Last week, we had an introduction on what SMS Marketing is all about, along with a few (of the many) reasons to why one should enter into the mobile marketing path. As I was writing up part 2 of “What is SMS Text / Mobile marketing & How to Get Started”, I realized that the start of marketing (as in every marketing campaign), it is important to understand your marketing objectives and desired outcomes and goals. First of all, knowing the audience and gearing up for SMS marketing is very important – enough to get its own spotlight in our blog. So folks, next week we’ll dive into the specific “how-to’s” of mobile marketing using various Trumpia tools.

Getting to know your audience

Recap!
So quick recap of what SMS marketing is all about: it is highly interactive because consumers need to initiate and respond in the campaign, by sending an SMS to a short code (ie. 69302) with a keyword (SNEAKER or TRUMPIA). This is usually followed with some other text (auto-responders).

Quick Market News: The Mobile marketing Association (MMA) released an upcoming survey about their mobile marketing budgets for the remainder of 2010-2011 stating:

…mobile marketing spend is set to rise 124% from 2010 to 2011, putting the total allocation to the mobile channel at roughly 4% of overall marketing budgets. Furthermore, SMS and Mobile Web sites are tied in adoption at 58% this year and 83% projections for next year.

Getting started with SMS marketing is easy. Before you start anything, make sure to take the time to sit down (or stand, or walk, or you get the idea) and develop a SMS mobile marketing strategy. This is similar to creating any new marketing initiative.

Here’s how:

Know your audience
Do you know whether you’re delivering what your audience wants? Offer incentives based on mobile subscriber activity and preferences. If a subscriber shows interest in a particular offering, send them related promotions or content via SMS/text.

Reward your audience
Here’s a common thread to many current thoughts on the marketing funnel: Turn your customers into your 12^th man (or woman). Loyal customers can be as strong as a sales force as your sales department if you keep them enthusiastic. Unleash the power of word of mouth and referrals! Surprise them. That doesn’t always have to mean a free offer or a discount – you can also give them useful content and sneak previews.

Communicate and share with your audience
The basic ideas are:

1. Educating people about your products and services.
2. Placing the right products into the right hands at the right time, providing information or samples to influence individuals.
3. Commit to sending those informative SMS/text messages at the scheduled times on your calendar. By the way, Trumpia has an automated message tool, so in case you have a pre-planned beach outing on a Saturday (which we don’t blame you), our system will work instead (since it gets no beach outing days). It’s easy to schedule, just look below:

Having a solid ground on your mobile marketing initiative will enable you to start off in the right direction and once that's done, it's off to the "mobile marketing" races! Cheers!

- Trumpia's Jeanius