The Five Minute SMS Marketing Primer

By now you’ve heard about mobile marketing, and if you’re reading this you probably want to know how you can use mobile marketing to benefit your business. Is it difficult? Is it expensive? What exactly is mobile marketing?

We’re going to look at SMS marketing, also known as text message marketing. We’ll explain its place in the world of mobile marketing, its advantages, its costs, and how you can launch your business’ first SMS marketing campaign today – in five minutes flat.

What is Mobile Marketing? Let’s go straight to the source, The Mobile Marketing Association: Mobile Marketing is a set of practices that enables organizations to communicate and engage with their audience in an interactive and relevant manner through any mobile device or network.

Now let’s translate that into plain English: Mobile marketing is a way for you to connect with your customers (and potential ones) on their mobile phones.

How Can I Market To My Customers On Their Mobile Phone? There are a few different forms of mobile marketing. There’s mobile search, which is search advertising on a mobile web browser, ads on the mobile web, Bluetooth ads that communicate with your phone, and apps (think downloadable iPhone or Android programs). And then there is SMS, better known as text messaging.

Why Is SMS Marketing The Best Form Of Mobile Marketing? SMS Marketing has three advantages that dramatically set it apart from all other forms of SMS Marketing:

1. Broadest Reach & Familiarity: Nearly every phone in the United States supports text messaging. Americans sent well over 1 trillion text messages last year. They love text messaging. All other forms of mobile marketing are growing rapidly, but they can only reach selected groups of your customers.
2. Cost: Hiring an app developer is expensive. Buying mobile display ads is a major commitment. Bluetooth requires the lease or purchase of physical hardware. Contrast that to text messaging. Many SMS Marketing services allow you to get started for free. A successful campaign for a small business can be launched for less than $50. As for consumers, most either have an unlimited texting plan, or at least one that comes with a couple hundred text messages every month. If not, messages only cost a few pennies. 
3. Ease: Simple yet powerful software like TellMyCell’s SMS Marketing service is easy enough for anyone to use. Signup in 60 seconds. Login. Add some contacts. Type your message. Click send. Want to build a customer list? Rent a keyword on a shared short code.

How Do Keywords & Short Codes Work: A short code is a special 5 or 6 digit phone number. It is a unique number that anyone can send a text messages to. Short codes are at the heart of SMS Marketing.

A Keyword is a unique phrase that a consumer can use to interact with you via a short code. A Keyword is unique to its short code. This means that you might see the same Keyword used on different short codes. Short codes are nearly universal in the United States. So, a short code can power a relatively inexpensive national marketing campaign. Keywords work when they are paired with a short code. A customer will use their mobile phone to send a text message to a short code. The best way to understand how keywords work with short codes is to try it yourself. From your mobile phone, text the word Joes to 88202. In this example, Joes is a Keyword, and 88202 is the shared short code.

How Do I Get Started? Head over to TellMyCell to check out our plans and pricing. Signup is free and takes 60 seconds. Your account comes loaded with ten credits so you can try it for yourself. Got more questions? Get in touch with us.

Comments

[Adam Horwitz]

Thank you for a great post. I am really excited about mobile marketing and I started playing around with it in the past month or 2.

I really think mobile marketing is going to be huge and it is an opportunity that comes once every 10 years or so. I think the last one was internet marketing and we all know how big that was and still is.

With Google buying AdMob and Apple launching iAd you know that mobile marketing is the place to be.

Sorry for the long comment but I as I said, I am really excited about mobile marketing and I am deferentially going to implement the tips you shared in your post.