Text Message marketing is a very personal way to send direct marketing messages to a large number of subscribers at the same time. Not only that, but it has proven to be one of the most cost-effective forms of digital age marketing available today.

Mobile phones have massively flooded the market in recent year with consumers buying new smart phones as fast as the manufacturers can produce them. Even more astonishing is the number of people who are using their mobile devices to access the internet.  In fact, Mobile internet usage is expected to exceed desktop internet usage within the next few years.

Have you noticed how many people are glued to their mobile devices? We’re doing everything from shopping to socializing on our mobile phones. Most people have theirs within arm’s reach at all times – including while they are asleep. In addition to that, studies have shown that approximately 90% of consumers read their text messages within minutes. What other types of marketing can offer that rate of deliver-ability?

None this is exactly why Text Marketing is more likely to generate an immediate response over traditional advertising methods.

There are an estimated 5.9 billion mobile phone subscriptions worldwide, meaning that as many as 85% of the current population of the world has a cell phone that can receive text messages.

With as many as 45% of consumers comparing prices online before making a purchase it makes sense to use SMS messaging as another means of promoting your business.

If it is used intelligently and combined with a more extensive marketing campaign, SMS marketing can add real value to your advertising expenditure because it has great immediacy, reach, and cost effectiveness.

How SMS Text Marketing Works and the Benefits

SMS is an acronym for “Short Message Service” and is better known as the familiar “text message” function that most of us have come to use regularly since it was first introduced in the 1980s.

Even when mobile phones are not in use, they are sending and receiving information through wireless signals and cell phone towers. When a text messages is sent, it has to go through one of these towers and then the SMS center, which transmits the message to its final destination.

With trillions of text messages being sent over the past few years, consumers have adapted to this method extremely well. Not only have they adapted to it, but they are somewhat “addicted” to it.

In fact, some studies show that most text message users prefer to communicate via text messaging instead of talking on the phone.

However, the use of SMS as a marketing tool by small businesses has been relatively low. Those businesses that choose to ignore Text Message Marketing are missing out on an excellent promotional opportunity that can help them steadily increase profits.

The convenience and effectiveness of Text Marketing has made it a very useful instrument for those businesses that have embraced it. It simply makes staying in touch with your target market much easier, which ultimately translates into sales.

The use of Text Message Marketing is very straightforward; it is a simple case of sending out your company’s latest marketing message to your list of mobile phone numbers.

There are several ways to collect a list of numbers to use in your Text Marketing campaigns. It is best to avoid the less creditable means, such as buying them in bulk. Instead, just ask your existing customers give you their mobile details and many will happily do so.

For instance, to get new subscribers, a pizzeria could have flyers that read, “Text ‘PIZZA NOW’ to 99999 for FREE Appetizer with purchase of Medium Pizza.” Once people subscribe, the pizzeria can start sending them occasional offers right to their mobile phone with a quick text message that reads something like, “Get £5 Off Any Large Pizza – Offer Available Today Only.”

Messages like this allow businesses to generate more foot traffic on their slower days with just the click of a button.

Text Message Marketing Flow

Here’s a Diagram that Shows How a Text Marketing Campaign Generally Goes

Main Benefits of Text Marketing

* Enables Personalized Communication with Customers – you can market to customers on a one-on-one basis giving them the feel of individualized attention.

* Your Marketing Messages are Welcome – text marketing is a permission-based method where only those who opted-in to your list will receive your messages.

* Higher Redemption Rates – the average SMS marketing offer has a redemption rate of 20%.

* Total Reach – consumers always have their mobile phones no matter where they are, so you can potentially reach hundreds or even thousands of your subscribers right away.

* High Open Rates – most of your subscribers will read your message within minutes of sending it out – 97% open rate!.

* Cost Effective – the low costs of text marketing makes its ROI unmatched by any other form of marketing.

* Speed – text messages can be setup and sent out instantly, allowing you to drive same day traffic with ease.

* Flexibility – you can send out text messages on demand 24/7; there are no limits to when you send out your messages.

