Internet Marketing Consultant – Dan Blakeslee

Text message marketing is undoubtedly one of the cheapest forms of advertising that you could invest in, and it’s not even all that much of an “investment” as it is an “expense,” that’s how little it costs. Mobile marketing companies will generally have a one-time set-up fee that can vary greatly, but usually starts at around $75. In addition to this, you will then need to pay a fee for the messages that are sent out.

The minimum amount of messages you can buy is usually somewhere around 500 a month, for about $50 while you can purchase as many as 10,000 messages a month for a costlier price of around $800. You can also of course, choose to buy even more messages for that, for an even higher price.

Many people who are concerned with the price of text message marketing are also concerned with how much it costs their customers to receive the text messages. After all, if your customers have to pay just for an ad, this will also leave a sour taste in their mouth regarding your company, won’t it? Well first, remember that they have opted in and so, there is a benefit to them for signing up and they did know about that fee when they opted in. But still yes, they may be charged a fee from their mobile service provider for receiving your text message.

Because there are so many different mobile carriers, it’s impossible to tell how much one will be charged for receiving a message on their text phone. If you’re concerned about it, or want to be able to tell your customers about it when they opt in for the program, you can also contact the major carriers in your area and ask them what their rates are.

That being said, text messaging is quickly becoming the main form of communication for many people – even more than actual phone calls from cell phones! Carriers can also provide text messaging to their customers at very little cost to them, and it’s also much cheaper than providing cellular service for phone calls. Because of these two factors combined, many carriers are now offering free unlimited text messaging to their clients, which means you can tell your customers it’s not costing them a thing to opt into your program!

The actual words in any text messaging marketing campaign are the most important part. After all, it doesn’t really matter how well you execute a campaign if, in the end, the finished ad is confusing or irrelevant to the readers. Of course it’s important that you use dynamic wording that motivates the reader to take action and either contact your company, buy your product, or take advantage of a coupon. But in addition to all of that, there are a few more things to keep in mind.

The first is that you’ll only have 160 characters – that’s characters, not words. And while this may sound like a lot, it’s really not. That means that you have a very short amount of time to get a very important message across to your customers. This is not the time to delve into your company’s history, it’s the time to tell your customers why you’re there and what you have to offer them. It’s the time to make them want to find out more, and to become interested in your product.

Get in any of the most important information first such as your phone number, the promotion code they need, or when a sale is running. Then include your call to action. You’ll probably be surprised that by the time that is done, you’re almost at your character limit – and you might even have to cut what you have down to size!

Always remember to include the word “exclusive” on it somewhere, whether it be “an exclusive text offer”, “for our exclusive customers,” or something else along those lines. Although people might learn that they’ll receive exclusive offers when they first sign up for your program, they may forget this somewhere along the way, and it’s always a good thing to remind them of it.

This one may sound obvious, but include the name of your company somewhere within that 160 characters. Often times a text message will be sent out and only your ad appears, without your company’s name or a link to your website. If your name isn’t mentioned somewhere within the ad, your customers will receive an ad, but they won’t know where to go, who to call, or what to do.

And then it doesn’t matter how well you planned your marketing campaign, how well it was executed, or how powerful the rest of the words are. If your customer doesn’t know what to do after all of that, your ad is entirely useless.

The most common form of text message marketing campaigns are bulk messaging, or text blasting, campaigns. This type of text message marketing is so common in fact, that when people refer to text message marketing, this is usually the type they are referring to.

This is the simplest form of text message marketing, as it simply involves a broadcast text going out to a large number of people. Within this text is whatever you want your customers to know, whether it’s that there’s a new sale or that you’re holding an event. There should also be a call to action (“Call us now!”) This helps reinforce the idea of the ad in the customer’s mind and also prompts them to do something about what they just read.

This type of text messaging marketing is one of the simplest to run and, if you’re going to be doing the entire campaign yourself, is probably the type of campaign you’re going to choose. Any other type is going to require a pretty lengthy knowledge about servers, web applications, and databases.

If you use a company to take care of the campaign for you, you may still be given software that you’ll need to run whenever you want to run the campaign. This software will contain the subscriber list, which will be the listing of numbers that the ad is being sent out to.

Whichever way you choose, with this type of text message campaign or any other, is that the numbers on your subscriber list are authorized numbers. This means that the owner of the number has given permission that their number be on that list and if not, that they have a way to opt-out of the subscription.

If you’ve ever received an email or text message with the line at the bottom, “If you choose to no longer receive this subscription, click here,” with a link provided to take your name off the list, then you are probably very familiar with this concept. There must be a way for people to opt out of the program. Not only will customers be annoyed with your text messages and turn away from your business rather than towards it, it’s actually against the law in several countries to send out unsolicited texts.