Promoting your local business doesn’t have to be a financial burden, take up all of your time, or even be complicated. For small businesses, text message marketing–also known as ‘short message service (SMS) marketing’–is the most cost-effective, time-efficient, and a strategic way to engage with audiences and grow your business exponentially. This marketing approach is undeniably one of the strongest strategies available to entrepreneurs in 2024.
In this article, we’ll go over how you can use SMS marketing to promote your small business and expand the reach within your community.
Do I Need SMS for My Small Business?
SMS is an always-on service that welcomes new customers into your brand and is a great tool for keeping existing customers around. It is the most interactive form of communication between brands and their customers today. Having some form of SMS infrastructure is non-negotiable these days in our modern market.
Think of each message as a sales pitch for your products. Whether you’re a brand new or established small business, SMS is a valuable marketing channel to build awareness in your community, acquire new leads, and increase your overall sales.
Working with a high-level SMS API provider like 160.com.au will allow you to automate many processes that small business owners typically have to take on manually.
Provide SMS Customer Support
SMS helps manage and facilitate customer support in a way that wouldn’t be possible before, especially for small business owners with small staffing levels. Many customers today receive information from a business through text messages, and prefer to have the ability to reply or have a conversation with them over text.
You can save customers time and energy by answering their questions through a text message. Customers typically expect a response from businesses within the hour. This is an excellent way for business owners to meet demands and improve customer satisfaction.
Geofencing
Geofencing is a location-based marketing strategy that is perfect for local businesses trying to build awareness within their community. That is because it triggers targeted marketing actions whenever a mobile phone comes within a preset geographic limit.
For example, let’s say someone walks by a coffee shop offering 50% off on baked goods that day with any purchase of coffee. Thanks to geofencing, the cafe can send on-the-spot notifications as an SMS text message to subscribers who are in the area and have their GPS location services turned on.
Send Tutorials
This may not apply to every small business, but it can be helpful in most industries. Whenever someone buys your product or service, send them messages with links to fun, short tutorial videos or blog posts that contain step-by-step instructions for using the product or service. By doing this, you establish your brand as an industry authority to your customers.
Cross-Selling
Cross-selling involves targeting customers by using their last purchase and then recommending related products you think they would also enjoy. This is an easy way to boost sales and increase customer retention. You might also take this opportunity to send product discounts on the items you’re cross selling.
Get Feedback
Customer feedback in an SMS campaign is a great way to improve your product line and make your customers feel valued. It shows you want to involve them in your business and product development.
After a customer purchases something from your store, you can use SMS tools to send them a quick poll to get feedback.
Next Steps for Your Business
Here at 160.com.au, we understand that running a small business means you might need to wear a lot of different hats–not only can we take some of the burden off your shoulders, but we can help your business succeed and thrive in today’s hyper-competitive digital marketplace. Follow best practices to maximise your results, and create an account with 160.com.au and get started today!