate the use of text messaging into your current marketing efforts.

1) Text for info – I think this is a service every small business should start using right away. The idea is that you set up a hub of information that people may want to receive and allow them to request it via mobile device. For example – for more information on our upcoming events text “ducttape” to 22334. You can create a multitude of options here and get people interacting with your content via mobile with very little work on your part.

2) Members only – Another great way to start getting people interacting with your brand via mobile is to create content that is only available to mobile subscribers. I saw an author use this tactic brilliantly by creating a chapter to his book that was only available via text.

3) Limited time special – Offering flash specials only available via text for immediate use is a great way to keep mobile subscribers interested and responding. This could be a great way to make a slow business day pick up some steam.

4) Customer follow-up – Once a customer makes a purchase you can offer a series of follow-up messages that could include thank you, more information about usage, warranty reminders and add-on offers.

5) Coupons – Mobile couponing is almost a separate industry, but offering coupons to subscribers via mobile is a great way to stimulate trial. This one is a great example of mixing sending texts to subscribers and offering short code “grab a coupon” options to stimulate trial of your products and services.

6) Event buzz – If you host in person or online events you can increase engagement by offering updates, reminders, and follow-ups via SMS campaigns. The up to the minute feel of text messages makes it a perfect way to add last minute surprises and create event buzz.

7) Content stations – taking the short code approach to full use you can set-up a bit of an information or content station that would allow people to choose codes from a menu of options to pick and choose the kind of information that would like to receive. This could be detailed information on products or simply newsletter alerts segmented by topic.

There are many opportunities to easily explore marketing via text messaging and now is the time to start building those lists and campaigns as more and more of your customers and prospects grow to expect this kind of interaction.

Image credit: ydhsu

Join the conversation ( 27 )

• Benetta Anthony 15 days ago

  

  I need to know the software required to start text marketing, allowing businesses to contact their customer database via text through our system.
  http://www.web-designer.sg/

• Benetta Anthony 15 days ago

  

  I like to know how can text message marketing be implemented to help increase night club, bar and restaurants business? I like to know if it is difficult to setup and how can user subscribed to receive my text message and is it cost efficient to use text message marketing to promote a business?
  http://www.virtualoffice.sg/

• Zamano 2 months ago

  

  There's a few options for this here in Ireland.
  
  Mainly http://www.zamanosolutions.com and there a thread discussing this here as well http://www.askaboutmoney.com/showthread.php?t=161825
  
  It's definitely the way forward for marketing and needs to be considered strong based on level of capital that each company has to invest.

• Chuck Reynolds 12 months ago

  

  First off, John I read your Duct Tape Marketing book a while back... loved it!
  Also good article here...
  I wanted to throw in a new comer that I'm aware of called Betwext. http://betwext.com and their Broadcast product. I used it personally through WordCamp Phoenix this last Jan and it was much more affordable than others I had consulted with. See what you think :)

• Benetta Anthony 1 year 4 months and 1 days ago

  

  SMS Mobile Text Message Marketing Ads are a helpful approach to cutting costs and saving money in various areas, giving you direct messages about special savings and deals suited to your interests. Most important, in receiving text message ads, is your texting plan with your cellular provider. If you have a limited number of text messages per month, receiving SMS ads will probably prove costly. However, with a plan providing unlimited text messaging, there is not a concern. For families with teens using cell phones, family plans with unlimited messaging prove practical already, and for the individual cell phone user, the plans must certainly be evaluated for practicality.
  
  http://www.smsmarketing.com.sg/

• Benetta Anthony 1 year 4 months and 1 days ago

  

  SMS Mobile Text Message Marketing Ads are a helpful approach to cutting costs and saving money in various areas, giving you direct messages about special savings and deals suited to your interests. Most important, in receiving text message ads, is your texting plan with your cellular provider. If you have a limited number of text messages per month, receiving SMS ads will probably prove costly. However, with a plan providing unlimited text messaging, there is not a concern. For families with teens using cell phones, family plans with unlimited messaging prove practical already, and for the individual cell phone user, the plans must certainly be evaluated for practicality.
  
  http://www.smsmarketing.com.sg/

• Marty Val Hill, SPHR 1 year 5 months and 10 days ago

  

  Great Information! Are any of you aware of a provider who might be wiling to provide free service to a non-profit, non-commercial group?
  
