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Your Local Business And SMS Text Messaging

Monday, April 2nd, 2012 at 5:04 pm

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5 Reasons Your Local Business Should be Using SMS Text Messaging

In today's fast-evolving techno-centric consumer market, it can be hard to keep up with the latest trends. However, keeping up is exactly what your local business needs to be doing if it is not to fall behind and off the radar altogether. The mobile market segment is considerably gigantic, and growing at a rapid pace, and you simply cannot afford not to be marketing specifically to this segment.

SMS text messaging is one of the latest trends to affect mobile marketing, and it doesn't look like it will be going away any time soon. You must jump on board. Think of it this way: your competition will be.

Need more convincing? Here are five reasons your local business should be using SMS text messaging:

Affordability.

As you well know, marketing and advertising can cost a pretty penny. SMS text messaging is relatively inexpensive to use. A small local business can execute a basic marketing campaign for between twenty and thirty dollars a month!

The opt-in crowd.

In order for you to send an SMS text message to someone's phone, they must first opt in. That means that you will be marketing only to people who have already expressed an interest in receiving your messages. There is perhaps no better way to reach your target audience then by using the opt-in method.

Real-time marketing.

If you want to get news of a special offer out to your customers right away, then the best way to do that is via text message. Cell phone users almost always have their cell phones on them, whereas they're not always checking their mailboxes, or even email inboxes. SMS text messaging is real-time marketing, in the truest sense.

Open rates.

Statistics show that ninety-five percent of all text messages are opened. That is a staggering number, considering only twenty-five percent of emails are ever opened. Simply put, no other form of marketing offers such a high probability of your message being received.

Paperless marketing.

One huge buzz phrase today is "going green". It seems that businesses far and wide are jumping on the green band wagon to win a greater following. In addition to saving you money, paperless marketing such as SMS text messaging is a great way to incorporate green ideals into your business plan.

As you can see, there are some great reasons for why your local business should be using SMS text messaging to market to your customers.

Bill Enross
Owner at Internet Marketing Services helps small business owners get more clients and business from the Internet.

Bill Enross Inc. - Local Internet Marketing
267 South St Foxboro, MA, 02035 USA
bill@billenross.com • 508-203-1660

Text Messaging To Build Your Customer Base

Friday, October 28th, 2011 at 10:41 pm

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Why Using Email And Text Messaging To Build Your Customer Base Is Important

Have you been looking at ways that you can actually increase your customer base in the hope that you will then begin to make more sales. There are numerous marketing techniques that you can use but you may find that using email and text messaging to build your customer base will provide you with the best results possible.

Through these forms of marketing you have the opportunity to reach customers quickly and easily. It provides you with a way to invite all customers (old and new) to ask for more information from you. As soon as they do then of course their details can be immediately included into the mailing list that you are creating of those who remain interested in what you are offering after they have been provided with information by you. Plus should any of these people wish to there is the option for them to opt out of what you are offering at any time.

This is one of the most inexpensive ways for you to actually advertise your business and allows you to reward those that remain loyal to you. Plus as you own the information that your customers provide to you they will be grateful that it is being kept safe and private as you aren't providing it to mailing list suppliers or telemarketers.

When you do send out an email or text message it is important that you offer them something in exchange for them actually bothering to respond. Certainly one of the best things that you can do is offer them a coupon so when they make a purchase from you they get the item at a discounted price. Not only is this a great way of getting rid of any inventory you no longer require but also will help you to track how your text messaging or email campaign is going.

As you will soon discover when it comes to using email and text messaging to build your customer base it can prove a very fruitful venture. Plus they can also prove to be one of the most effective tools that you can employ when marketing your business if you know how to use them correctly.

Bill Enross
Owner at Internet Marketing Services helps small business owners get more clients and business from the Internet.

Facebook Mobile Marketing

Monday, July 18th, 2011 at 9:43 pm

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Facebook Mobile is one of the fastest growing aspects of the world’s largest social network, and business owners are quickly realizing the incredible opportunities for low-cost, effective marketing that Facebook’s mobile features offer. With nearly 200 million Facebook users accessing Facebook from their mobile phones, Facebook mobile marketing is hot!

