For many businesses or companies, both text message marketing, and social media marketing form a major part of their marketing technique. Brands use the two techniques to increase the outreach and popularity of their brands. A text message became a method of marketing much before social media marketing, and even today, it still holds a good position as an effective means of marketing. The two marketing techniques both have numerous advantages and can be utilized by any type of business ranging from restaurants to online retail stores, to advertise their products and services as well as attracting and familiarizing new customers with their brand. Read about Text Message Vs Social Media Marketing in this article.
With everyone in this present age talking about social media and its advantages, other forms of communication are sometimes overlooked or forgotten. Despite all this, Text Message Marketing can still match up to the speed and effectiveness of social media marketing in this present age. With each having completely different methods, styles, and techniques. They can still be put together and compared to find out which marketing technique is better and more effective especially in this present age, where marketing has become more complexed due to the commercial behavior of customers. More and more people are turning towards social media platforms like; Facebook, Instagram, twitter,
What is text message marketing? Text message marketing is the use of a text marketing platform to send SMS (short message service) or text messages that contain promotional content, such as special deals, product updates, or any other marketing information directly to customers. A few more Text Message Marketing examples can be found here. When a company or business decides to use text message marketing for their marketing campaigns, they would start by asking the consumer to opt
Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms and websites to promote a product or service. Businesses and companies communicate with their customers through social media platforms. Great marketing on social media can bring remarkable success to any type of business, creating devoted brand advocates and even driving leads and sales. Social media marketing is a form of Internet marketing that utilizes social networking websites as a marketing tool. The goal of Social media marketing is to produce content that users will share with their social network to help a company increase brand exposure and broaden customer reach.
Why Compare text message marketing with social media:
Liberty
Text message marketing gives businesses greater liberty to deal with the people on their “list”. These are the people who have shown certain interest in your products and services and have also shown interest in patronizing the brand when the need arises. They are have also permitted the brand or company to send them promotional messages. This is not the case with social media especially with Platforms like Facebook. Furthermore, you are bound to save a lot more funds with this concept of owned media rather than paid media, which is peculiar with Facebook, Instagram etc. Text message marketing depends on the package you have chosen and offers great numbers to work with.
Pay to Boost
To a business, every move is accounted for financially, and no business or company would invest in any activity without having some experience of success from it or by the sheer logic of the activity. Most social media platforms require you to pay to boost your post. For instance, you could spend $50 to reach out to 1000 users. Without which, the organic reach of your posts would be less than 6%.
Open Rate
This point hardly needs much explaining. As we know that text message marketing takes our message directly to recipients immediately. And it is a well-known fact that 98% of the messages are opened immediately when they are received. According to research 98% of the text messages sent are opened within 3 minutes by the recipient. The fast open rate of text message had made it a very good choice for companies and businesses to utilize.
Prominence
Social media allows you to market frequently to a wide audience. But, still, how do you ensure your tweets or post is actually seen by your target market? Twitter and Facebook are two of the most popular social media channels, so they are pretty busy and saturated. It is easy for someone to lose your post amid the crowd, even if it is promoted and targeted. A text message, on the other hand, is treated differently by consumers. By sending a text message, you will reach the audience you want which is the first part of the battle, and they’re likely to read it. While a bit more intrusive, a text is more of a novelty than a tweet or a Facebook post and is usually treated as a less disposable commodity by the recipient. As a result, although more targeted, many companies find more visibility through text message marketing.
Connectivity
There is always a danger that when trying to contact customers directly your efforts could backfire. Marketing campaigns need to engage the audience, not annoy them a sometimes difficult balance to strike. When it comes to messaging, there is always the chance the customer could opt out of receiving future messages, but social media needs to be even more wary of this. People love to share good content but, equally, most users are easily turned off by poor material. It is perilously simple to unfollow any brand on any social media platform which is easier than opting out of texts, and 55.7% of people say they have unfollowed brands on social media for boring content. Social media content is more likely to interrupt someone’s stream whereas a text can be saved and read later if necessary.
Convenience
Social media and texts both list speed and ease among their benefits. On social media one swift post, in theory, makes your material available to a wide audience instantly. But, that isn’t the same as direct contact. Text message marketing methods can mean a large tranche of messages are sent within a matter of minutes meaning it is quick, easy and direct. So, while both offer convenience, text messaging provides more direct contact for same level of effort.
Fee
A standard tweet or Facebook post will be free, and you can share content, build followers and engage with customers for no cost. However, that does not mean that there is no cost involved in social media marketing. Facebook ads and promoted tweets cost money but ensure prominence, and you might reach an even wider audience if your customers like and share your posts. It is important to weigh the cost as promoted post on social media carry a fee of up to a couple of dollars per engagement and could stretch beyond the price of a text message package. With Express Text mobile marketing packages cost way cheaper than that. Any size of business or company can pick a package that is within the reach of their financial capabilities, without having to break the bank.
The conclusion is clear, social media are no longer “free” but “pay-to-play” platforms. So, if you must pay to reach people with your marketing messages and product promotions, why don’t you invest in what works? Yes, we are talking about text message marketing as well as subscribing to a service provider like Express Text which has the facilities and essential features to provide any business or company with the platform that they need to start their marketing campaign.
Why is text message Marketing better and smarter choice than social media? Because almost 100% of mobile phones are SMS-enabled, it is the easiest communication channel everyone in the world knows how to use and, above all, because 99% of all SMS messages are opened and read within 3 minutes or less. This is a huge open and read rate!
In conclusion customers spend a lot of time using social media, there is no arguing that. However, they spend far more time using text messaging. Customers also would prefer to text a company over using social media. That is not to say that companies should abandon social media, but rather take into consideration offering channels that customers are using.
But if you had to choose where to spend money, ask yourself where customers are spending their time: on social media or text messaging?