Making Your SMS Marketing Go Viral
by Kathryn Free on 06/05/11
Email and print mail are marketing tools of yesterday. Tomorrow's Marketing Technology Today is SMS marketing and the potential is large and everyone enjoys forwarding great offers or interesting news to friends, family and colleagues. What makes SMS Marketing viral is people can share the message easily and directly with their smartphones. Due to the viral nature of SMS marketing a business can exponentially increase brand awareness as well as achieve other marketing objectives. It pays to maximize your exposure as much as possible because the likelihood of your customers to passing along your SMS marketing texts can be viral in and of itself. Below are a few '10' ideas for making your text message marketing more viral.
1. Share Is A Must
Do not overlook this basic yet simple rule. Sending a great offer or bit of news is one thing but if the recipient cannot share it with their friends you have not gone viral. You text message become the firecracker whose spark died before exploding the brilliant display of sparks. You want to make sure the company you are using allows for all types of sharing!
2. Ease of Use is key
There have been 7 success factors identified for the mobile viral marketing world and ‘ease of use' is one that is identified in multiple case research studies. SMS messaging is actually very simple but due to it's simplicity many new to the world of texting keep looking for something else to do.
3. Send VIP Offers
Do NOT offer your SMS offers everywhere. Recipients need to believe and trust that what they are being offered has added value because of the SMS received. Whether your program offers exclusive content or high value content does not matter has much as the privilege the recipient gets when they accept your offer.
When you send exclusive offers you increase customer loyalty and that is when SMS marketing begins to go viral! SMS messages that tend to be forwarded most affined are coupons, entertainment content, and applications like greeting cards.
4. Offer ‘Sharing' Incentives
Rewarding your customers with incentives is always good but when you motivate them for just sharing your SMS message you bring marketing to a higher level. Your customers with pass along not only your text messages BUT your incentive offer for their friends to pass them SMS message along.
Just keep in mind that while incentives are great motivators, make sure that your SMS messages gives your customer the feeling that they are well-informed and being helpful to their friends instead of just marketing.
5. Make Sure You Offers Are Valuable
Incentives and rewards are good but you will not build a true following unless what you are offering is valuable. For instance, if you always offer 20% of a widget then make sure your SMS Marketing Campaign offers the same widget at a higher savings. When you do this your SMS Message will be more likely to be looked at as useful and your customer will not be wary about frequency or aggressiveness of your campaigns.
6. Have A Mobile APP for Your Business
Mobile APP's are becoming what websites were about 5 short years ago – A MUST! You can start slowing. . .like MSRtech's Mobile Business Card. . .a simple APP where your customers can share and keep all your offers. These APP's are especially important around gift-giving holidays. You can turn an offer into a special way for your customers to give their friends or family members a present!
7. Identify Your Influencers
It is not the people you know but the influencers you identify and market to. Those who have a high social networking presence and tend to influence others to purchase or try certain products or companies. Court these influencers strategically by partnering or offering added incentives for passing along your offers to their followers. Make good use of analytics to identify those who read and share your SMS Messages and encourage them by treating them as VIP's.
8. Social Media
Always share your campaign via the Social Networks. When you begin you will have many more Twitter or Facebook followers than you do mobile subscribers so remember to regularly advertise the benefits of your text message marketing program with them. They will catch on and when they do you have once again expanding your SMS Marketing to a even higher level.
All of MSRtech's mobile APP's come complete with Social Networking links.
9. Op-In SMS Marketing
There are so many Opt-In SMS Marketing programs popping up. The problem is that few businesses have a mobile database and to create one the mobile user has to first ‘opt-in' before you can send blast SMS messages. This can be problematic to say the least. The ‘opt-in' procedure can be daunting and many are so afraid of viruses or lists they rarely will take time to read and understand.
MSRtech has a complete program that combines Opt-out with the Opt-in SMS Marketing model. You can contact them at 949.267.8647 to find out more.
10. Accept Mobile Coupons
Consumers are 25% more likely to redeem a mobile coupon than ANY OTHER type of advertising! That is huge ~ but majority of most businesses doe NOT GET THIS. They do not understand how to track, how to get it off the consumers phone so it cannot be used again and the list goes on.
MSRtech has made mobile coupons easy. You place your coupon and when the ‘accept' the coupon it then is no longer viewable on the consumer mobile phone. This can be done many different ways, so relax, the answer is out there!
Let MSRtech drive your business with TMM ~ Targeted Mobile Marketing.
