Marketers are always searching for new and different ways to approach their potential clients and present their products and services. Online SMS marketing campaigns are really no different from any other marketing channel and should be integrated into your overall marketing strategy.
In this article, I’ll outline the best way to launch an inbound text messaging campaign that generates a flood of new sales leads.
1. Build Your Buyer Persona(s)
A buyer persona is a fictional character based on the commonalities of a specific target group of customers.
Each customer buys your product for different reasons, for example, a health club will attract people who want to lose weight, need to rehabilitate an injury, want to prepare for a specific sport etc.
Each of the above groups has different motivations and is seeking a different outcome so will only respond to specific messaging.
You want to pick a specific group and convert them into a character so that when you’re creating an SMS campaign you know exactly which hot buttons to push to get them to take action.
2. Craft An Offer That Your Persona Can’t Refuse
Now that you have your buyer personas in place it now becomes easier to come up with offers that are irresistible to each persona.
What is an irresistible offer?
It’s an offer that is highly relevant to a specific goal that your buyer persona wishes to achieve.
For example, which of these offers is more appealing to new moms?
- 8-week boot camp.
- 8-week boot camp for women.
- New Moms! Get back into shape in 8 weeks with our new MommyFit Boot Camp.
The last offer would work best because it speaks to the problem (women who gained weight during pregnancy), offers a specific time frame (8 weeks), and offers a solution (lose weight quickly and get back to your previous shape).
Come up with a general offer and then keep reworking it until it speaks right to the problems and desires of the person you want to attract.
3. Set Up Your SMS System
We know who we’re going to target, what motivates them and an offer that matches the result that person is looking to achieve.
Next, we have to set up our online SMS lead generation system.
Keyword
First, decide on the keyword that you want to use in your promotion. Be sure to make it short and relevant to either the person’s goals or to the promotion itself.
For example, if you have a 50% off special happening in-store then you might just use the word 50% as your keyword: “Text 50% to 8887 and receive a 50% off coupon to use in store during December.”
Shortcode
The shortcode is the number that people will text your keyword back to in the above example the shortcode was 8887.
Customer group
This is simply a contact group. Each person that texts your keyword back to that specific shortcode will be placed into this contact group so you know exactly who they are and what offer they responded to which makes follow up a breeze.
4. Get Eyeballs On Your SMS Promotion
This is the easy part. Now that you have everything ready to go it’s now a matter of getting as many eyeballs onto your SMS promotion as possible.
Take a look at where your potential customers are interacting with your business and place your SMS offer in that space, common areas are:
- Website
- Email newsletter
- Blog posts
- Paid ads
- Social media
- Influencers
- Store POS
- Window signage
- Neon sign which you can check on this site
- In-store etc.
New sales leads will begin to flow in and your SMS list will continue to grow, allowing you to send out effective text marketing campaigns to continually generate more sales for your business.
