Text Message Marketing for Small Business: A Comprehensive Guide
23 May 2024
Philip Portman
Text message marketing stands out in the era of constant beeps, buzzes, and vibrations that try to grab our attention instantly.
Why?
Read on to get its answer.
Text message marketing is personal, direct, and, most prominently, highly effective. That's why small business owners must master the art of SMS marketing. Besides, text message marketing for small businesses is a cost-effective way to acquire and engage consumers.
This article dives into how small businesses can leverage SMS marketing to thrive. From the basics of SMS marketing to advanced strategies to boost ROI, this article will shed light on how to make text marketing for small businesses a driving force to maximize small business growth.
So, without further ado, let's unlock the secrets!
Before diving deep into how text marketing for small business helps your small business grow, first understand what text message marketing is in brief.
What is text message marketing for small businesses?
Text message marketing, or SMS marketing, is a simple concept. You can send transactional, promotional, or informational messages directly to your consumer's mobile phones through text messages.
Now, one question will pop into your mind – why send an SMS and not an email?
Well, the reason behind this is that there is a high chance that the email you send might sit unopened in the inbox. At the same time, text messages capture instant attention. Even statistics show that SMSs have an average 98% open and 46% response rate.
Besides, you can give a personal touch to text messages and build a strong, personal one-to-one relationship with your consumers. The ROI of text message marketing for small businesses is impressive. Simply put, spend low implementation costs and expect high engagement rates!
So, whether you want to launch your new product or service, send a thank you message to consumers or discount offer notification, each text message can boost consumer engagement and conversion rates, which shows how powerful SMS marketing is for your small business's growth.
Why should small businesses use texting services?
Text message marketing offers various benefits. Let's have a quick overview of it, which will help you understand why you should use texting services for your small businesses.
1) High Open Rate
SMS have high open rates; therefore, there is a high chance that your target audience will see and read your messages compared to other marketing channels.
2) Low Competition
Email marketing and other social media channels are highly saturated. By crafting compelling and personalized marketing messages, you can capture comsumer's attention quickly. According to a study, text message marketing is estimated to grow by 18% yearly. Therefore, more brands will add it to their marketing efforts. So, adopt it early, as it will significantly benefit your business.
3) Easy To Track
Using text message marketing platforms like Textdrip, you can easily track and measure the performance of your SMS campaigns. These platforms come with robust analytics and reporting tools that will help optimize your SMS marketing strategies for better results.
4) Inexpensive
Text message marketing has a high open and response rate and affordable pricing plans, providing you with higher ROI.
5) High Click-Through Rate
The click-through rate for SMS is approximately 20% to 35%, whereas email has approx click-through rate of 1% to 10%. A higher click-through rate means more consumers are clicking on the call-to-action button.
6) Improved Consumer Engagement
You can send exclusive offers, personalized content, and promotional events directly to the customer's smartphone with text messages.
7) Easy To Opt-In / Opt-Out
Customers can easily SMS opt-in and out of receiving text messages. It shows that as a business owner, you respect your customer's preferences and confirm compliance with legal regulations.
8) Increased Customer Satisfaction
Delivering more valuable and relevant information, updates, or promotions to your target audience's devices will automatically improve customer experience.
9) Instant Read and Reach
Generally, SMSs is delivered and read promptly as compared to Emails. Therefore, it is an excellent communication tool that ensures that your SMSs reaches to your target audience at the optimal time.
10) Multiple Use Cases
Versatility is another significant advantage of SMS marketing. As a small business owner, you can use various types of text marketing campaigns like flash sales, price drop alerts, event reminders, new product launches, etc.
11) Simple To Integrate
When you pick the right SMS marketing platform like Textdrip, you can easily integrate texting with other marketing channels and tools. It will help you sync data between platforms to create a wholesome digital experience for leads and consumers.
12) Personalized & Scalable
You can create personalized marketing campaigns by segmenting the contact list according to their preferences using SMS marketing platforms. So you can send more targeted messages. Besides, by gaining more subscribers, you can easily grow your SMS marketing channel, as texting is familiar and easy. So, there is no need for extensive team training for the execution.
How does SMS marketing for small businesses work?
Here is the 4-step process in which SMS marketing for small businesses works.
Step - 1 - Decide on the SMS Marketing Software
First, you need to choose the text message marketing software that best suits your marketing requirements and budget. Sign up for it. Once you do it you can access all the messaging tools.
Step – 2 – Get the trusted number
Make sure you obtain trusted and credible numbers to send text messages. Your audience will trust and engage with your messages when you have such numbers. Try to obtain 10DLC registered numbers to send personalized bulk SMSs.
Step – 3 – Build Your SMS Subscriber List
Use text messaging platforms like Textdrip to use the customizable opt-in tools and segmentation features. It will ensure that your message reaches a targeted audience, maximizing engagement and conversion opportunities.
Step – 4 – Create Compelling Texts That Deliver
You can use text marketing platforms like Textdrip and craft and deliver compelling text using its user-friendly interface, scheduling options, and analytics tools to track and measure that your SMS campaign delivers optimized engagement and conversion rates.