Making Text Marketing Work for Your Business

All marketing plans hope to achieve at least one of three objectives:

1. To generate new customers and to penetrate new markets
2. To continue to service existing customers
3. To increase revenue in the business

SMS marketing strategies can be developed to deal with each of these goals. Of course, building a list of mobile subscribers for this kind of marketing requires a bit of time and effort.

A great way to start is to have some type of giveaway that requires people to leave their numbers so they can redeem their freebie.  This could be a simple coupon for one of your products or services.

Some businesses believe that consumers do not want to receive promotions on their mobile devices, but this is far from the truth.  Mobile users in general love to receive incentives on their mobile devices. In fact, this is simply a natural extension of their daily lives.

Text message marketing is considered “permission-based,” which means once someone opts-in to your list, you have permission to send them promotions.

Something as simple as a discount to “SMS customers only” could cause a traffic surge and ultimately boost sales. Not only that, but promotions such as this improve customer satisfaction as they feel “special” for being offered such a great deal that is not offered to the general public.

SMS text messages are considered to be more “personal” than other forms of digital marketing, so you have to respect people’s privacy and not abuse it by sending a constant stream of unwanted messages.

It is extremely important to strike a good balance between effective advertising and annoying spam.

Because text message marketing is so direct, it is always best to give people plenty of opportunity to opt out if they choose to.  However, if you are using this tool correctly and are not spamming your list with offers every day, most of them will be happy to stay on your list.

SMS should be used for more than just sending offers and discounts. Mix things up by actually building a relationship with your list. To do so, send some messages that are non-promotional, such as useful tips and information.

You can also send messages that help your customers get to know your business better. Anything along these lines will strengthen your customer relationships and should lead to increased sales over time.

Another reason SMS text marketing is so effective is that it keeps your business name and message right in front of your customers. This way, when they need a product or service that your company offers, they will think of you first.

Various Ways to Use Text Message Marketing

Different types of business will obviously use SMS marketing in different ways to get the most benefit from it.

Retailers may use it as a way to send out a list of this week’s specials, while Restaurants may use it to offer a limited time “buy one get one free” deal.

Hair salons may use it as a way to send mobile coupons for their services, while Attorneys may use it to send out helpful legal tips to their prospects.

Real Estate agents may use it to let their prospects know when new homes hit the market that fit their criteria, while Personal Trainers may use it as a way to send out fitness advice and healthy eating tips.

As you can see, direct marketing isn’t the only way companies can use SMS text messaging. Depending on the type of business, there are numerous ways to get foot traffic through your doors with simple text message marketing.

Various Ways to Use Text Message Marketing:

* Newsletter Sign-up – using short codes, people can sign-up to your list to receive your mobile newsletters going forward.

* Coupons/Discounts – customers will receive the offer on their mobile phone and in order to redeem it, they have to show it to your staff when they come into your establishment (or whatever redemption method makes the most sense for your type of business).

* Communicate with staff – it is a very fast, convenient, easy, and reliable way to tell your employees important information.

* Customer Surveys and Polls – getting feedback from your customers has never been easier than sending a quick text message.

* Appointment Reminders – service businesses are utilizing this service to send quick reminders to their customers about their upcoming appointments. Not only does this cut down on lost revenue for the business, but their customers love the convenience of receiving appointment reminders right on their mobile phones.

* Service Reminders – businesses such as Oil Change shops can use text marketing to remind their customers when it is time for an oil change.

* Thank You Messages – let your customers know how much you care by sending them a simple “Thank You” text message. This small measure can improve your customer loyalty quite a bit as people like to do business with companies that care.

These are just a few ways that your company can use Text Marketing. But selecting how you will use this method is the most crucial piece of the puzzle.

Get this right and you will reap the rewards of consistent new business as well as repeat business.  Get this wrong and you will end up wasting a lot of hard-earned time and money.

If you are unsure about the methods that would be most effective for your type of business, it is best to hire an Internet Marketing Consultant who can help.

SOURCE LINKS
1. http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/material/FactsFigures2010.pdf
2. http://royal.pingdom.com/2011/12/07/the-mobile-web-in-numbers/

So why am I talking about blind spots? Because every day I see more and more businesses that have blind spots regarding the Internet.

