We live in a mobile world, don’t we?

In 2020, the global user base for mobile phones is expected to grow to 7.26 billion. Considering that the average user checks their phone 58 times a day, the potential that mobile devices hold for marketers is exponential.

Along with mobile phones, social media has also grown to be a powerful channel with a worldwide user base of above 3.8 billion. Integrating these two high footprint elements i.e. mobile phones & social media can work wonders as a marketing tool in today’s world.

The efficient integration of these two elements shouts out only one thing i.e. SMS marketing which holds the potential of becoming an effective strategy for businesses.

In this article, we will explore how you can enhance your SMS marketing by leveraging social media channels. But before that, let’s understand more about the first highest footprint element i.e. SMS marketing.

How Do You Define SMS Marketing?

SMS marketing is a more direct approach towards reaching your target audience by sending them valuable text messages. Even with a pocket-tight budget, SMS marketing can be utilized to communicate your brand to mass groups at once.

Mobile users who have opted to receive business SMS can be reached with various kinds of messages.

• Time-sensitive offers
• Alerts or reminders
• Discounts/Special deals
• Business updates and new releases
• Welcome messages to celebrate the new sign-ups

The second highest footprint element i.e. social media can be utilized in numerous ways by small, medium, and large businesses. In today’s world of technology, it all ends at businesses reaching the right place at the right time and social media is a perfect illustration of this.

The Perks of Social Media For Businesses

Considering that billions of people are using social media channels, it would be silly to not have a specific marketing strategy in your digital arsenal. 

GlobalWebIndex reports that 54% of customers leverage social media to research products and services which tell you to buckle up on our social media strategies. The key benefits of implementing social media for business include:

1. Build brand awareness.
2. An economical alternative to market your business.
3. Develop a dialogue between your brand and target audience.
4. Maximize reach and establish customer loyalty.
5. Seamlessly share valuable and attention-grabbing content.
6. Generate potential leads.
7. Directly communicate with your audience in times of crisis.
8. Gain visibility and drive inbound traffic to your web portal.
9. Influencer marketing and organic and local SEO opportunities.
10. Competitor analysis through visible social platforms.

Now that we know the potential benefits of both SMS marketing and social media, let’s jump on integrating both of them as an addition to your digital marketing cycle. 

5 Ways to Enhance Your SMS Marketing Strategy with Social Media

When it comes to enhancing SMS marketing with your social media campaigns, identifying the best tips and tricks could be a game-changer. Text messages, being the quickest way to reach people if integrated with social media, can reach to your potential buyer in just a click.

If you are confused with where to begin, here are some of the most effective ways of enhancing SMS marketing with social media:

1. Increase Your SMS Opt-Ins With Social Media Offers

Promoting your SMS campaign becomes more efficient on social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter because your followers are already interested in your product/service and would also be interested in opting for your SMS list. 

Tap on your already gained audience and provide offers in exchange of SMS opt-ins that they won’t be able to resist. This particular method has the potential to get you a database of the most potential customers in your business book.

Domino’s Pizza directly approached its customers to sign up for email and text offers which clearly shows that the audience gathered this way will be genuinely interested in their food service.

2. Run Text-to-Win Contests

Text-to-win campaigns can be integrated into every social media channel like Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram to generate more leads. This is one of the best ways to boost your SMS marketing campaigns by offering:

• Free products
• Vacation trips
• Event tickets
• Giveaways

If you are a social media marketer, the best practices to execute a viral text-to-win campaign are as follows:

These text-to-win contests on social media are easier for people to enter from anywhere which accelerates the audience’s footfall. Also, if your campaign is worth sharing then your users and their fellow community might be just a click away to create an online buzz of your brand.

3. Keep In Touch With Your Audience

It’s important to keep all your potential leads updated about your product/service. Juniper Research has reported that 97% of text messages are read by the phone owner, and 90% of those phone owners read the text within the first six minutes of receiving it. After knowing this, you can easily figure out the best way possible for customers to remember your brand.

By integrating SMS campaigns on your social channels it becomes easier to build faster and robust relationships with your audience and has other benefits like:

• Keeping your customers and potential prospects aware of any changes or updates or even a new product launch.

• Fostering long and healthy relationships with the target audience by developing a dialogue through two-way communication.

• Sharing personalized messages with prospects on social channels to increase the chance of them taking the desired action.

Aeropostale uses a hashtag and updates its potential buyers with a recent offer that reaches directly to a customer as an invitation to scroll through and buy their products.

4. Use an Automated Reply Text

When you are offering a text-to-win contest, you will automatically get a number of people sending you keywords to participate in your contest. And when you start receiving keywords on text messages, don’t consider your job as done.

Prepare an automated message for your potential customers that are sent to them as soon as they reply with a keyword. You can thank the user for participating and add a link in the message to further direct the user. This link can be of your latest blog, a sign-up page, or for more details on the content on Facebook.

5. Launch Targeted SMS Campaigns By Using Social Media Analytics

It often turns out to be useless to keep sending SMS to your prospects without getting any response. To avoid making one-sided conversations, social media analytics can be of great help in categorizing subscribers into different segments.

Let’s say if a user is following you on each one of your social media platforms, you might not want to send them offers that they get in exchange for following or signing up. Rather you would invest in building relationships by sharing last-minute updates about your brand or just friendly conversations.

There are plenty of tools for each social media platform such as Facebook tools, Linkedin tools etc, which can help you in integrating your SMS campaigns across all the social channels. These tools can allow you to:

• Save your time by automating tasks like sending timely notifications to your social audience.

• Keep yourself updated with the help of analytics to monitor the progress of how well your SMS marketing efforts are performing along with social channels.

The Final Word

SMS marketing and social media can be the smartest collaboration for sharing relevant and valuable information with your target audience. This integration cuts on the layer of logging in to social media and provides a more direct approach to reach the audience within a click. Also, it could grab more followers for your business and turn maximum prospects into leads with ease.

So, what are you waiting for?

Start using your social media channels to enhance your SMS marketing and spread the word for your business.

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