  I am leading an effort to allow Eagle Scouts at several universities to opt-in to a system to alert them to campus and local community service projects, as well as, networking events and career fairs.
  
  I also have a group of 13,000 Eagle Scouts on LinkedIn and would like to eventually be able to provide a similar opportunity to them to opt-in to a notification system for service projects and Eagle Scout networking events in their local areas. http://www.linkedin.com/groupRegistration?gid=38692
  
  Thanks in advance for your assistance. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! I may be reached at marty at liveyourlegacy.com.
  
  Keep Smilin'
  Marty

• justin bryan 1 year 6 months and 22 days ago

  

  Awesome post! Thanks for sharing such nice information with us. Today text messaging campaigns are the most popular as well as growing strategy for marketing products, services and brands.
  
  http://www.wire2air.com
  (sms gateway and mobile marketing solutions provider)
  228 Park Avenue S
  New York
  

• carolyn joseph 1 year 6 months and 29 days ago

  

  thanks.. to know more check out my blog http://www.txtimpact.com/mobilemarketing.asp

• carolyn joseph 1 year 6 months and 29 days ago

  

  ohh! really great article, Mobile marketing is the new tread of marketing products because of uses of mobile phone. According to recent survey about 90% US people read sms and this shows how people interested in mobile. Sending sms through shared short code or own brand short code to customer helps to reach your products to customer. Short code is now used by all popular reality shows, programs, games and election campaigns to send or to populate their message to targeted audiences.

• Brad Down 1 year 7 months and 24 days ago

  

  Some great ideas John. As a web SMS service, we have seen significant growth in predominantly the small to medium business sectors. We have even seen some businesses now gererating 100% of there bookings through SMS marketing. The key to the whole thing is very specific targeting. a. by location and b. by interest. You must be completely relevant to the user otherwise they will consider your message spam.
  
  We have been educating our clients to make sure they do a few things very clearly. 1. Identify themselves within the message. 2. Personalise the message with the recipients name 3. Explain clearyly why the recipient has received the message and 4. Allow a simple opt-out process.
  
  By targeting, personalisation, identification and opt-out within the message you have the best chance to not only be not treated as spam but to generate an enquiry.
  
  If anyone is interested check us out at BurstSMS.com

• SMART Marketing 360 Marketing Smarter...Not Harder! 1 year 10 months and 10 days ago

  

  @Stephen Hoey -- Stephen, many platforms and dashboards have made it very easy to integrate SMS Marketing into their marketing strategies. What we have found here at www.eztextme.com is the promotional efforts upon launching any campaign. Successful campaigns have all started with notifying current clients of their new options for communication and an offer. In-store signage or website announcements are absolutely a necessity to cross over from traditional channels to SMS. Because of this, we've opted to offer affordable print collateral as a part of a bundle when looking at SMS programs. Without it, the average business will have difficulty launching a successful campaign.
  The uses for SMS are truly ENDLESS... from voting, to contests to feedback surveys. The absolute KEY to successful SMS is the permission-based opt-in. Good SMS services will offer "opt-out" instructions with each message so users can opt in or out out at anytime making 100% voluntary participation eliminating the threat of SPAM. There are of course "Best Practices" which should be considered which include frequency of offers, types of offers and usability. SMS is another phenomenal tool in the digital marketing tool box which really has great potential to tie many traditional forms of media advertising together-- let's not forget to add to the list of uses the potential for tracking offline promotions. I could go on and on... feel free to contact me therese@smartmarketing360.com for further discussion or assistance! HAPPY MOBILE MARKETING!