This may seem silly, so let me explain. As you already know, the Internet is very quickly replacing the way that most of us used to do business. Instead of offering a service just to people in your local area, you can now serve the entire world! Instead of having to pay expensive telephone fees to talk to someone in Asia, you can now hop on Skype and talk to them for FREE.

It’s amazing, and it’s only going to keep changing faster and faster. A good business owner has to keep up with these things- otherwise they risk their company getting mauled by the flexible, more adaptable ones.

Well even though a lot of business owners realize this, they still have blind spots. Most of the blind spots that I see these days are not from businesses that never tried- it’s businesses that didn’t realize “try” is different from “succeed”.

You see there are TONS of Facebook fan pages created by businesses. These are from business owners who realize where trends are going and want to stay on top.

The thing is, many of these pages were set up incorrectly! Maybe it doesn’t have a lot of company information on it. Perhaps there are no graphics or images listed. Maybe the information is outdated and pointing customers the wrong way.

You see there’s a lot more to being successful with your fan page than just putting it up. You have to make it look professional, set up marketing campaigns to get new “Likes”, send out regular updates, and a lot of other things. If you’re just letting it sit there without doing anything with it- you’re wrong!

Another example is Google Places. Even though most businesses have created a website or Facebook, most of them have never even looked at Places. I’m not sure why this is the case, but hopefully I can help turn this trend around.

As you already know, there are a few reasons why Places is such an important tool. For one thing, they show up very high in Google’s searches. Something else to consider is that Places makes it very easy for someone to see exactly where your company is in their town.

Now don’t get me wrong with this- I’m not saying that EVERYBODY is doing this wrong. What I am saying is that more and more businesses should start using these tools they have in front of them. Really market with Facebook, don’t just leave the page there. Claim a Google Places listing so you can start getting more customers.

If you have any questions, check out my Google Places guide. The guide shows you how to create your listing and do basic search engine optimization (SEO) to help it rank better in Google.

What’s this change? Simple- they changed the color of the pin that shows up in Google. So instead of showing a red pin, there is now a grey pin instead.

Now I know what you might be thinking- probably one of 2 main things.

“Why would they do that when they spent so many resources building up the red pin?”

To be honest there are a few reasons. One might be simply that Google wanted to try something new. The red pin stands out a lot more, so having a lot of them pop up on the screen may be irritating. On the other hand, the grey pin blends in more with the background and isn’t as irritating.

Another reason could be that like the logo showing on Google.com, maybe they wanted to start changing things on a regular basis. For all we know the grey pin could just be here for a week, and then maybe it’ll switch to a green or blue pin. By doing this, Google keeps its users engaged a bit more.

Something else to keep in mind is that even though the pin is grey when listings first appear, it turns red if you put your cursor over it. This allows it to still stand out if the user wants it to.

Here’s another question you may have-

“What’s the big deal?”

This is a legitimate question because for most people, this really isn’t a huge change. It’s kind of like changing the color of an arrow on a street sign. Sure, people will notice, but is it really worth making a stink about?

Well, yes and no. This is a very minor change, so chances are it’s not going to dramatically affect Google’s bottom line. In fact, it may not change it at all.

On the other hand, it’s important because it shows that Google is constantly adapting and trying new things. They never want to just say “well we’re the #1 search engine so we don’t have to worry about anything.”

Instead, they realize that companies that don’t adapt will FAIL. They’ll fall by the wayside and be replaced by flexible, more adaptable companies. In fact, this is how companies such as Google, Facebook and YouTube get so big in the first place!

I think most of us can learn a lesson from this.

Chances are that if you’ve been in a certain business for a while, your methods, website, equipment, and everything else may have gotten stale. I hate to say that, but it’s true.

These days we all want something NOW. We want the newest, fastest, biggest, best stuff and we want it quickly. But you aren’t going to be able to offer that to customers if you don’t keep testing to see what works best!

Please take a look at my Google Places guide. I update it with changes that come around, and stay in touch so I can keep you up to date with the latest Places news!

