When it comes to marketing in the 21st century, there’s an impressive number of tools available. Social media alone is a rather impressive tool, since there are so many different outlets to choose from, such as Twitter, Pinterest, and of course, the big Kahuna: Facebook.

But even a robust marketing tool like social media can use a little help, something to boost its effectiveness even more. That’s why employing SMS in your next social media marketing campaign is an absolute must.

Not all tools are impressive, as can be seen here

SMS Defined

Short Message Service, or SMS for the cool kids, is a permission-based messaging platform that’s also known as “text messaging”. SMS lets users receive texts once they give permission, usually in the form of signing up on a website, or texting in a code or keyword. SMS lets you send messages of up to 160 characters, though the actual net character count is 140, following the Twitter format. The first 20 of the 160 characters are set aside for the sender’s name.

Advantages Of SMS

Right off the bat, it must be pointed out that SMS texting has the huge advantage of being supported by just about every smart phone type. Considering how mobile device use has exploded (and shows no signs of abating, mind you!), it’s imperative to have a tool that easily reaches these devices, in addition to the usual collection of tablets, laptops, and desktops.

Also, a study conducted by the Mobile Marketing Review says that 97% of mobile subscribers read a text message within 15 minutes of receipt. Furthermore, 84% of those people end up responding within the first hour.

If you want a medium that has grabbed people’s attention, look no further.

How To Use SMS In Marketing

Whoever said “It’s better to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission” has obviously never tried to conduct a mass-marketing campaign online. Since SMS is a permission-based medium, you need to acquire that permission somehow. If your business has a presence on a social media site such as Facebook, you should include a posting that asks for users to sign up for SMS texting.

If you do this, you have to make sure that you make it worth the users’ while, and that means letting them know ahead of time what they will get (breaking news, announcements, contests, discounts). And as if the promise of goodies sent via SMS isn’t enough, you could always offer some small incentive just for signing up, like perhaps a discount off their next purchase, or some small token such as branded merchandise.

There are a lot of people out there with overloaded email Inboxes, so they may be reluctant to sign up onto an email list. But signing up for SMS messaging isn’t as painful, and it overall seems to attract less clutter.

Alternately, you can craft SMS messages that send the recipient to your website, so the texting itself isn’t the final result, but simply the means of driving in web traffic and making the business’ site the ultimate stop. Again, there can be an incentive, along the lines of “Click this link for our website, and type in the promo code for a free gift”.

But no matter what you do with your SMS texting, make sure to include an Opt Out function, such as replying STOP to cease future messages. It also helps if you tell people up front how many messages they can expect on average per month. Remember, you’re trying to get people to like you, not to irritate them.

Some Final Words

Check out the article “Using SMS Marketing in Conjunction with Social Media” for further insights into this very effective marketing technique. In fact, if you end up using SMS, you may want to consider adding a little oomph by employing emoji. After all, a picture, even a dorky one, is worth a thousand words.