Using SMS Marketing is a great way to promote your business throughout the year – especially during the busiest seasons. But what about the slower summer months when more people are travelling and away from home?

Using mobile marketing for increased response rates, small businesses and larger companies alike have a unique opportunity to grow their business as customers clamor to make the most of their summer days and nights.

Here are four ways you can use SMS marketing to deliver red hot results even during the laziest days of summer.

1. Increase your customer base with QR Codes (Quick Response Codes)

According to a recent Inc. Tech article, GigaOm reports that QR codes will really be heating up this summer. More people (with their smart phones) will be out and about in the warm weather and eager to interact with any QR codes that they run across. Young companies, especially, have a lot to gain from this opportunity.

Marketers can use QR codes or 2 dimensional black and white squares on posters, billboards, print ads or TV commercials that send information to the scanning person’s phone, directing them to unlock the hottest offers through online sign up pages. The codes can push a promotional webpage to the phone or send an offer via a text message.

2. Keep your Customers Up to Speed via Short Codes and Mobile Keywords

One of the easiest ways to build your customer contact database and gain an even greater following from your community is to invite customers to receive your important updates by texting in your unique mobile keyword like TAPAS to your short code (a 5 or 6-digit phone number used by businesses for sending and receiving text messages). For local businesses that send out monthly emails or run ads in movie theatres or on TV, it’s a great way to increase response rates and find out if your traditional marketing campaigns are really holding their own. It also offers an extremely affordable way to ensure the success of your traditional campaigns using a solution such as Trumpia that provides wholesale SMS pricing, Bulk SMS messaging packages and credits that will never expire.

3. Turn Up the Heat with Mobile Coupons

Up-to-date marketers understand that paper coupons are being replaced by electronic counterparts for effectiveness, speed, and environmental purposes. Electronic coupons come in web, email and mobile formats. Web and email coupons are great – until your customers forget to download and bring in their printed copies to take advantage of your offer. Mobile coupons yield better returns. They only have to be downloaded once. And then the mobile coupons stay with customers wherever they are – on their phone. No printed copies are necessary.

Integrating mobile coupons as part of your SMS marketing campaign can help you ensure an even greater call to action this summer. Using a solution like the Trumpia platform, you can also keep better track of redemption rates. For example, one major retailer recently launched a summer mobile coupon campaign, offering discounts that were redeemable by customers who scanned and stored a barcode on their smart phone at the point of sale.

Research shows that more and more restaurants and retailers are integrating mobile coupons as part of their SMS marketing as well as traditional, online and social media marketing campaigns. A mobile coupon can be as simple as displaying proof of a discount code as part of a plain text message that you  send to all customers.

Since taking advantage of local offers seems to be what consumers are doing this summer, SMS marketing is a sure fire way for businesses to reach out to their community – knowing their revenues will grow.