The SMS Marketing Blog

Entry By Jason Brick

One of the best ways to ruin a company is to have excellent marketing and terrible service. Similarly, you can spoil some of the best text message marketing by having it lead to a second-rate website (check here for mobile web design tips!).

Some Web concepts vary from market to market, industry to industry -- but others are the same whether you're selling legal advice or custom widgets. Does your site violate any of these best home page practices?

Keep it Simple

The KISS principal applies to electronic advertising just as it does to print. You can have a lot of information, even complex information, spread over several pages -- just keep the elements on any given page to a minimum.

Avoid the Dreaded Text Wall

Break up any text on your page with bullet points, subheads and line breaks. The human brain reads words on a screen differently than on paper. Make it easy to skim through your content, since that's what your reader's body wants to do.

Use High Quality, Legal Graphics

A photo, chart or other pictorial element does a lot to make a page stand out and get read -- but don't just use any old graphic. A bad photo is worse than no photo at all. So are stolen photos. No matter how easy it is to download and use a random photo from the Web, somebody is bound to notice. Use graphics only with permission and proper attribution.

Love Your FAQ and About Pages

On many sub-par websites, these informational pages are obviously an afterthought: generic and thin marketing information recast from a brochure. The best sites embrace these sections as a way to break free of the anonymity of web commerce. Be informative, fun, even quirky with these. Let your personality and company culture shine through.

Limit Options

It's tempting to load your site with widgets, games and acres of content. Though this works for a few content-based business models, most of the time those extras simply distract visitors. Always remember the goal of your page, and offer few -- if any -- options that lead readers away from that goal.

Post Your Contact Info Proudly

The purpose of your page is to get prospective customers to become paying clients. They can't do that without knowing how to contact you. Whether that contact is personal communication, or an anonymous Internet purchase, make it clear and easy how to make that happen. Don't hide these options at the bottom of a text wall or behind several click-thrus.

Entry By Jason Brick

If you're like most business owners, you're faced with a three-point problem.

1. You need to allocate as much of your time as possible on the activities that help grow your business.
2. You spend too much of your time working on menial tasks. 
3. Training another employee to do these menial tasks would take too long. 

Unless something changes, 1 plus 2 plus 3 equals long hours and slow progress. What you need is more time in each day. To get there, consider one or more of these simple small business time savers. 

1. Take 10 Minutes to Plan Every Evening

Ten minutes of planning can mean more than an hour of extra productivity over the course of a day. This is one of the simplest and most rewarding time investments you can make. Better still, by planning in the evening, you put your worries in order to you can focus on "you time" and your family after hours.

2. Check Email and Voicemail Only Occasionally

Many -- probably most -- business owners check messages like they'll disappear if they’re not picked up in the first five minutes. A spare moment means opening the browser or picking up the handset -- followed by losing 20 minutes or more answering whatever they find. Nearly all of those messages won't be hurt by waiting a few hours. Schedule time to check messages, and save other times for other tasks.

3. Close Your Door

Interruptions are a constant in a business owner's life, and it can take as much as 30 minutes to return to productivity after each one. When you're "on mission," don't be afraid to close your door. Your employees will open it in true emergencies, but figure out the little things for themselves.

4. Automate Bills

Paying bills can take several hours each business month, but free banking tools can get handle them automatically while simultaneously reducing your postage and stationery costs. Automatic bill pay also improves your company's credit, allowing you access to new resources.

5. Get Enough Sleep

Working sleep-deprived makes everything take longer, even if your groggy mind doesn't make mistakes. Seven to nine hours of sleep is simply better for your business than trying to "power through" on less.

6. Exercise in the Morning

Exercise at any time of day improves your productivity by increasing your energy, awareness and focus. Scheduling exercise time in the morning means you'll actually get a chance to do it. By afternoon or evening, it's easy for unplanned emergencies to force you to cancel your gym time. If you exercise first thing, the rest of the day doesn't have a chance to interfere.

7. Delegate Adventurously

It's likely that at least half of your people are able to perform at least half of your tasks. The trick is to trust them to do it well, and trust yourself not to go nuts while they learn. Take the risk of letting your best people take on more responsibility. The rewards greatly outweigh the risks.

