How To Gain More Customer Reach With SMS

While your business is still in its nascent stages, it’s acceptable to have a smaller audience that supports your products or services. However, as you continue into your entrepreneurial journey, creating a large customer base should be your main goal and responsibility. Fortunately, every business has numerous ways to achieve extensive customer reach.

Importance of Customer Reach 

Although the concept may seem pretty obvious, many business owners fail to grasp a basic understanding of reaching out to customers. Essentially, customer reach is the process of broadening your business.

Customers have a vital role in your venture. Without them, there’s basically no one to offer your products and services to. To capture an audience and turn them into your regular customers, you should develop effective marketing strategies. 

Among the numerous marketing strategies that businesses like yours can choose from, mobile marketing remains a classic option.

What Is Mobile Marketing And How Is It Different?

Mobile marketing involves reaching a targeted audience on their devices, such as smartphones, tablets, and feature phones. As there are currently 3.5 billion smartphones around the world, mobile marketing is a promising strategy that can help you achieve your business goals.

But what makes mobile marketing unique and more advantageous than traditional marketing methods? Here are some advantages of using mobile marketing: 

  • Offers detailed analytics seen immediate and in real-time
  • Consumes lower costs
  • Provides engaging and interactive content
  • Easy access and convenient use
  • Allows plenty of room for personalization
  • Ensures instant completion of transactions


Additionally, take a look at numerous strategies under the mobile marketing umbrella:

  • Short message service or SMS marketing
  • Multimedia messaging service or MMS marketing
  • Mobile internet marketing
  • Bluetooth mobile marketing
  • Mobile games 
  • Application marketing
  • Barcodes and quick-response (QR) codes


As more people are owning smartphones and gaining use of it, your business shouldn’t let this opportunity pass. Among the different strategies mentioned above, find one or a combination of several to help you reach an undeniably large number of customers. 

SMS Marketing: An Excellent Tool For Reaching Everyone

Compared to mobile marketing, SMS marketing can be more immediate, convenient, and effective, if you know how to use them on your business appropriately. In SMS marketing, your customers don’t need internet connection to receive your messages, and that’s a strong advantage against other marketing approaches. 

While it can take someone 90 minutes or more to respond to an email, an individual can reply to a text within 90 seconds. This study shows that 75% of consumers are fine with receiving SMS messages from brands they’ve interacted with before.

Specifically, here are the advantages of using SMS marketing that other strategies lacks of or don’t have:

  • Emails only have a click-through rate (CTR) of 3.42 percent, and most of your emails may not even generate interactions from your recipients. Because of speed, lack of internet requirement, and higher open rates, SMS can achieve higher engagement levels.
  • SMS marketing is less expensive than many traditional and digital marketing methods like television and mobile ads. Depending on your provider, you can find cost-effective packages offering a bulk SMS option to send messages to a thousand of people simultaneously. 

The SMS industry has been around for more than 20 years, allowing companies to develop and design more technologies catering to SMS. Despite being often overlooked, SMS marketing presents a huge potential for your business.

In this article, you’ll explore different methods and strategies on widening your customer reach and engagement through SMS marketing:

1.  Rent A Toll-Free Number Or Local Number

Your business should be ready for SMS marketing platforms. Before starting your SMS marketing, set up a two-way system where you can reach your audience, and they can interact with you as well. Find a business dialing platform which allows you to manage everything SMS-related.

Call Cowboy is dialing platform which allows business owners to rent a toll-free or local number. If your business has a toll-free number, anyone can dial your number from landlines without incurring any charges. The telephone number attached to your business is composed of a distinct three-digit code. 

Setting up a toll-free number is particularly advantageous for small, rookie businesses attempting to reach a wider audience, because of the following reasons:

  • Easy to remember and dial
  • Can be dialed and answered anywhere
  • Enhances customer service and satisfaction
  • Improves brand image and recognition
  • Adds up to your credibility

2. Send Ringless Voicemails 

Instead of communicating with your target customers through plain, generic messages, you can amplify your reach and whet their interest through ringless voicemails. A ringless voicemail technology is a strategy of sending voice messages to one’s voicemail inbox, appearing typically as a missed call or voicemail.

When integrating a ringless voicemail system into your brand, collaborate with a company with unique and reliable services, like Drop Cowboy. They utilize a dedicated technology called True Ringless™ Voicemail Drops™, where your voice messages will be sent without ringing the phone. This tool presents an authentic ringless solution for broadcasting to your target audience without being labeled as a missed call. 

