Text ‘Success’ to 55555 For Huge Sales!

The ABCs of SMS marketing

The average 13- to 17-year-old sends and receives more than 100 text messages a day and while folks between 45 and 54 years old only tally about 10 percent of that, the number is climbing…fast.

In addition to that, industry figures indicate that 94 percent of all text messages get opened within five minutes. How long does it take on average for a person to listen to a voice mail message? Five hours, according to James Sminoff, who founded PhoneTag, a service that transcribes voice-mail messages into text messages.

What percentage of your emails do you even bother to open?

Startling numbers like these hint at the potential power of text messages in the world of marketing. But, questions remain, such as:

✓      Is text messaging effective?

✓      How does a business get into text messaging?

✓      How much can a company expect to spend on text messaging?

Effectiveness of text messaging

As with any advertising and marketing medium, the outcome is only as good as the ability of the campaign to target the right consumers with the right message and desiring the right outcome. 

First, we’re talking about opt-in relationships between consumers and businesses. Very often they begin with a message something like “Text blah blah to 12345 to vote for your favorite this or that.” In fact, the wide adoption of text messaging in the United States is often credited to American Idol and the way viewers use text messages to vote for their favorite contestants.

Brand awareness is often the primary goal for text message marketing campaigns. If you want to read some success stories, check out the Mobile Marketing Association’s case study pages. They discuss specific successful applications of text marketing and other mobile marketing solutions in various sectors of the economy, including automotive, B-2-B, social media, consumer goods, nonprofits, travel, media, healthcare, and more.

Social media drivers 

There are a number of ways to get the initial “opt-in” decision from the consumer and one good way is to leverage social media. Regal Cinemas publicizes a weekly snack bar discount coupon to its Facebook “fans” and the coupon is delivered via a webpage to smartphones. 

To receive the coupon automatically each week, moviegoers sign up to receive a text message with a link that opens up the smartphone browser to the coupon page. This process gives coupon recipients a little extra nudge each week to go see a movie.

Sometimes text message marketing may not even seem like it’s marketing. For example, some healthcare providers are using text messages to remind patients about upcoming appointments. Remember, when patients miss appointments, it’s a major loss of revenue.

Further, clinics can use text messages to urge patients to come in for their flu shots, or remind them about the need to get a yearly physical. Also they can send out basic health information that will strengthen their relationships with their patients.

How to get started 

Step number one is to get yourself really up to speed on what’s possible to accomplish in your market. Along with the Mobile Marketing Association case studies, you’ll want to check out:

• Text Message Marketing Watch.com, and
• CITA The Wireless Association

At the CITA site, drill down to their business resources case studies to see how some of the big players have used text marketing to their advantage. 

By the way, if you get yourself up-to-speed on what can be achieved, you’ll probably find yourself far more educated that most when it comes to the realm of text marketing. Not long ago Forbes ran a story that said most marketing managers put text message marketing one step above restroom graffiti as a diserable strategy.

Once you have an idea about which campaigns hold promise for your business, you’ll want to find a service provider. There are many to choose from today. Some of the main providers are:

• SlickText.com
• Tatango.com
• TellMyCell
• Opti It
• Ez Texting
• Callfire
• Simple Texting

What will it cost?

Most providers have small, basic plans that are free. For example Simple Texting has its “Free for Life” plan that allows you 50 messages per month and one keyword. A keyword is the what the users input when they are instructed to “Text Carumba to 12345″

Of course, you can scale up from “free” to any number of paid plans. SlickText offers “The Big Brother” plan at $119 a month that gives you 2750 texts per month using up to eight keywords, plus they rollover unused texts. And, while we’re talking about SlickText, they have a great downloadable guide to text marketing that you’ll want to read before you jump in.

Next Steps

If there’s one singular truth that applies to digital marketing strategies, it’s that they change about as fast as they can be documented. However, there are a few facts that relate to text message marketing that will probably remain true for a long time:

• Cellphones are here to stay
• Smartphones will get smarter
• Short digital messages are not going away

Ignore those facts at your own peril.

Most of these fail within a month or two. Generally, the folks who own these domain names let them expire and they are never heard of again. A friend of ours is wondering right now whether or not to renew his ChiropractorsInNashville.com domain. However, a rare few buck this trend and manage to carve out a significant presence on the Internet and even provide a valuable service to both businesses and consumers. 

Yelp, Yahoo Local, City Search, OpenTable, and BBB.org are among the survivors. But, perhaps the most important player in this website genre is Angie’s List. Odds are you don’t know what Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com looks like, but because of her television ads, there’s a good chance you could pick Angie Hicks out of a lineup of Internet entrepreneurs. 

From 2002 through 2004, Inc. magazine named it one of the fastest-growing privately held companies in the United States. How did Angie succeed where others have so often failed? Interestingly enough, one key to her success goes counter to what has spurred huge growth on other websites: Angie’s List does not allow anonymous reviews. And, that’s also one of the reasons it can prove so beneficial to businesses and consumers. Let’s outline this and make a few more points as well. 