• Linda Daichendt 1 year 10 months and 10 days ago

  

  Excellent article about the "whys" and "ways" to use Mobile Marketing to grow your business. However, there is one point you made that I very much disagree with. Mobile Marketing is no longer out of reach for even the smallest of businesses to utilize! The industry has advanced far enough now that there are a number of easy-to-use, low-cost solutions available for small businesses owners that will enable them to easily participate in Mobile Marketing.
  
  In fact, our firm is a Certified Solutions Provider for one of these mobile solutions firms, and I would be happy to set up a FREE demonstration for any small business owner who may be interested. They will see how they can be up-and-running with their text message capability in a matter of minutes. We also work with them to help them build up their 'opt-in' list, teach them how to make the strongest messages that get the best results, insure that they are up-to-speed on all applicable regulations, and show them how to use the service very effectively investing only a very small amount of time every week. All this - for as little as $25 per month to get started! Mobile Marketing is no longer out of reach for small businesses!
  
  If any small business owner is reading this and would like more information, please text the word STRATEGIC to 244326 to opt in to our Mobile Club and receive a FREE demonstration. Participation in our Mobile Club will also entitle you to discounts on other services, weekly marketing tips to grow your business, and other great information. If you prefer not to opt-in but would still like the FREE demonstration, please email us at info@StrategicGrowthConcepts.com.
  
  Thanks, John, for writing a great article that gets small business owners thinking about the use of Mobile Marketing in their overall marketing strategy.

• Stephen Hoey 1 year 10 months and 15 days ago

  

  Great article. The only thing that worries me about mobile marketing is when does it turn into the dreaded spam like our email has become? Also, on a technical level how hard is it to implement mobile marketing for a small business?

• Victor Aloi 1 year 10 months and 6 days ago

  

  Hi John,
  
  Great article and thanks for mentioning InvolveMobile.
  
  It's good to see discussions about SMS marketing when everyone is mostly talking about smartphones applications and they forget that only 20% of the people have smartphones.

• John Jantsch 1 year 10 months and 6 days ago

  

  Barry, I think you need to offer the option to existing base and let those that want it optin. Then I would start adding the ask to all your web and in person forms but be very clear about what you will send and make sure people can opt out without any hassle.

• John Jantsch 1 year 10 months and 6 days ago

  

  @Suzanne - I agree with the comment about exclusivity. I always get several negative comments from people when I talk about SMS because too many people think about SPAM - I think that's the wrong view totally - yes people will spam, but it's also a way that many want to get info so you better offer the option.

• John Jantsch 1 year 10 months and 6 days ago

  

  Denise - love the addition of how groups are using text - great way to rapidly alert and mobilize.

• PAUL ROSENFELD 1 year 10 months and 6 days ago

  

  Hi Barry, Good question. I strongly advise you against purchasing opt-in lists of mobile subscribers. They're often very sketchy and land you in criminal proceedings if people complain you SPAMmed them. SMS marketing is currently ideal for your customers that you collect their mobile phone from. I'm happy to help if that's something you're interested in.
  
  Best,
  Paul

• Barry Goldberg 1 year 10 months and 6 days ago

  

  Where do we start with an established user base that we have not collected phone numbers on. We would like to do some SMS marketing but it seems we would have to collect phone numbers first. Are there opt-in lists we can subscribe to?

• PAUL ROSENFELD 1 year 10 months and 6 days ago

  

  Lots of good comments on this thread. I'm the Co-Founder of www.Fanminder.com, a text message service and I wished you had added us to your list since we're knocking the cover off the ball! :-)
  
  Let me add a few add'l top of mind thoughts:
  
  - The list of uses is great. I'd add "service reminders" for things like confirming appointments. New studies have shown anywhere from 25% - 70% decrease in 'no-shows' when texts are sent the day before.
  
  - We've seen very few people use the "text in" functions. Perhaps it was our implementation or perhaps it's just more work for relatively little benefit. I think it will depend on the information being pulled.
  