Today’s mobile phone users rely on their cell phones as their primary connection to the world for personal and business use. In fact, many cell phone users are ditching their old-fashioned land lines and using their cell phones for all of their communication, including accessing the internet and popular online social networks like Facebook. Facebook has made mobile access of its features easy and its popularity has soared, with hundreds of millions logging on every day. For business owners, Facebook Mobile means low-cost and highly effective marketing that gets noticed.

To take advantage of the marketing opportunities available with Facebook Mobile, it starts with a Facebook fan page for your business, product or interest. Using one of the many proven ideas about how to get Facebook fans, grow your fan base in simple and affordable ways and start interacting with your fans via Facebook Mobile.

Facebook Mobile’s greatest advantage is how effortlessly it incorporates into the average cell phone user’s regular texting habits. According to a recent study from marketing research experts at ComScore, nearly 2/3 of all Americans are regular ‘texters’ and the average user sends and receives dozen of messages each day. It is simply a habit to check any incoming message when one receives notification that a text has arrived. That is why mobile marketing through Facebook is so effective!

The benefits of Facebook Mobile marketing are clear: instant connection with fans, communication that is consistent and timely, highly affordable and simple to do! Business owners with even the smallest marketing budgets can use Facebook Mobile to connect with fans, and these are just a few of the many ways to reach out to a fan base with mobile messages that capture their attention:

• Poll your fans about issues relevant to your product or service. People love to be asked for their opinions!
• Ask trivia questions related to your business to get people thinking and interacting in a fun way.
• Offer coupon deals only available to those receiving the text.
• Notify fans of special events and happenings connected to your business or Facebook page.
• Make your mobile marketing campaign engaging and entertaining and watch it go viral!

Facebook Mobile is a simple and affordable way to reach out to fans and connect with them wherever they are in the world. With a simple text, business owners can maintain relationships with their fans, share ideas, send special offers and create a sense of community that reminds people about products and services they love. Connect with fans through Facebook Mobile with effortless ease and find out what a simple text can do for your bottom line.

Bill Enross
Owner at Internet Marketing Services helps small business owners get more clients and business from the Internet.

QR Codes Explained

Monday, April 4th, 2011 at 4:20 pm

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So what’s the big deal with QR Codes, and why should you care?

1. QR Codes are free.

In their most basic form, QR Codes are free to generate and cost nothing extra to print. Just add them to your existing marketing materials like any other image.

2. QR Codes provide an immediate response mechanism.

As soon as an advertisement or product catches their eye, consumers can snap and view. There is no delay between the interest and the response. This eliminates the drop in response rates that comes when people are required to type in URLs by hand or write down information to access later when they are sitting in front of their PC. You should think of QR Codes as the marketing equivalent of an impulse buy at the checkout counter.

3. They leverage today’s growing mobile culture.

The latest smart phones have been described as today’s laptop. People’s entire lives are stored on their phones, from contacts to music and family photos. The cell phone is the one device that is with people at all times. A jogger is out for their morning run and sees a QR Code on a billboard or bus bench. She stops, scans the code (which is stored on the phone for later) and continues running. Later at the office, they are able to view the content while on a break. Imagine a teenager visiting at a friend’s house sees a jewel case for a new album by his favorite band. By snapping the QR Code on the back, he is instantly directed to a mobile website where he can listen to audio clips, purchase songs and download them directly to his phone, or buy tickets to the latest tour. He can even access links that automatically Tweet the information or post it on his Facebook account!

Get a free Mobile Marketing Report now, just text Internet to 72727.

4. QR Codes are trackable.

Not only are QR Codes trackable themselves, but they can provide tracking for other types of media such as billboards or magazine advertisements that are not otherwise trackable with proper tracking, the code can be printed on a piece of direct mail advertising, and if five different people access it, not only will you know it, you will be able to tell when and where those scans occurred! QR Codes can be set up to recognize the type of phone used to read them and provide content optimized for the exact model of phone used to give an end user the best possible experience.