Which text marketing rules and regulations do you need to follow?
SMS marketing is permission-based, and small businesses should follow the rules and regulations of TCPA and 10DLC. These rules will prevent spamming and protect personal privacy. They even restrict placing telemarketing calls without the consumers' consent.
As a business owner, following TCPA and 10DLC compliance will ensure that your consumers receive messages from a reliable source. It will increase the authenticity of your brand.
10DLC registration offers following benefits to businesses without compromising on consumer’s privacy.
- Prompt delivery
- Quick responses
- Reliability
- Consistency
- Affordability
Here are some best practices and key rules and regulations that, as a business owner, you need to comply with to avoid any legal issues.
- According to the TCPA rules, businesses must obtain written consent from individuals before sending text messages to consumers.
- The business must include clear opt-out instructions for each text message, such as UNSUBSCRIBE or STOP.
- All text message content should be truthful and not misleading; otherwise, it can damage the brand’s reputation.
- Businesses should adhere to proper timing for sending messages. They can’t send SMS to any subscriber before 8:00 am or after 9:00 pm.
- Privacy and data protection are a must, and businesses should implement strong security measures.
- Businesses should clearly identify themselves in the message. It will help in building trust and recipients will know who is contacting them.
- If the user has listed your number on the National Do-Not-Call Registry, you can’t call them.
- Some industries, like healthcare, have some additional regulations. In US, healthcare organizations must comply with HIPAA while sending SMS that involves patient information.
By following these rules and best practices, businesses can win their customers' trust, which will increase brand awareness, authenticity, and trustworthiness and ultimately boost business ROI.
How can SMS marketing help small businesses grow?
If you are a small business owner, you have faced unique challenges like:
- Customer acquisition
- Brand awareness
- Inventory management
- Engaging with customers
- Collecting consumer feedback
- Creating personalized and targeted marketing campaigns
- Consumer retention
- Marketing with a tight budget
Effective SMS marketing not only helps in brand awareness and gaining new consumers but also helps retain consumers. Text marketing is permission-based, so you can send promotional, transactional, and informational messages to the most interested consumers.
Besides that, you can create tailored text marketing campaigns to wow your customers. Text marketing is cost-effective, so if you are on a tight budget and have limited resources, then you can also create a successful SMS campaign and implement it effectively. Selecting the right text message marketing platform provides you with budget-friendly text message marketing cost plans. So you can choose the plans that best suit your budget and marketing requirements.
Once you have decided on the SMS platform and plan, there are a few ways to increase your subscriber list.
- You can use opt-in forms on your website, social media platforms, or in-store to collect the contact number of visitors/ customers.
- You can offer exclusive discounts or promotions to encourage customers to subscribe to your SMS list.
- Arrange trade shows and events to collect phone numbers and add them to your subscriber list.
- You can use a QR code on your marketing materials so customers can easily subscribe to your SMS list.
Once you have enough subscribers, you can send messages using personalization, segmentation, and automation. Ensure you do A/B testing to find out which message perfectly resonates with your target audience and adjust your strategies accordingly.
Conclusion
In summary, most business owners have a misbelief that text message marketing is expensive and complicated. However, text message marketing for small businesses is an accessible and cost-effective way to boost sales and grow the consumer base. With the right SMS marketing platform, such as Textdrip, small business owners can easily set up effective SMS campaigns and promote their products, services, discount offers, send reminders, collect feedback, and more.
So, if your small business is ready to implement solid marketing and sales solutions, take advantage of SMS marketing for small businesses with Textdrip and experience features like quick responses, automated messages, bulk texting, two-way messaging, etc.
Contact us today to book a free demo and discover the difference Textdrip can make for your small business.
FAQ's
| How do I get started with text message marketing for my small business? |
Text message marketing is quite a simple and effective process that consists of two steps. First, enable your customers to opt-in to receive your messages. In the second step, you will need a text messaging platform to send SMSs to your contacts once they have signed up.
| What is the average ROI for SMS marketing for small businesses? |
ROI = Return (campaign's revenue) – Investment (cost to run the campaign)
To determine the ROI for SMS marketing for small businesses, you can use this formula: (Return/Investment) * 100 = ROI percentage
| How can text marketing for small businesses boost holiday sales? |
You can offer seasonal discounts such as a flat percentage discount on all products just before the festive season. Besides that, you can promote holiday special giveaways, start a holiday referral contest, offer holiday pre-booking, and launch new products during the festive season.
| How can text marketing for small businesses help in customer retention? |
You need to use strategies like personalizing your message, being consistent, keeping your messages short and crisp, creating easy and quick communication with customers, etc. It will help in customer retention.
| Can I integrate text marketing with other campaign channels? |
You can integrate text marketing with other campaign channels like social media, email, and events.
| Does text message marketing for small businesses still work? |
Yes, it still works because of its highly convenient and personal nature. SMS marketing can engage customers effectively, so most customers respond quickly and positively.
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