Google noted “But now, if a user provides new information about a business they know — or if our system identifies information from another source on the web that may be more recent than the data the business owner provided via Google Places — the organic listing will automatically be updated and the business owner will be sent an email notification about the change.”

The idea is that if Google finds information on another site that is more accurate than what your Places listing says, it will update your listing with the new information.

When this first came out, a LOT of people were angry. They came up with every reason in the world why this was such a bad idea. why it was going to ruin Places, companies were going to fail because of this… crazy stuff.

But here’s the thing- Google is a HUGE machine, and is the beast of the Internet. A few people complaining is never going to stop Google, so why bother whine about it?

Instead, let’s focus on why this is a nice feature that Google is implementing.

For one thing, Google isn’t just going to make up the new data that goes into your listing. It is getting this information from somewhere, and I think Google knows some good places to look to find accurate information! They know the real authority sites that people love.

Still not convinced? Okay well here are a few examples of things that might happen.

Let’s say that you move to a bigger and better location but forget to change the Places listing. This is very easy to do- after all, who thinks of Places when they are trying to relocate their entire business?

Within a few weeks of reaching your new location, Places starts picking up the information that you moved and changes your Places listing. Now it’s accurate again and you don’t have customers driving to your old location!

Here’s another thing that can happen. Let’s say that you have a pretty good-sized business with several different email addresses (for different divisions). What happens if you close one division, merge two together, or something else that renders one email address obsolete?

If you forget to change this in Places, it will automatically change it for you once you figure it out (and delete the old listed email address).

What I’m trying to say here is that Google Places is going to keep changing. Google can basically do whatever the heck it wants, so you might as well just try to see the bright side!

All of this said, I still recommend learning how to optimize your Places page and keeping regular tabs on it. Just because Places will automatically update some information, that doesn’t necessarily mean it automatically optimizes everything for you. You should still follow my Google Places Guide to get ranked high in Places and prevent your listing from getting banned!

First, let me back up for a second. I have to give a bit of background before everything is very clear.

There is a very well-known company in the search engine optimization (SEO) world called SEOMoz. They have a number of different tools and pieces of software that help companies with SEO. A few examples of what they can do are analyze your competition, tell you what to change on your website, and keep track of your rankings in Google.

SEOMoz also specializes in something that the vast majority of webmasters are not using, although they should! It’s something called heat maps, and it’s a very neat idea.

The basic idea is that this is software that tracks where a website visitor is looking. I know this seems a bit weird to some, but it is actually very accurate.

Here’s an example of how it works. Someone clicks on a link that takes them to your website. Now let’s say that you have a heatmap plugin or software installed. As the visitor looks around your site, the heatmap plugin keeps a record of where they look! So for example if you have a very bright, flashing banner on the top of your page, they may look at that first. Then they might scroll down and read your headline, your article, etc.

As you might expect, this is HUGE for webmasters and business owners. It tells you exactly where your visitors are looking, which will make a big difference in where you place the most important things.

Well back to the main point of the article- SEOMoz recently did this for some Google search results. As you might expect, they found that users spent the most time looking at- you guessed it- the Google Places listings!

Now there are a few reasons for this. For one thing, they’re listed near the top of the results. They are not always #1, but it’s not uncommon for them to be listed there.

Another thing is that the Google Places listings are a bit shorter than the normal listings. They Places listings are all blocked together, making them stand out even more from the competition.

Here is picture to give you the best indication of how it went down:

Pretty cool, right?

My friend, this is why I have been pushing Google Places to my customers for so long. Some of you might be saying “well shucks- I already know that Places is important, that’s why I’m listed on it!” But not all of my customers have quite taken the plunge yet.

Something to note about the image is that the brightest spot- meaning the spot where the most attention is given- is on the very first listing in Places. The other spots in Places do get some attention, but the vast majority is on the very top one!

This is why I am recommending my clients to pick up my Google Places guide. It will help get you to the top so that you get the lion’s share of the business.

You see it seems like a lot of people think that mobile devices are going to replace conventional laptop or desktop computers in the next few years.

