Text message marketing is actually extremely hot and exciting right now. It`s a new and highly effective medium

Is marketing to mobile phones important to your business in 2012?

In my opinion marketing to mobile phones can be a fantastic source of high-
quality, repeat buying traffic for any business so let me help you get started.

Step 1: Decide what your purpose and intent will be with your mobile phone
marketing:

* Are you looking to increase leads and sales?
* Are you wanting a way to get customers in on your slow days?
* Are you hoping for an easy way to send out reminders and
notifications?

What would be a successful mobile phone marketing campaign for you? What
kind of open and response rates are you looking for? Are you doing any other
kinds of marketing that you will be able to compare your results to?

Who will you be marketing to? Who is your typical customer and when do
they usually come to your store? What will the tone of your messages be?
How often and what time of the day will you send messages?

Getting clear on these types of questions can help with the rest of the process.

Step 2: Find a text message marketing seller or company to handle your
campaigns or to provide you the software to handle your own campaigns.

Running a mobile phone marketing campaign is actually quite simple. The
software does all the work for you and doesn`t even take long to learn.

You will, however, want to be sure that the company has good support and
that the software has all the features that you want

Text message marketing is new and exciting and has fabulous open rates and response rates, but you still want to take care with how you do it. There are laws to follow and there is a certain etiquette or style that will ensure your customers don`t text STOP, which you don`t want them to do.

First, every customer or person on your list must be opt-in. This means that every person must have explicitly said “I want to be on your list

Text message marketing is really hot right now, and it`s good to get in while the medium is still unique enough to be exciting to your customers. If you are wondering how to get started quickly and easily, here are some simple tips to follow.

#1

Are you looking for a guide to help you get started in SMS text marketing? Let me help you. I`ll walk you through exactly what SMS text marketing is, what else is available, and how to start using SMS marketing for increased leads, sales, and profits.

SMS stands for Short Message Service and basically is a text message that is no more than 160 characters. SMS text marketing is when a business uses SMS to send out marketing messages.

The first thing you must know is that you can only send text messages to people who have opted in to your list. That means they have specifically requested to be on it. The typical way for this to be done is if you have a keyword and a short code set up, you let your customers know and they text your keyword to your short code and this puts them on your list automatically.

They must also have the option to get off your list at any time. The typical way for this to be done is for them to reply to one of your messages with STOP in the message.

The next thing to know is that SMS is not the only type of message available. There is also MMS. MMS means multimedia messaging service and can include text, audio, video, and pictures. One way that marketers would use MMS is by sending out mobile holiday cards with a coupon attached via text. This is basically just a holiday-type picture, with text overlaid on the picture. MMS messages will generally cost more in text credits than an SMS message.

To get started with SMS and maybe MMS you will need to find a vendor who is able to service your text marketing campaigns. You may be able to find someone local if that interests you. If not, there are tons of national companies like Trumpia and Rocketbux.

Look for a company that has good support and plenty of features. More features do not necessarily mean a higher price, but you will want to evaluate the available plans to see if they will meet your needs.

Before you sign up with anyone you will want to get a text marketing plan in place. Know who you are marketing to. Decide when you will send out information. Decide what your goals and intentions are. Know what will make an SMS text marketing campaign a success for you.

Once you sign up you will want to start building your list. Put signs up on the walls. Put your message on your tables and menus. Put it on your advertising. Get the word out there so your customers will get on your list.

You may want to even ask your customers “what kind of a deal do you want to see in these messages?

This is a question that gets me very excited, because I can think of ways that just about any and every business and even some groups could use mobile marketing. Mobile text marketing is very versatile, and is ‘for` everyone. It is the future, here and now.

Let me think of some examples of businesses and groups that could make their lives better, easier, and/or more profitable just by plugging in some mobile text marketing to their operations.

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Perhaps you`ve heard good things about the mobile phone market like how fast the text messages get opened, and how high the open and response rate is compared to email and direct mail. If so, you may now be wondering how to get started in mobile phone marketing. Here are some essential steps to ensure your entry into mobile marketing is smooth.

1) Answer the following questions about what your mobile phone marketing will look like:

– Who will your target customer be?

You should have a pretty good handle on this if you know the demographic of your current customers. Decide which portion of the demographic is most likely to be embracing texting technology.

– What will the intended action you want the customer to take be?
Do you want them to come into the store and do something

Are you looking to break into mobile phone advertising for lead generation that will translate into increased sales and increased profits? There are many ways to do this, so let`s talk about some of them.

Your business will have to build a list of customers to market to, starting with your own customer base and potential customer base. There are no lists of phone numbers you can buy or rent

Any size business can take advantage of sending mobile phone ads. All you need is to get signed up with a company that can send bulk SMS advertising and then start building a list. Your customers can start receiving ads on their mobile phones as soon as they sign up.

Yes, you will have to build your own list. There are no lists that you can just buy text numbers from because this is illegal. A customer has to explicitly sign up for your list before you can send them text messages.

The only exception to this might be if a local company has built a list of people who say they want a text when a new local business starts sending text coupons. Then, that company could send a text blast to their list saying your company will start sending out text coupons and deals and if they want to sign up they just need to text your keyword to your short code.

Before you sign up with a mobile phone ad company, you should know a little about how they work. Some companies will assign you an agent and the agent will handle all of your campaigns. You will call your agent and say “I want to send out this message to my list on this day at this time

If you are looking for top-notch mobile marketing software with great features, remember that the text credit and short code service provider will be just as important as the software to your user experience. Also, what makes the software the best will be unique for each company, person, and business.

Definitely, before you consider signing up to use anyone`s mobile marketing software and plan be sure you have thought beforehand about exactly how you will be using it and what features are most important to you.
Here`s a list of software features that will probably make your life easier:

Contact Management

You are going to be working very hard on building your list and treating them well. You want the software you are working with to make this easy on you.

I have used mobile marketing software that did not have a way to export contacts. This was bad. Customer support suggested I print them all out. Not what I wanted.

Your software should be able to import, export, filter, remove failed contacts, and search contacts. If you can filter out landlines, then that is even better.

Web Signups
Some mobile marketing software will allow you to post web forms that will collect mobile phone numbers and put them right into your list.

Mobile Voting Keywords

Just like American Idol, your business could create a contest or ask a question and your customers could vote on it by texting in a keyword. The software would keep track of all the responses and the winner for you.

Shuffle Responder

Your software can ‘shuffle` which message it sends out when someone texts in your keyword. Use a variety of auto responders.

Multimedia Content

Besides just being able to send text messages, some software will send videos, audio, and even images. You could send out occasion cards! Like for Mother`s Day or the 4th of July. These will probably cost more than one text credit though.

Text to Screen

Some mobile marketing software applications have the capability to show text comments on a screen in real time and even screen out any swear words.

Text Appointment Reminders

Do you regularly take appointments? Some software programs will set up automated text appointment reminders to send to your customers. Import in CSV or enter manually.

QR codes

QR codes may be one of the most fun applications of mobile marketing software. Create a QR code and put it on your products.

If you can find a company that has good customer service and offers many or all of these features with their mobile marketing software then you could be a step ahead of your competition. Now you just need to decide which methods your customers will enjoy the most.