As the Economy falls deeper and deeper into Debt, every business is looking for a way to market to their customers without spending a ton of Money. Some Small businesses have cut out their marketing and advertising budget to almost nothing over the last few years and are wondering why they are not getting customers into their stores. So if your are in Business, what do you do? Advertise on TV, the Newspaper, or Radio? All of these come with a hefty price tag and leaves the owners thinking, how do I track those ads and know if they are working? The only sure way is if your business or store is busy, then you could justify spending the money. So where do you put your marketing dollars to maximize your campaigns and make them successful?
1) Social Media- Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, and Linkdin are a low cost way to do business in Today’s market. If you are not on Social media driving in Traffic, it’s still not to late. Having proper marketing techniques can drive a small business into profitability.
Pros- Attracting new and existing customers to your site and give out coupons to your local or online market.
Cons- Takes time to build a following, PPC can be expensive, Most small businesses will need to hire a marketer to run their campaign and then the costs will start to rise.
Grade B+ : Because this country is ran by the local businesses, most owners don’t engage in Social Media or they would get lost starting things out; Example(Creating a Fan page and running a PPC campaign). PPC Campaigns can run as high as $2,000 per month on Facebook.
2) Article Marketing and Blogging– Writing Articles can be a very cheap way to drive people to your web site or online store. More small online businesses are using this technique to drive traffic. Submitting these articles to Authority sites such as enzinearticles.com and Goarticles.com will get your article out in the public view.
Pros- Over time, you will develop a following from others that have not followed you on Social Media. You will develop backlinks to rank you web page higher on google. Plus It’s FREE!
Cons- Time Consuming and may take a long time to develop a following
Grade B- : I gave this a lower rating because the average business may not have the time to write articles and submit them off to authority sites. This also targets only the online market and leaves the local or warm market in the dark.
3) Mobile Media – Text or SMS marketing is new and taking the small businesses by storm. Only 5% of all businesses are using Text Mobile Media and over the next 2 years that number will rise to over 90%. Local businesses can gather and track all their campaigns and send any promotion any time they want. This form advertising is permission based advertising which gives it a leg up over the traditional forms of Advertising- TV, Radio, and Newspaper ads. Tracking is the Key, plus you can instantly advertise and get a response that day. The Statistics are overwhelming, over 94% of all text messages are read and 20-40% act on the promotion.
Pros- It’s very inexpensive. You have the ability to advertise instantly with an instant reaction to your campaign. It’s the in thing to do right now “Text”, look around you, everyone has their eyes glued to their phone texting. You will capture New customers and communicate with old customers. People want deals right now and local businesses can capitalize on this new form of advertising.
Cons- Having the right company! There are so many companies out their offering text mobile marketing, but only a few are offer Tier 1 Sms or text messaging. Not a lot of small businesses know about the power of text mobile marketing. If a business has used the text marketing platform, they probably were involved with someone who didn’t use the marketing aspect properly- so make sure you pick out the right company to use Text Messaging.
Grade A+ : No other form of advertising or marketing can give an instant message to your customers that will be looked at or read at a 90% rate. If your are a small, medium, or Large business- Get Text Messaging involved in your marketing Campaign soon.
Branding yourself through Mobile Media
You can Branding yourself through mobile marketing- most companies offer a short code that is hard to remember. Short codes are 5 or 6 digits where to send your message to. Try and have your customer talk about your business with a short code like 644472? How would like to have a short code that everyone can remember? There is a company that has a Tier 1 Platform, the ability for the businesses to control their List, and the most famous number in the world; iZigg has the Mobile Marketing short code 90210. Now that would be a great number to remember, oh yeah! You and your customers don’t have to, it’s already embedded in our memory. People will start talking and you will start seeing your lists of customers that have texted in and said yes, I want to receive deals and coupons from you. How awesome is that!
Who’s using Text Mobile Media: Athletes, Churches, Restaurants, hospitals, corporations, utilities, clothing stores, just about anybody. I used Text Message marketing for my personal business.
Tier 1, 2, and 3 Platforms for Text Mobile Media
Watch out for the companies offering anything but a Tier 1 Platform. Why? Because you may miss your important customers that want your specials today. After Time you could lose hundreds if not thousands of texts to your customers if you don’t have the proper company running your text messaging. Here’s a simple breakdown.Tier 1- Has a the ability to send and receive Text Messages at a 99.9% rate. Which means that if 10,000 customers opt in over one year, you will be able to send and receive messages to 9,999 of your customers.
Tier 2- Has a the ability to send and receive Text Messages at a 80 to 90% rate. Which means that if 10,000 customers opt in over one year, you will be able to send and receive messages to 8,000 to 9,000 of your customers. You would lose the ability to communicate with over 1,000 to 2,000 customers. That would be Painful to find out.
Tier 3 – Has a the ability to send and receive Text Messages at a 60 to 70% rate. Which means that if 10,000 opt in in one year, you will be able to send and receive messages to 6,000 to 7,000 of your customers. You would lose the ability to communicate with over 3,000 to 4,000 customers. You would definitely want to stay away from these types of services.
If your current plan does not offer a Tier 1 service or they cannot provide that type of information to you, you will never know if your messages are being received by your customers.
Top 3 TEXT Messaging Companies
While Izigg has a user friendly platform, people all over the US to help set up a campaign, and the ability to start making money from your service; here the top 3 Text messaging companies out there.
- Izigg – Short Code: 90210 – Tier 1 Platform
- Motto – Short Code: 83936 – Unknown Tier Platform
- Yep – Short Code: 41242 – Unknown Tier Platform
While the other 2 will not display their tier platform, It’s safe to say that they are either a tier 1 or tier 2.
My Recommendation is iZigg for any business, gather leads and start promoting Today!
If you want to find out more about Text Mobile Marketing and it can benefit you and your business please text: iLike to: 90210 or iCard to: 90210 you get the idea.
Jamie O'Hara
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