Beyond just delegating around the office, you can also take the next step and begin outsourcing some of the work you’ve been shouldering. If you’re president, CEO and marketing manager, it’s time to look into bringing on a partner to take some of the burden. Though we hate to admit it, if you’re handling 10 different job titles, you’re probably not suited to all of them. Let people who know what they’re doing take over, and you’ll likely see higher-quality materials come out of the office. If you can’t bring in other people, look for time saving tools like email, social and text message marketing services.

Entry By Jason Brick

Keywords are part of every effective SMS, text and mobile marketing strategy. They're an integral part of success for blogging and social media. Every modern media mogul knows this fact.

But not everybody knows that keywords have existed long before the days of search engines and text message marketing. In marketing ages past, these keywords elicited emotional reactions in human readers and listeners -- stimulating them to buy the same way modern SEO stimulates Google to list a site.

Adding these keywords to your mobile message can make each broadcast and web page more effective, generating greater turnover and more social media shares. You can find lists of thousands of marketing "power words," but six of them are marketing royalty.

New
This word has two meanings, depending on how you use it -- and sometimes means both at once. "New" can refer to the product, implying that buyers are hip, mode and ahead of the curve. It can also refer to your company, promising change to people who were disappointed in the past. Either way, the result is sales for you.

Free
"Free" works even when you don't offer anything for free in the advertisement. Simply using the word draws and keeps eyes on the page. People will also go to incredible expense to qualify for something free...as evidenced by a restaurant chain's coupons for $1.00 off a meal when you buy a $1.29 side dish.

Secret
People like to feel superior to others, and what's more indisputably superior than knowing what everybody else doesn't? Promising secret knowledge, insider information or privileged access to goods and prices brings people in. This works especially well in the mobile age, when you can give inside looks at your business to subscribers.

Expert
Experts say that people are more likely to believe information attributed to an expert than information without a stated source, even when there's no information about said expert and his or her credentials. These experts can give detailed information on your product, and recommend it because of their knowledge base.

Power
A magic word if ever there was one, using this word in your copy implies that your product or service will give power to a customer. Whether that's power over their finances, their clutter or the 'heartbreak of teenage acne,’ strangers will become customers in its pursuit.

Money Back
This can be a guarantee, offering a refund if customer's aren't satisfied. It can also be bait for a rewards program. Like "free," it implies customers can get something for nothing.

Entry By Jason Brick

Text message marketing is so cheap, widespread and effective that it's tempting to abandon print marketing altogether. This is a good move sometimes -- think about the last time you thumbed through the yellow pages -- but other print marketing still has some life in it. Consider these factors before jettisoning every piece of "dead tree" marketing in your campaign.

1. Print Shows Up Where It's Least Expected

Digital pop-up ads aren't asked for, but most people expect them when they appear. SMS broadcasts and similar messages are typically opted into, which makes them even more expected. Expected is appreciated, but can often mean ignored. You can place print ads to catch people by surprise and snare new customers.

2. Print Is Flexible

Mobile messaging shows up on a cell phone, on a small screen, often with limits to the character count and file size. Print ads can strut your stuff in detail, with high-resolution photos and plenty of room for a testimonial or three. This is also true of your website, but your website can't go outside.

3. Print Carries Authority

For some reason, people trust things they see in print. They trust a book by an amateur more than a speech by a professional, and a newspaper more than a website. This perception might change over the next decade, but for now it's a marketing fact.

4. Print Is Starving

Companies that used to make huge profits with print advertising are feeling the pinch from mobile modes. This means you can afford some truly impressive print campaigns -- options that simply weren't available in a small business budget even five years ago.

5. Synergy Is King

A powerful mobile and Internet campaign can get customer attention, but not as much as mobile combined with something else. People retain information best when they receive it from different modes of communication. Print is the least expensive of the other main options, coming in substantially cheaper than radio and television.

6. You Can Read Print While Driving

Thirty-five states say it's illegal to read texts while driving a car -- and for good reason. No state says it's illegal to read a billboard, roadside sign, vehicle wrap or bumper sticker...or even that magazine ad on the passenger seat.

7. Print Is Immersive

Studies show that people skim digital content, but they sit down and read print. Use your mobile campaign to foster interest in your company, but print to give them the details of why you're a great value.

8. Print Sticks Around

Look at that one corner of your desk, that one drawer in your kitchen and probably the magnet-covered part of your fridge. If you're like most people, they're filled with advertisements, coupons and flyers from businesses. Many of them are months, even years, old. Those print ads can generate customers long after a mobile message would have been deleted.