Bill Enross
Owner at Internet Marketing Services helps small business owners get more clients and business from the Internet.

Mobile Marketing Strategy

Monday, April 4th, 2011 at 7:20 am

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A Couple Of Great Suggestions To Use To Develop Your Mobile Marketing Strategy

On the subject of promoting and marketing your small business, consider putting together and then having a cell phone marketing campaign. It is not difficult and in fact is very easy to do. In fact, it may be on the list of the least difficult and most cost-effective types of marketing for you to put into action today. However, it could be a complete and utter waste of time and resources unless you decide to use it to its fullest ability.

In this article are a variety of pointers that businesses can easily perform that can take their cell marketing and advertising plans to another level:

1. Games or Polls

Text message polls and contests ( often called "Text-to-Win") have become increasingly popular with quite a few small business owners. This type of prize drawing calls for ways to get people to mail a message via their cellphone to a designated SMS (Short Message Service) code. By doing this, the person gets into your contest or drawing for a chance to win a prize. Once they do, you now have their cellular phone number so that you can keep marketing to these people.

Prize drawings deliver such great results for the reason that access is definitely rapid, instantaneous and the confirmations happen to be pretty instant as well. Not only this, but they also increase shopper discussion and entertainment while helping to create your new customer database (or list) simultaneously so that you can market to all of them later on.

A majority of these special offers also deliver top results due to the fact many people help to bring other people directly into your business so they can buy your goods and services. They can be ideal for word of mouth marketing promotions and are particularly powerful when it comes to generating news along with anticipation with regards to your business.

Be sure that you provide an enticing prize so you get hold of many people that want to enter as possibly can. Remember that an excellent "attractive prize" doesn't have to be an "expensive" prize… simply just some item which all of your subscribers will see some appeal using .

2. Mobile Social Groups

Text message Groups (often known as Mobile phone Clubs) are an easy way to establish client interaction along with developing your collaboration even more along with excellent promotions as well as marketing and sales communications. It usually is as easy as customers opting-in in order to get regular text notifications on their cellphone regarding new products, in-store sales along with cellular coupon codes intended for in-store redemption.

If you're a brick and mortar business, Mobile Clubs could be a fantastic way to stay in touch with all your purchasers and be sure everybody is simply up to date regarding what is going on in your company.

At the time you start a Mobile Club, you are able to include text message notifications (also called SMS Notifications), which in turn allow for you to engage with clients with focused facts to keep your brand on top of their minds. SMS Notifications are usually fundamentally speedy textual content concerning beneficial newer services, a purchase you may well be having at the store, or maybe bursts of up-to-date information to maintain your opt-in list up to date for a unique topic of great interest.

This process will definitely continue to keep these people returning!

Give some thought to it… are there any aspects of your small business that might genuinely really benefit from a simple yet effective, real-time, conversation approach designed to develop customer commitment along with help the bank balance on promotion concurrently?

3. Text Polls and Voting

Do you need suggestions or perhaps ideas on your new product lines from your shoppers or maybe the general public on the whole? Textual content voting could possibly be your solution mainly because it means that you can engage with customers and find invaluable feedback on products and services or maybe the store experience.

The simplest way to supply customers what they want could be to ASK them what they really want. Cellular promotion makes it possible for you to complete this approach without difficulty in addition to efficiently by means of Text message Voting. Consumers lug around their mobile phones using them virtually 24 hours 7 days per week thus marketing to all of them on their cell device is actually not really difficult at all.

On top of that is the fact people like to provide their thoughts and supply recommendations on product or service which they pay for. By permitting these people to actually vote on particular components of your small business, you set about to generate a level of confidence with them that will take you a long way.

Not just that, then again text message voting helps to assemble your own list of clients since people that most likely are not at this time on your list are going to be incorporated when these people place their votes!

Bill Enross
Owner at Internet Marketing Services helps small business owners get more clients and business from the Internet.

Mobile Marketing Trends and Ideas

Saturday, March 26th, 2011 at 5:41 pm

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Mobile phone devices are definitely an option when thinking about communicating to your target market in the most relevant and interactive way. You can make use of just about any mobile network and device out there these days.

