How Text Message Marketing Can Effectively Promote Your Small Business

By Alexa Lemzy

Promoting your local business doesn’t have to be costly, time-consuming, or overcomplicated. For small businesses, text message marketing, also known as SMS marketing, can be as effective as multiple promotional methods when it is sent at the right time to your customers and contains the information they’re looking for.

Here is how you can use SMS marketing to promote your local business with little to no effort.

Text message marketing for small business

1. Target and expand your local audience

SMS is the easiest way to reach your audience when they are located near your company’s headquarters or in the vicinity of your stores.

Send promotional texts as an incentive for clients who opt-in to receive your company’s communications by offering exclusive discounts for your products or simply inviting them in for a free consultation with one of your representatives. Make sure to mention that an offer is time-sensitive to instill a sense of urgency.

2. Encourage client engagement using exclusivity

You can use texts to launch deals that aren’t available anywhere else: on your website, social media channels, etc. This is how you can make customers feel like they belong to an exclusive club. This approach also triggers the fear of missing out (FOMO), causing them to act faster.

3. Keep it interactive

When implementing text message marketing for your small business, sometimes simple texts work best, but mixing up plain content with links to other media channels or your company's social profiles can be more engaging, especially if you're targeting a younger audience. Links to short videos also work well, and these can include how-to tutorials, short product launch clips, or even informational footage that shows how your product was created and how it is manufactured.

4. Sell more with geofencing

Geofencing is a location-based marketing strategy that triggers targeted marketing actions whenever a mobile phone reaches a preset geographic limit.

Let’s say someone walks by a restaurant that is offering 50% off specials that day. Thanks to geofencing, the restaurant can send on-the-spot notifications (in the form of texts, emails, app notifications, etc.) to clients who are in the area and have their GPS location services turned on. This is a targeted approach to text message marketing for small businesses.

5. Increase customer loyalty

When people buy your product or service, help them make the most of their purchase—and turn them into loyal customers—by sending them automated texts with links to short tutorials or blog posts that contain step-by-step instructions for using the product/service.

6. Encourage cross-selling

Cross-selling is an easy way to boost sales and increase customer loyalty and retention. It involves targeting clients by using their last purchase and then recommending related products you think they would like. For example:

“Hey, [Name]. Are you enjoying your recent purchase? We thought you’d like to see more items that go well with you bought, and they’re 30% off today: [Link]”

More articles from AllBusiness.com:

• 7 Rules of Etiquette for SMS Marketing
• The 10 Do’s and Don’ts of Text Marketing for Your Business
• 6 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Waste Time on a Startup Business Plan
• To Reach Millennials, Try Text Message Marketing
• How to Optimize Your Blog Content and Get Noticed

Why you should use SMS marketing

Reaching out to customers to collect feedback through SMS marketing is easier than you think and can be done with limited resources.  A few reasons why it works so well include:

It offers immediate results. Unlike emails, texts are read instantly and are often answered within 90 seconds of being received. For companies looking for immediate feedback, text message marketing can be a great way to find out a product's weak spots and to come up with solutions that are tailor-fit to match client expectations.

Allows you to easily personalize professional communications. Most customers today expect their offers to be personalized. When asking clients for feedback or reviews in a text, include personal details in your message: “Hello, [Name]. Are you enjoying your latest purchase? We’d love to get your feedback on [Product Name] and would like to offer 30% off on your next purchase to show how much we appreciate your business!”

Immediately engages customers. Business texting solutions allow companies to reach customers wherever they are and no matter how busy they are. A person may not be able to get through an entire email if they are in a meeting or if they are on the go, but they most likely will read a text.

Leads to internal process optimization. Customers can provide valuable feedback on what's working and what needs improvement with a product or service. Conducting customer research can be overwhelming, but a simple text message to clients can save you a lot of trouble by providing instant engagement, prompt answers about both the benefits and weak spots of your product, and potential solutions to your problems.

SMS marketing can be a valuable business partner

Text message marketing is more than a method of sending promotional messages to your customers via texts. It is a simple, cost-effective way to engage your target audience using personalized communication that yields big results.

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