Other than face-to-face conversations, the fastest way to reach your customers is through a mobile marketing strategy involving texting. Smart phones outnumber PCs 4-to-1. If you need to get your message out fast, there is no better way than sending a text. In this video, Eric Spellmann shows you the secrets to tap into this advertising medium and how to avoid the pitfalls that can hurt your brand. He even gives his recommendations on which vendors to check out!
Note from Eric: Below, you will find a word-for-word transcript of this video. I provide this as an aid for the hearing-impaired and for those who might just want to read it rather than watch the video. This conversational style is not reflective of how I write. Be nice! 
Hey I’m Eric Spellmann helping you succeed online. Today we’re going to be talking about something exciting, . Specifically how to use text broadcasting to help your business. So, first of all we’ve got to decide what is mobile marketing.
When you hear that term, chances are you might be getting a lot of calls from people promising you the moon on , so let’s define what it is.
Basically, you’re reaching customers anywhere, anytime. And that’s one of the advantages here. They always have their cell phone with them. There’s basically two types of out there. There’s indirect, and that’s basically mobile web sites.
In other words, when someone pulls up your website on the phone, they don’t go to your big website where they have to zoom in everything; they go to a special website, that’s indirect because they are going to you. The other is direct. This is where you are sending them text messages, and that’s what I’m going to be talking about in this video.
Later on, I’ll be talking about mobile websites and where they come in, but for this specific video, we’re going to be talking about texting.
What are the advantages of text marketing? Well first of all, as I mentioned before it is THE most direct form of online marketing, THE MOST DIRECT form of advertising. An interesting stat I came across was that 97% of text messages are read within four minutes of being sent.
Keep in mind when you send an email, they don’t have to read it right then, they may read it later. Your webpage, they have to go to you! But with the text, you send a text, most people are going to check it within 4 minutes! You have a much larger reach.
And what I mean by that is most people don’t realize that Mobile Phones now outnumber PCs four to one! You’re reaching out to more devices. But also you’re reaching out to people where they are at that exact moment.
So what are some of the pitfalls to avoid, because a lot of people make a lot of mistakes when they just jump right into text marketing. Number one is over-texting. People are sacrificing their time to read your text.
And if you are texting them every minute or even every day, and they’re getting tired of it, they will get out of that in a heartbeat. And also, they will start to unlike you. And they will give you phone calls and in some cases, they may even take you to court. And yes there are some court cases, pending, where this has actually happened.
Inappropriate timing. You never want to send these things late at night or early in the morning. Always keep in mind who your audience is. And select a time appropriate to send that, because remember, the phone is in their pocket and it’s probably going to make a noise or something. It’s going to wake them up or it’s going to force them to do something. They might be in a meeting, so whatever you’re sending, it better be something they want.
You know, choosing the audience is key. You’ve got to make sure that you’re targeting your audience, and not only that. You’ve got to make sure that the audience you’re bringing in has given you permission to do it. You don’t want to just go out there and grab everyone’s cell numbers and start texting them.
That is illegal and they will come after you. So you want to make sure that you are soliciting them, you’re telling people “Hey, I’m going to send you a text message a week and it’s going to have a super special deal that you’re only going to get via texting.” And make sure you get their permission. You don’t just want anyone on your list. You only want people who’re the most excited about your product or service.
So what are the ingredients of a good text. Because you don’t just want to send out “Hey! Hows it goin?” You want to make sure that it is short and to the point. You want to make sure that it’s not some loooong thing that they have to read. Get it to the point. Make it very clear so that within seconds they know exactly what you are trying to say.
Always, always, ALWAYS include a call to action in that text. Something like “Click here” or “Do this” or “Bring this in to get a discount.”
You can also put a little link to a deal. And that needs to be little. Not a big loooong link. Because remember this is a text. So you might get one of those link shorteners. And since most people have a smart phone, when they click on it, it will actually pull up a webpage, hopefully a mobile friendly page that shows the deal, or it shows the offer where it gives all the information on what you’re trying to sell.
You don’t want to try to put all of that in the text. Sometimes you just want to say “Hey! Here’s today’s deal from the best Amarillo Website Design company! Here’s the link for it.”
So who do you pick? There’s a lot of players out there. Who do you pick? One of the first things I recommend is that once you get the list of your vendors, someone tells you to check them out, go to Google and type the name of that vendor and check out the reviews.
You’ll find out what a lot of people are saying about these different guys, because some, I’ll be honest be with you, are fly by night.
And some are good. The problem is we’re still new in this area, and so a lot of vendors haven’t been vetted yet. A lot of vendors don’t have a lot of reputation yet. But this is one way to help narrow down your list.
Test, test, test! Most of these places will offer the ability like a 14-day, a 7-day test or something like that. And I want you to get a small group of your friends and test it. See how long it takes, this test. See how accurate it is. Did it go to everybody?
See what kind of reporting they have. I mean can you tell that it actually got delivered. And see what kind of abilities after they send the report, exist. In other words, if they click on the link can they go on to a page on the vendor’s site or does it have to go to your website. So find out, how they actually work before you select one.
The top players that I have run into, while working in this arena are callfire.com. They do a lot of other things including helping you come up with auto-calling and some voice features, but they’re a really good texting platform. txt180.com has really good pricing. tellmycell.com has been around for a while and I like them. clubtexting.com, one of the oldest ones out there and one of the biggest ones. I tell a lot of my customers to go to, simply because they have a pretty good reputation and they do a great job.
Well as always, if you have any questions give me a call or shoot me an email and I’ll be happy to help you. We help a lot of our customers with texting campaigns and if that’s something you’re interested in, just let me know. I’m Eric Spellmann, I’ll see you in cyberspace.
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