SMS email texting is great for local business marketing and this is where you will find most of your ideas when considering how to use SMS text messaging. There are also some bombshell ideas for online businesses selling affiliate products that can use SMS texting as a business marketing tool.
To the consumer SMS messaging is simply text messaging they generally do between friends and family on their phone. Very rarely do people get text messages from businesses and this should give you some idea as to how open this is for opportunity and growth.
Quite a few millionaires have been created in the last 8 years from email subscriber lists. There are people called mailers who work from home or a small office. Many of these mailers started out with a list of only 10 – 50 people.
The initial email list took awhile to build but eventually once they figured some things out many of these people amassed lists of 50,000 and more people.
Over the next 8 years mailers in all different kinds of markets sent out offers to those who subscribed to their list.
Open rates were great in the beginning of email marketing but have since been reduced to only 7 percent.
SMS text messaging is the new email list. Open rates on SMS messages are over 90 percent and people do not think of a text message as being spam.
The SMS business ideas outside of having a local restaurant send out special event restaurant invitations are numerous. Local restaurants have always done well with SMS but many would like to use it for online marketing.
First lets consider who right now is likely to respond very well to SMS messages. Youth and those with low income will be most responsive. Low income people usually don’t have immediate access to a computer with Internet and so their cell phone operates as Internet, computer, cell, and local phone all in one.
If you were to send a low income consumer an SMS text message in which you sent them something they need or want you are on to something.
For instance, you could setup a contest to win a free Ipad on a Facebook page you create or website. On this page you could talk about local furniture to rent in maybe a large metro area of your state.
You could feature large screen TV’s and different couches and stuff for rent at rent a center stores in that area. These stores all sell the same type of stuff. There are likely affiliate banners and ads you can find online for some of these places.
You could then create a large banner at the top of the Facebook page or website you create that asks people to send a text to 90210 to subscribe to your cell number SMS list.
Now that you have these consumer phone numbers there are a ton of things you could offer these consumers to buy online that are geared to those who cannot afford a lot.
I want to warn you that this strategy could be used for evil intent especially considering that you are targeting low income families to subscribe to your SMS email list. Be sure that whatever you do you offer your market something that you would be comfortable offering a friend. It’s not cool to scam low-income families or anyone for that matter.
These SMS business ideas lays out the framework of what to do but it is now up to you to decide what offers to send back to them through text messages.
One idea could be to offer them a link to a laptop you can buy that takes payment plans. The customer could purchase the laptop and pay $40 a month or so.
A product offering like this could even be run from your house where you buy refurbished laptops and finance them to your SMS subscriber list.
This is a sweet idea and if you don’t jump on it soon someone else will I promise you. That is why I kept it until the end of this article.
Tip: Facebook groups work great to build up a list of people you can encourage to subscribe to SMS even better than a page. Simply make a group about something viral, controversial, etc. like: “The US government should be fired for how high gas prices are!” Write some compelling things on the group wall and add your site if you have one. Now promote this page to all your Facebook buddies and convince a few of your friends to promote it also. Hopefully several hundred or thousand people will like your group. Now when ever you want you can send a message to all those who have liked your group and they will see that message in Facebook. Offer some good content and throw in an offer for that laptop financing deal or your own idea.