No Anonymous Snarking

Business owners don’t have to fear anonymous negative reviews from competitors or ex-spouses on Angie’s List. That lets business owners and healthcare professionals breathe a lot easier. Similarly, consumers need to know that companies can’t pay to get a positive rating on Angie’s List. The only thing that approaches “advertising” is that Angie’s List allows business with a rating of “B” or higher to offer discount coupons to the members of Angie’s List. A business can also set up a free profile, but it won’t have a rating until its customers have written reviews.

However, any business that it willing to “throw its hat in the ring” at Angie’s List is telling consumers that it doesn’t fear negative reviews. In other words, it’s a good vote of confidence. One local owner we know saw his business jump 40 percent after he started getting positive reviews on Angie’s List. 

Bogus reviews are a big problem on the Internet, and they have created a whole new category of service provider: companies that sell software that “verifies” actual shoppers who have purchased the products they are reviewing. You’ll find “Verified Buyer” labels on many e-commerce reviews today. This is not a problem with Angie’s List because there are no anonymous reviews from “Ivan765748″ and there is a fee to join the service.

Of course, it is possible for a business owner to “bribe” people to write positive reviews. However, if they provide poor service, it shouldn’t take too long for nefarious sorts like this to be “outed” by piling up poor Angie’s List reviews.

Qualified Leads

Qualified leads are the gold standard for sales prospects. A qualified lead is a prospective customer that has already demonstrated a serious interest in the product being sold or the service being offered. I don’t know about you, but I click on a lot of ads just out of curiosity. I have no intention to buy. Everyone who uses Angie’s List is a qualified lead. People who are not serious about buying don’t pay the monthly or yearly membership fee.

A chance to make it right

Companies are allowed to respond to negative reviews and often this can be the best time to score real points with consumers. Most of us understand that things don’t always go as planned, but when businesses own up to their mistakes and do what’s necessary to make things right, it demonstrates real character. Like they say, when God gives you lemons, make lemonade, although you’re going to have to provide your own sugar and water…

CONSUMER TIP: If you have something negative to say about a service provider, express yourself in an honest, open and straightforward manner. Almost all of us have been guilty of making criticisms online that were too harsh, sarcastic and just generally over the top. Reviews judged to be vindictive have a good chance of being taken off of Angie’s List, even if there’s an underlying truth being expressed.

When and why to join

Certainly anyone getting ready to do a major remodeling project or series of projects will want to consider joining Angie’s List. In addition to this, consider how many times over the course of a month you sit down at the computer and try to get information on local businesses. It’s probably more often than you think. Angie’s List offers both yearly and monthly memberships, as well as a 110 percent money back guarantee. Last time we checked some 1.5 million consumers were finding professionals on Angie’s List and writing reviews. That’s a lot of information for consumers to tap into.

The nuts and bolts

When consumers join Angie’s List, they input their ZIP codes so they get listings for their local areas. There are some ancillary benefits as well. Angie’s List has a good library of articles on consumer issues, a magazine and it its own complaint resolution team that’s available to members.

Finally, you may ask who’s rating Angie’s List? The Better Business Bureau gives it an A+ overall rating.

Today there’s a good chance the first place you’ll turn to is the Internet, and specifically one of the big search engines, like Google or Bing. Further, the repair shop that manages to wiggle its way up to the top of the search results is positioned well to get your serious consideration.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the main reasons that specific auto repair shop managed to get listed at the top of the first search results page. Any business or person who’s serious about increasing website traffic has to understand and incorporate SEO best practices.

It’s a zoo out there

Google, as even casual web watchers know, is king of the hill in the realm of Internet searches and over the years Google has tweaked and re-tweaked the algorithms it uses to rank websites and list them in search results. The latest version is called “Panda” in the SEO world and when Google implemented it, it threw the SEO industry into a frenzy not unlike the monkey cage at the zoo when the keepers throw in a bunch of ripe bananas.

For a long time, website owners felt they could inch their way up in Google search results by loading their pages with search terms. Google finally realized that this website “content” was really meaningless to Internet users, so today overloading pages with words and phrases like “best price on Cialis” will actually cause Google to put a site lower in search rankings and in some cases even ignore the site altogether.

With Panda, SEO became all about the quality, popularity and relevance of websites. SEO “Black Hat” developers and designers can’t fake a website’s way to the top of search results anymore.

Does SEO matter?

With that background, you might wonder if SEO matters anymore and if it does, how should a website owner approach developing effective SEO. The simple answer to the first question is yes, SEO still matters. After all, only a handful of websites are going to be listed on the first page of search results and search engines have to be using some formula to determine which sites earn those coveted spots.

Sophisticated search engines examine webpages and judge if they look “spammy” or like they’ve been created by robots instead of real people. So the first word of advice, and an overarching principle, is to create websites that are relevant and offer real people real information and not just setup to be ready for the day Googlebot comes crawling through to look at your content. This level of relevance needs to carry over to all aspects of a website, including page titles, headlines, subheads, photo captions, alternate text for graphics and more.