While I can understand that point of view, I personally don’t really agree. Here are a few reasons why:

1) Even though mobile devices are becoming more powerful, it will be tough for them to replace the mega computers used by many offices, graphic designers, etc.

2) Computer gaming is becoming more popular every day, and the more powerful games will require bigger and more powerful graphics cards and processors.

3) I can be MUCH more productive on a 17 inch monitor with a keyboard and mouse than I can with a little mobile device!

Now I know that these devices will probably be able to hook into mice, monitors etc. in the near future, but my case still stands.

That said, nobody can deny that mobile devices are going to be the “next big thing”. People are on these devices constantly to check the weather, traffic, prices on products, recipes, and other things. They watch videos, get quick tips for their video game, and countless other things with their smart phone.

Now my question to you is- what is your business doing in light of all of this? Are you expanding your online and mobile presence to make the most out of it? Or are you sitting on the sidelines and hope that everything is “just a phase”?

Well in the last few years, we’ve seen several companies bust because of their views on some things. Kodak, once the most powerful name in the photography world, went under because they didn’t embrace digital photography.

Don’t let this happen to your business! Instead, you just have to keep up with the trends! This means using social media sites like YouTube, Stumbleupon, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. It means you’re making your website friendly to mobile devices so that customers can read your site on the fly. You may even want to adjust your site to be much more basic and friendly to those viewing it on their smart phone.

Your business doesn’t have to do these things to survive in the short run. You might do just fine with traditional methods of doing business, but some of those things can change. Networking and building relationships will always be important, and since many of those people who you want to network with are on social media sites or using their smart phones, you might want to hop on the same bandwagon!

As you already know, this is a very exciting time to own a business. You can very easily buy and sell things to people from the other side of the world, but the best way to do that is to properly use the Internet!

In my opinion, one of the best ways to use the Internet for a small company is to get on Google Places. This will make your website much more visible to others and help you to generate more buzz.

If not, I can almost guarantee that you’re losing business! Although it depends a bit on what type of business you are in, for the most part any small business can benefit from using social media these days.

Here are two examples of how the above process can work:

1) You optimize your Google Places listing to show up at #1 in Google for your primary keywords. So whenever someone searches for “Portsmouth bakery”, your bakery’s website is the first one to show up. Nice, right?

So then the visitor looks at your listing and decides to visit your website. There you show them how to “Like” your Facebook fan page, and that way they’ll get updates throughout the week as you post things to Facebook.

Here’s the second scenario-

2) Someone in Portsmouth is browsing through Facebook and sees an ad for a Portsmouth bakery. They click on it, and it takes them to your fan page. You tell them that if they “Like” your fan page than they can get a coupon for a free gift, and now you have another fan on Facebook.

From there, they view your fan page and decide to check out your website. There they can make an order, find out your location to come visit, etc.

Do you see the power of combining these different platforms? Basically one drives traffic to the other, and this can lead you to attracting new customers that you can market to over and over again!

As I’ve already discussed in the past, another very powerful tool right now is YouTube. Although there are a few ways to use it, one of the simplest ways is to have a nice video made for your company and post it up there. If you can optimize it for some of your main keywords, it can rank very high in both Google’s and YouTube’s search results.

This may sound simple and ineffective, but you’d be amazed at how many companies are not doing this. Even though it is fairly simple, you can definitely stand out from the competition just by doing something like this.

Because the internet is so big these days, the key is to throw out a lot of different nets to catch the fish (visitors). A few press releases here, YouTube videos there, Facebook ads sprinkled in the local area, and a Twitter account can all tie together to your website and Google Places listing. By doing this, you are maximizing your exposure to the Internet world and you are much more likely to attract new business.

Oh yeah, and I highly recommend to use some type of email service such as Aweber, iContact or GetResponse. These allow you to  very easily create a form to capture the email addresses of website visitors, and that way you can market your product or service to them via email.

I see this all the time, and it goes something like this-

A small business owner realizes that the Internet is a goldmine. They know that they need some type of web presence, so they decide to get their own website and Facebook page.