  - Office Drop CEO - We see younger folks more likely to give their mobile and the older you are the less likely you are to give it. People are still quite interested to join mobile fan clubs but I would counsel any small business to consider Texting as one part of an overall outreach strategy. While it's true the effectiveness of email newsletters is declining (and they take a lot of energy vs. texting) people in general are still likely to join.
  
  Regardless, in the next 2 years, SMS and Email will merge and the concept of multi-channel List Management Tools will become the norm, cutting across email, texting, and social networks.
  
  Lastly, I'd also add that in choosing a SMS provider, a small business should look at affordability and ease of use as the two primary factors. Many of the providers in the industry, including most of the ones on your list, are really for larger small businesses and the typical small business won't be able to use the service nor afford it. I suggest taking providers such as www.fanminder.com or textmarks.com out for a test spin to get a feel for the day-day experience. We're also offering a 20% discount to all Open Forum members.
  
  Cheers, Paul

• Nick Asolas 1 year 10 months and 6 days ago

  

  in my experience, text message marketing is the best way to keep in touch with my customer base and control info flow. I use BoomText (www.boomtext.com) and it rocks... its not listed in the piece but it is the best one out there by far.

• Denise Terry 1 year 10 months and 7 days ago

  

  We also see a lot of SMS group texting use within schools (universities and high schools) by teachers who send out homework assignments and class alerts using our SMS group broadcast feature.
  
  Quite a few churches, religious groups and youth ministries are also using our group mobile chat and group broadcast to send out inspirational messages of the day, coordinate youth events, group gatherings, and community rallies (TextMarks also powers www.textchurch.com). Coaches and sports teams are using SMS alerts to notify of practice updates or weather cancellations at the last minute (www.teamtext.org).
  
  We're also seeing quite a bit of group SMS use among developers (mobile and web developers) who are using the TextMarks SMS API to send out group text messages and mobilize existing web content and applications. Some developers are promoting their iPhone app via SMS, so if someone texts their keyword to 41411, they get an auto SMS back with a link that launches the iPhone app or download directly.
  
  Lots of good use cases outlined in the article above, and we love hearing about how small businesses and organizations are using group SMS and mobile alerts to engage their audience with mobile marketing.
  (@textmarks)

• SUZANNE VARA 1 year 10 months and 7 days ago

  

  John
  
  Very useful list here as there are webinars on how to or why but not always the reasons to use mobile marketing for small businesses. When introducing new marketing means to the small business owner providing examples of how they could use it as you have here is gets them thinking what they could do for their biz.
  
  The exclusivity that a company can create with the SMS to their customers for discounts, gifts, etc would be better than the email offering or a specific discount to the masses. The group is smaller and more focused/targeted. I am on board with you t hat all small businesses should see where SMS marketing fits into their plan and use it.
  
  @SuzanneVara

• PRASAD THAMMINENI 1 year 10 months and 7 days ago

  

  Very useful and timely article John! I saw EZ Texting presentation at Small Business Tech Summit in New York couple of weeks ago and I was very impressed with the market potential on the mobile platform. Your article captures the essence.
  
  Since SMS marketing is in its early stages, may be more people will be willing to give out their mobile numbers to receive offers as opposed to a traditional newsletters. Your thoughts?

• John Jantsch 1 year 10 months and 7 days ago

  

  Thanks Kim and I would further suggest that folks check out Kim Dushinski's Mobile Marketing Handbook.
  
  No question, spam is spam these days no matter the form - I actually think people might even act more violently to spam on their mobile. Particularly if their mobile plan has them paying for data.

• Kim Dushinski 1 year 10 months and 7 days ago

  

  Great ideas John!
  
  Just a reminder that every time you send text messages it must be with permission. As long as you have people opt in using the text in method, via online sign up and/or with a double opt in you are good.
  
  Text messaging is a great marketing tool. Glad to see you sharing it.