Your Smart mobile phones are readily available throughout the market place and currently are excellent breeding grounds with regards to mobile phone marketing. It will help you with economizing your time, energy and effort as well as your cash reserves.

People do not need to go to their home pc to be able to search for and purchase their favorite items from stores. This new consumer can carry out all sorts of transactions while resting in their easy chair. This new way to market is using text based messaging using consumers mobile phones. It makes use of mobile e-mail marketing and advertising, mobile phone text messaging, mobile phone as well as internet sites, location specific promotion along with mobile app advertising. The foreseeable future of advertising is definitely going to be mobile phone promotion. The massive amount and sheer size regarding the sales volume will be tremendous. It is rapidly approaching par with e-commerce.

Our modern society in which most people live comfortably right now has grown a lot more mobile. Most people currently carry a cellular phone along with him or her. The best way a person can be contacted by you is actually simply by way of a text message to them. This exact same tactic is now being implemented by local business using mobile marketing. The main target associated with mobile promoting is currently relating to:

* Typically the target might be about apps a smart phone uses or other interactive gadgets that are speeding up ideas and conversations
* Customer care for almost all sorts of things.
* Better video cameras for the end users as well as standardization regarding products and more sharing platforms for social interaction.
* Q-Codes, Short codes for discounts and freebies through real time mobile coupons.
* Soon even your Health care provider will offer their services through mobile devices making it easy to shedule and touch base for critical care needs.

A lot more local small businesses are beginning to choose to provide information regarding their particular expert services via mobile message texting. Their target customers then receive messages with regards to the hottest tv show, or movies or release of new clothing styles. These are all announced via a simple sales message to let folks know about the particular release date.

The volume of traffic your web page receives by way of mobile phones is now being tracked by the major search engines in order to start ranking these mobile ready sites. Mobile phone marketing and advertising can save you a small fortune when compared with other styles of promotion or advertising.

Bill Enross
Owner at Internet Marketing Services helps small business owners get more clients and business from the Internet.

Getting Mobile Users To Your Website

Wednesday, January 26th, 2011 at 7:53 am

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How to drive mobile users to your local business website

There are about 4billion mobile phone users globally and a fast growing number are using smart phones like Blackberry, iPhone and Android. The advantage of mobile phones is they are affordable, their owners always have them on hand and they are always switched on. You really can’t say the same for their personal computers.

So how can a local business drive mobile phone users to their websites and businesses?

Text messages

This is the most direct way to contact mobile phone users and update them on promotions, events and other important information.

Email marketing

Most phones today allow users to access their email accounts from mobile phones meaning your customers can still read your emails and participate in sales offers.

Mobile ads

Your business can set up an ad campaign through mobile ad networks which can target mobile users within a certain radius of your business location. Just imagine a tourist or local native seeing your restaurants ad banner on his phone during lunchtime. Wouldn’t that be an extremely targeted and compelling marketing strategy?

Podcasts and Videos

Users can download your business podcasts and videocasts onto their phones. You should mention your business website address or embed it in the videocast.

Social media

Users can also access their social media accounts via mobile phones. All the more reason to open your account and keep in touch with new posts, tweets and RSS feeds.

Applications

In a study published in June 2010, The Nielsen Company showed the top mobile applications accessed by users include Facebook, Google Search, Google Maps, the Weather Channel, iTunes, Pandora, ESPN amongst others. That means your local business needs to have a presence on these applications. Optimizing your webpages for mobile users is a further step to take, so that if someone clicks on your website through Google Search, they are able to read your content. Mobile traffic cannot read regular websites.

Another point in the applications category to consider, is that local businesses can now be found by mobile users who have bought mobile apps from iPhone and the like. For example the Where Inc app helps people “Search out cool local places, events, things to do, and great deals — even coupons and special offers…. Discover what’s nearby with real-time reviews on restaurants, cheap gas, movies, weather, and more”.

Bill Enross
Owner at Internet Marketing Services helps small business owners get more clients and business from the Internet.