It’s easy for companies go overboard in marketing their brands and be a cause for inconvenience and irritation to many people. Ringless voicemails are a non-intrusive way of making your presence known to potential customers. 

3.  Get Customers Involved Using Call-To-Action

Interaction and communication are paramount to your business. To take advantage of SMS marketing, always add value to your content. Incorporating call-to-action (CTA) into your SMS marketing makes your customers feel that they’re always involved and valued by your brand. 

CTA is an advertisement tool that leads your customer into your venture. A well-planned and effective CTA should instruct your customer clearly on what you want them to do. Do they have to visit your website, take a survey, download your app, or purchase your product?

Here are the ingredients in crafting an effective CTA message: 

  • Create a sense of urgency
  • Provide clear instructions
  • Use a distinct and memorable keyword
  • Add examples
  • Provide encouraging incentives, which will be elaborated later
  • Ensure they’re working

4.  Offer Incentives Through Keywords and Short Codes

As explained previously, CTA text messages should be encouraging and specific to boost customer reach and engagement. Aside from adding the CTA, give incentives to customers who notice and follow your CTA. They can be promo codes, discount codes, vouchers, and more.

 In one study, two-thirds of consumers have completed purchases they didn’t initially plan to make because of coupons and discounts. It was also highlighted that 80% of individuals are encouraged to make their first-time purchase with brands that offer incentives. 

Adding incentives into your text messages is also an excellent chance to bring your audience into your brick-and-mortar shop. For instance, they can redeem their discounts through purchasing in one of your branches. Another technique is to use referral programs. You can include a referral link on your SMS, where customers can claim $10 off their next purchase upon convincing another individual to make a purchase. 

5.  Pick The Right Time And Momentum 

In business, having the right timing and flow is everything. While SMS marketing centers on urgency, you should still make sure your ads are urgent, yet non-intrusive. Flooding your customers with messages during their work meeting or travel isn’t a good sight.

Ninety percent of individuals read text messages within the first 3 minutes of delivery. Since most people read their messages immediately, your SMS will be more compelling if sent at the last minute. For example, send a text message about your Monday branch opening on a Sunday. 

Furthermore, choose your timing wisely. Urgent deals or promotions still don’t mean you can send SMS in the evenings or too early in the morning. 

6.  Use CRM To Know Your Clients Deeper

Every customer is different, and a business that can cater to every type of client holds more advantage than a business that doesn’t. Along with SMS marketing, investing in a customer relationship management (CRM) system can help you know your customers better.

CRM system is a technology used to manage interactions and relationships with your customers. CRM integration into SMS technology works through connecting CRM into your texting platform via their application program interface (API). 

Basically, this strategy enables your SMS and CRM systems to communicate with one another. Here are some tasks and events you can accomplish when you have a CRM system:

  • Sync contacts
  • Text customers directly from the CRM system
  • Add SMS to CRM workflows
  • Customer service
  • Outreach campaigns
  • Sales closeouts

7.  Personalize Your Messages 

Now that you’ve had the opportunity to know your clients better through CRM, it’s the perfect time to keep them engaged and loyal to your business. One excellent way is to customize your messages to make them feel more personal and genuine.

A personalized message is a form of targeted marketing which digs deeper into your client’s unique needs and preferences. Before composing custom messages for your customers, take the time to categorize them first. Case in point – you can group contacts within the same location or ZIP code.

8.  Expand Your SMS Marketing Team 

Last but definitely not least, pick the right individuals to build your SMS marketing team. Although it’s easier to just reassign regular employees into the team while you’re still starting, it’s highly recommended to hire a team of skilled and experienced professionals dedicated to SMS marketing. 

The best people to invite into your SMS marketing team are:

  • SMS marketing program expert
  • Social media experts
  • Digital creative designers
  • Retail experts
  • Promotions specialists
  • On-location signage coordinators
  • ROI and discount budget analyst


Conclusion

Undoubtedly, SMS marketing can revolutionize the way you promote your brand. Consider the tips and reminders discussed in this article to broaden your customer reach through SMS marketing. Since there’s no one-size-fits-all strategy for any business, use these tips to formulate your own action plan towards brand improvement. 

Rylie Holt