We live in a crazy world, don’t we? Everyone runs from day to day, each with their own agenda, and everyone’s day is filled with persuasive ads, spam, email spam, TV commercials, and sales pitches. Wouldn’t it be nice to just get the information you want, instead of having a bunch of useless propaganda foisted on you?

Welcome to the world of text message marketing. It is “advertising on demand”. The best part about this: you are not dependent on provider demand; It is at the request of the CLIENT.

As you probably know, there are companies and agencies whose sole purpose in life is to collect information about consumers and then sell it to advertisers for highly targeted promotions. That is NOT what we are talking about here. (Personally, I find that kind of advertising invasive and offensive.)

Instead, text message marketing is a systemized way of inviting customers (and potential customers) to ask you for information, and you can build a mailing list of people who are still interested in what you offer once they’ve received the information. what delivery They can unsubscribe at any time. You don’t have to pay high prices to advertise. You can reward your customers with discounts and coupons for their loyalty. Also, YOU own the information and your customers will appreciate you keeping their data private, not exploiting it by adopting mailing list providers, telemarketers, etc. Text message marketing is perfect for everyone. It’s big, and it’s getting bigger all the time!

If the setting were something as hip and fast as casting your vote for a contestant in a singing competition, you probably felt empowered texting your vote to the show to be counted. There were actually a few more things that happened (behind the scenes) that were invisible to you when you hit the “send” button. By sending your text message, you participated in an “inbound ad” campaign for any company that sponsored (or paid for) the vote/call for the text message. You see, text message marketing is not about simply sharing information. It’s all about adding to customer mailing lists and expanding your distribution. It is done through technology that collects and “stores” data for future advertisements.

When your text message was received by the TMM service, your cell phone number was stored in a database while the automated reply (confirming your message) was sent to you. Pretty clever, don’t you think?

With the “inbound ad” campaign complete, a text message marketing service can use the collection of everyone’s cell phone numbers to send “outbound ad” campaigns. What’s that? Well, by sending text messages to the database of people who sent messages and votes, the TMM service can keep people up to date with new product information, new book releases, links to newsletters, or anything else under the sun. . By sending your original text message, you became a “subscriber” to the TMM service for future text messages. You can unsubscribe at any time, but the messages you receive in return are not officially classified as “spam” (unsolicited correspondence from parties you are not related to) because you initiated the relationship (based on your invitation) by sending your original message.

A few points to ponder as we continue:

• If you’ve ever used your cell phone to vote for a contestant on a televised singing contest, dance contest, talent show, or reality game, your cell phone information was “harvested” and added to the database. someone’s data
• If you’ve ever responded to an ad that says “text the word (whatever) to (phone number),” then you were added to a text message mailing list when you received the information you requested.
• Text messaging (and its associated shorthand) has become a BILLION dollar industry. It’s effective enough that TV commercials now joke by having actors speak in cryptic abbreviations while the translations appear as subtitles at the bottom of the screen. Why? Because millions of people do it today (which sadly explains why kids can’t spell correctly anymore). LOL (“laughs out loud”… do you know what I mean?)

This technology is typically incredibly expensive for small and medium-sized businesses to use, but some companies that provide TMM services have gotten smart about the untapped small business market and now offer “shared” access to advertising. from TMM for less than the cost of a small newspaper ad! And the monthly expenses? About the cost of a decent meal these days! If you take advantage of this technology (which is INCREDIBLY easy to use) while you’re still relatively young, you may be able to grow your customer base without invading their privacy, becoming a nuisance, or offending them. Most companies are still waking up to the idea, while the few that are acting on it are in the lead.

By now, you’re probably thinking, “Wow, that’s a great way to market to your customers.” or “Wow, that’s SO annoying and I’d hate to be on someone’s text message mailing list.” Well, both thoughts would be quite accurate. Texting is the fastest growing trend in advertising, but it can also be one of the most irritating! If you imagine the nightmare of your phone ringing in the middle of a business meeting and receiving hundreds of spam emails every day, you’re not alone. That’s what most people think of when they hear about texting. But that’s not how text message marketing works!

Here’s the dilemma: You want to be able to reach as many people as possible, but if your customers get mad at you, you’ll lose them to someone else. (And they may provide you with negative word-of-mouth advertising.) For this method of advertising to be effective, you need to be responsible AND find a balance. Then what do you do? Two simple things:

1) Don’t send anything to your customers unless you have something important to tell them!

2) Let them opt out of further messages from you!

Text message marketing, done right, can launch your business with THOUSANDS of dollars every month without upsetting your customers. In fact, if you use text messages to add value to your customers, they will thank you!