In last week’s post, I shared five ways your small business can leverage text messaging as part of your 2014 marketing plan. Although SMS may not be a top method for lead generation, it is still an effective and convenient delivery opportunity to tap into customers and prospects seeking specific actions and information
Don’t forget to reference my original article for the first five. Now, here are the remaining five ways to creatively integrate text messaging into your strategy…
Enjoy!
John Jantsch, Duct Tape Marketing
Share your slides
I speak to lots of groups and without fail someone always asks if I’ll share my slides. I have no problem doing this, so I’ve started setting up a short code word for each event. I simply tell the audience to text “event name” to the code and they will get a message that allows them to download the slides while I’m standing up there in front of them. On top of convenience, this offers up a bit of a wow factor for participants.
I’ve also used this approach to gather instant feedback on a presentation by asking participants to text their thoughts on the event to a short code. A quick search on the web can provide examples of services that can handle this autoresponder functionality.
Instant polling
If you’ve ever attended a workshop or seminar that features polling hardware you know how cool it can be for a presenter to ask a question and then have the audience click their handheld controller to vote or make a choice.
The problem is that all those little RF keypads, receiver and software to integrate with your slides can add up to lots of bucks.
A number of web based technologies have cropped up of recently making it very affordable to poll audiences by having them use SMS and their own mobile device.
You ask a question and then offer the responses via short code and watch the results populate your PowerPoint slide. For an event, this technology requires that there is a web connection available, but you can also use this in print or other environments to collect data.
Coupon distribution
Creating membership type levels where people can get special treatment or special announcements is a great way to build community.
You can use SMS to allow people to join your “first mover” club and then routinely send them coupons, gift certificates, special previews, and advanced education and information only available to club members.
You can also simply set up codes where people can request this week’s hot deal or special coupon.
Bonus: Group Text
Don’t forget about the wave of group text services that are cropping up as a great way to communicate with your staff, customers, partners and suppliers. The key feature these services offer is that the group text becomes a conversation for all and most allow you to go beyond text and add images (MMS).
You can create open groups that anyone can join, but I think the real power is in the private, controlled group.
Text messages are opened and read by more recipients than any other medium so take advantage of this awesome opportunity, but don’t abuse it or you’ll lose it as they say.
Until next time….
John
John Jantsch is a marketing consultant, speaker and author of Duct Tape Marketing, The Commitment Engine and The Referral Engine and the founder of the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network. All contributions from John Jantsch are through a paid partnership with FedEx Office.
Filed under: Marketing, Strategy & Management, Tips & Tutorials Tagged: Coupon, Duct Tape Marketing, Featured, fedex, fedex office, John Jantsch, MMS, PowerPoint, small business, SMS, text messaging, web