Since the business owner may not have the technical skills to build a website, they hire someone to do it for them. They pay a hefty chunk of change to a website design company, then check up on it when it’s done to see how it looks.

They figure that since there are fancy graphics and it has the company contact information, it’s probably okay. They’re satisfied, and move on to working on the business.

…and the website just sits there! It never gets optimized for SEO, has tracking scripts added to it, receives targeted traffic from Pay Per Click, or anything else!

Not only is this a waste of money, but it’s also costing these companies BIG time. If the website is not tested and tweaked, it might not “convert”. A conversion is basically when a visitor to your website makes a purchase, or even fills out a simple form.

If your website is not converting, is it really doing you any good? Or even if it does convert but it doesn’t receive any traffic, is that website useful at all to your business?

Again, I see this ALL of the time. I’ve learned over the years that simply having a website or a Facebook page is never enough. Even though it’s better than nothing, for most businesses it isn’t enough unless they have tweaked it so that it receives visitors and converts them into sales.

The problem is that most businesses don’t have the time or resources to do this kind of work for them. To master this, they would have to learn how to use tracking scripts, how to use SMS services, make a website mobile-friendly, how to drive traffic, and a number of other things. That’s a lot of stuff to learn!

This is where I try to help. Besides just offering a Google Places guide and service, I also help business owners get the most out of their website. I can either show them how to do these things themselves, or I can perform the service for you.

To sum it all up, I highly recommend that you optimize your small business website. Even if you only focus on one part of it at a time, that’s much better than letting it just sit there! Learn how to drive traffic or how to make it convert into sales. These are the two most essential parts of any business once you already have your product.

Good luck, and please let me know if I can help you with this!

This post is going to be focusing on one thing, and one thing only-

The fact that Google makes mistakes.

Now, I know a few things that you might be thinking right now:

-What kind of mistakes does Google make?

-Why does that affect me or my business?

-Is there anything that I can do about it?

Let me talk to each of these questions individually.

What Kind of Mistakes Does Google Make?

I’m sure that there are millions of small problems in their software and coding, but that’s not what I’m talking about here. Every piece of software has bugs, so that isn’t a major piece of concern right now.

What I’m talking about is that Google makes some bad choices sometimes. The latest one that I am thinking of is allowing users to mark a business as “Permanently Closed.”

You may have heard about this- it actually caused a pretty big stink! You see what happened is that when Google did that, it opened up the floodgates for spammers. Rival companies were hiring people to go in and say that a company was permanently closed, although they weren’t! Obviously that could be very bad for business if Google, basically the world’s authority on everything, said that your business was closed.

Why Does This Affect Me or My Business?

Since every mistake from Google will affect you differently, let’s just look at possible consequences from the above scenario.

Let’s say that your competitor marked your business as permanently closed. You didn’t catch it for 3 months because you are focusing on other parts of your business.

Now let’s say that during those 3 months, 500 people looked for your type of service. They saw your business listed on Google Places at #1, but it was shown as being permanently closed! They just decide to move on to your competitor’s listing, and you just lost a potential customer.

In other words, one little mistake like this from Google can cost you an AWFUL lot of money if you were positioned well before the mistake occured.

Is There Anything that I Can Do About It?

To give you an honest answer- yes and no. I say yes because there are two things that you can do to help protect your business, but obviously you can’t really control what Google does in the long run.

The first thing that I recommend is to make sure you are not relying on Google Places. This may sound weird coming from a Google Places expert, but I will be the first person to say that you need more than one way of getting customers! For example you can use Google Adwords, Facebook, fliers, direct mail, and a number of other things to get customers into your store.

That said, I still recommend that you do the second thing as well. I highly recommend that you either keep up with Google Places news, or at least hire someone that does. You want to make sure that your Google Places listing is ready for anything new and “improves” that occurs. If something goes wrong, you want to do everything you can to get it fixed fast, right?

My Google Places guide goes over this process somewhat, but I still recommend that you hire an expert. It’d be your best way to stay one step ahead of the competition- especially when these little hiccups from Google occur!