Phones have been around for 3 decades now, with their popularity rising every single day. Today, when every single person has a smartphone in their hand, businesses have decided to use this opportunity by marketing their brand and products directly to users’ cellphones. This is called text advertising. Businesses can send general information about their brand to inform customers, send promotional offers, keep users updated on sales, and send them reminders of upcoming events and so on. The options are countless.
To keep both users and the business protected, there are certain rules of text advertising. These can be found in The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) of 1991. Some of the basic rules for businesses are to make sure that their SMS campaign is permission-based i.e. they ask for users to opt into the service so that they subscribe willingly instead of spamming their inbox with unnecessary messages they do not wish to receive. Similarly, businesses are required to allow users to unsubscribe to the service as well. There is also a control on the frequency of texts that can be sent to a user.
Texts can be sent through a web-based SMS marketing platform. Text advertising can work for entrepreneurs and newly established businesses which do not have the full financial marketing resources because of how affordable it is compared to other traditional marketing tools. Still, keep in mind there are guidelines by the Mobile Marketing Association’s Code of Conduct which protects the personal privacy of the sender.
Among the many reasons why more and more businesses opt for text advertising every day is because of such promising returns. Statistics show that an SMS text ads is twice more likely to be remembered that a web ad, and has an extremely captive audience with almost a 100% impression rate. Furthermore, it is used by two-thirds of people aged 18-50 which is the target audience for most businesses. Not everybody may have access to websites or email, but every cell phone has an SMS feature, so it’s the one place businesses can be sure to reach potential customers. Text advertising is cost-effective, easy to use with the highest response rate. It is deemed the most effective method of marketing in today’s world.
Using text advertising to its maximum potential can be tricky. Firstly, a business should follow all rules and regulations because that will be appreciated by customers. Secondly, instead of wasting text messages on users who will not be interested, a brand should do its research before advertising. For example, a brand selling women clothing should only target women. Sending texts to teenagers or men would be a waste of time and resources for both the business and users. Similarly, the brand should take demographics into account. If it has outlets across the city, then only people within that city should be targeted. It is the little details such as these that elicit a higher response rate and engagement. Thus, businesses should be up to date with not only the best methods of advertising but also on how to render them effective.