When you are running a
business, especially a small business, it is absolutely vital for you to market
yourself. As it can be extremely expensive to send out postcards, mailers or
advertise in newspapers, magazines, on television and on the radio, it is
suggested that internet and mobile advertising be used as much as possible. If
you are already online and taking advantage of free social media such as
Facebook, Twitter or Google Plus, taking your campaign mobile is relatively
simple.
SMS, or short message
service, is the acronym for what most people call text messaging. This form of
marketing on a cell phone has become much more prevalent in the marketing
community for the past 12 or so years. When you are running any online
marketing campaign, your goal is conversions. For every conversion you get, the
higher payout you will receive on an affiliate network and the more traffic
your business will also receive. As most people read their text messages in
less than five minutes, mobile marketing has a much higher conversion rate than
most email marketing or social advertising ever could.
Short message service marketing is usually ran one of two ways, by short codes
or by email. When running a short code message service, you, the business owner,
or your marketing director will come up with a short call to action. You will
then send that message to a short code that will act as the liaison between you
and your customer base. The code will send your message to everyone on your
marketing list and then report your conversion rate. You can usually view your
analytics on how well everything has converted on a separate webpage or the
liaison company will usually send you a weekly reported email to inform you of
your marketing campaigns growth and progress.
Another way SMS can be used is through an email marketing platform. Let us
assume you already have a weekly or monthly newsletter. Be sure on that page,
there is a space for customers to send in their phone number. If their number
is already on file, when you send out your newsletter, you can also have text
notification set up. This can also be used to inform them of upcoming deals,
coupons, late or early business hours and special promotions. You can send your
short, call to action to an email liaison company that can send everything out
to your clientele if you are unaware of how to make your call to action clear
and concise.
Mobile marketing is one of the best new ways to market your business. Not only
is it inexpensive, often times, free, but it is highly accessible with great
conversion rates.
Sam is a blogger with a
background in Internet marketing. His latest endeavor has been to learn how
to build an iPhone app and
this is a skill he now finds to be very marketable.