Further, within the coding that creates webpages there are various “meta” tags. One is called keywords, and it used to be a big part of how search engines sorted and ranked websites. It’s not so important today, but it’s still necessary to include the proper keywords without overdoing it.

The “meta” description tag is quite important. It’s generally the little paragraph that Google displays in its search results to describe a website.

As in high school, popularity counts

In high school, the popular kids got invited to all the parties. They “ranked.” It’s the same on the Internet and one way search engines rank the popularity of websites is by the number of other sites that link back to them—the virtual equivalent of being invited to a party in high school. Imagine for a moment how many millions of websites must have affiliate links to Amazon.com! Those would be a good yardstick by which to measure the popularity of Amazon.com.

If a foodie writes the quintessential blog on chocolate chip cookie recipes and people start sharing it and linking to it, that webpage is going to jump up in search results when people look for the “best chocolate chip cookie recipe.” Creating relevant and legitimate links to your pages shows that your site has authority. Search engines like that.

However, there’s a dark side to this. Links from sites that search engines have judged as low quality or “spam” can hurt websites. Think of backlinks as personal references. You wouldn’t list Snidely Whiplash as a reference on a job application, would you?

In the final analysis, SEO must be done properly today. Good placement in search results can greatly enhance success. Poor placement can be deadly. Gimmicks don’t work. A sound strategy, consistently applied, and a high quality website are crucial.

Just because everyone is doing something doesn’t make it a good idea. And, when the subject is related to your business, it becomes especially important to weigh the benefits before jumping in with both feet. Obviously, major corporations are expected to have websites. Many of us have visited these and they look great and often offer substantial benefits to the visitor. This brings us to one of the first benefits a website can provide your business.

Enhance your image

This is a somewhat intangible benefit, but we wanted to mention it here because it relates to something we just pointed out. Major corporations have websites. One of the beautiful things about the Internet is that even a small business can have a website that looks and functions as well as the website of a Fortune 500 company. Working with a good designer and developer can deliver a site that impresses visitors just as much as any other site on the Internet.

This can give your business a kind of instant credibility. Of course, the products and services your business offers have to be excellent, but a good website can give your business the kind of enhanced image it needs to “get its foot in the door.” Very often the first interaction a potential customer will have is with your website and we all know the importance of first impressions.

Expand your reach

Is it time to take your product or service and expand your sales beyond your local area? A website provides a cost-effective way to accomplish this. The Internet, combined with services like UPS and FedEx make it virtually irrelevant where many businesses are located today. In fact, if you have a product that you sell directly to consumers, you can move your operation out to the rural area where you’ve always wanted to live, and as long as delivery trucks can get there, you’ll be able to successfully market your product via your website. This benefit is driven by the next:

Enjoy low-cost advertising

With a search engine optimized (SEO) site many businesses find that their best advertising is virtually free. Once you have a website for your business that appears high in search results, your customers will come to you “organically” or naturally, just by doing web searches about the kind of products or services that you offer. To be included in their regular list of search results, search engines like Google and Bing do not charge businesses. There are, however, also opportunities to advertise on search result pages.

Google offers a program it calls Adwords. Businesses bid to have their small ads placed along the sides of Google search results pages. For example, a used car business in Dayton, Ohio might want his ad to appear on Google search result pages whenever someone does a search for “good used cars Dayton.” Online advertising strategies like this can be inexpensive and the only people who are going to see your ads are those who are specifically interested in your business. Businesses don’t waste money putting their ads in front of people who have no interest in their products. Of course, a business website is required to take advantage of this kind of targeted advertising.

Improve customer service

You can easily provide existing customers and potential customers with a wealth of information about your business. There are probably a half dozen questions that you or your employees get asked all the time. When the answers to those questions are provided by a business website, new and established customers get the right information every time and it doesn’t require additional employee hours.

It’s a fact today that many consumers prefer to get their information online. So many times when we call a business we immediately get put on hold. Your website never puts your customers on hold. Well-organized FAQs along with an online contact form can handle many of the questions your customers pose. With responsive employees, good organization and an informative website, even a small startup can offer world-class customer service.

Another important benefit for your customers is that a business website is “open” 24 hours a day, seven days a week, including holidays. This means customers can go there to find answers even when everyone is out of the office. It also means that if you are selling a product online, your store is always available to take orders.

Adding features like a blog or opt-in email list to your website also improves customer service. You can let customers know about product improvements, new offerings and other developments very easily through a business website.

Expand the scope of your business

Another important benefit of Internet commerce is that the barriers to entry are low. While adding a new product line in a brick-and-mortar store requires shelf space and more, adding products to a website is as easy as adding a few new webpages. Further, combined with drop shipping, an Internet retailer would not even have to stock the new products. This makes it much easier to experiment with products or services that might prove to be complementary to your core business.

Reduce costs

An underlying attribute of everything we’ve discussed so far is that a business website has the potential to reduce overall costs. A business can improve its image, offer better customer service, reach a bigger audience, target advertising dollars and expand business opportunities once it has a good website.

And finally, the flip side of reduced costs is greater profitability and that’s something even mom would approve, isn’t it?