At the end of 2014, half of the world’s population had at least one mobile subscription, totalling over 3.6 billion unique mobile subscribers. By 2020, around three-fifths (3/5) of the global population will have a mobile subscription.
Closer home, mobile subscription in sub-Saharan Africa continues to scale rapidly reaching 367 million subscribers in mid-2015. These statistics undoubtedly prove that Africa and the world are going mobile.
If you’re a business owner in Kenya looking to reach your customers, it makes sense now more than ever to do it through text message marketing. It has been found that 90% of all text messages sent are read within three minutes of delivery.
SMS Marketing is not a new trend in Kenya, many big brands mostly in the telecommunications space have made the most of this medium. This type of marketing is however not limited to these big brands alone, even you, as a small scale business owner can take advantage of SMS marketing to deliver personalized marketing material to your customers in an economical way. I assure you despite what you’re thinking SMS marketing is actually quite affordable.
So here are three simple ways you can build your business through SMS Marketing:
Be Persuasive But Not Pushy
From the onset, you need to clarify to your customers what it is they are signing up to. Allow them to voluntarily enroll themselves to your SMS campaign. Just like with email marketing campaigns, you need to use creative persuasion techniques to make them curious enough to want to opt-in to your campaign. You can offer a freebie, discount, sales offers or even a loyalty reward after they signup.
It’s important to provide your customers with an option to unsubscribe from your campaign. A common example of this would be: “To Stop Receiving These Messages reply with ‘STOP'” This will assure your customers that you are a genuine business looking to build genuine relationships.
Build An Effective Content Strategy
Content strategy might sound like a really complicated thing but it isn’t. It simply means taking into consideration what your business communicates to its potential customers with the intention of boosting sales.
A text message only has 140 characters, so you only have a limited amount of words to effectively communicate your message with your customers. Keeping this in mind, you need to make your texts short and to the point. SMS Marketing is most suited for promotions, quick updates, and time-sensitive offers.
You can have the best services and products, but if you’re not communicating this value to potential customers, your hard work will have little reward.
Monitor Your Performance
Like any other digital marketing campaign, SMS gives you an opportunity to analyze consumer trends. You can use tools to find out what is working and what isn’t in your business and map out a way forward. This will give you great insights on how you can improve your products and services and (most importantly) help you stay ahead of your competitors.
In conclusion,
In the past, marketing was all about communication, but nowadays marketing is all about relationships. Today mobile phones have become a part of our everyday lives and as such SMS Marketing allows you to create close-knit conversations with your customers. This provides you with a unique opportunity to create long-lasting relationships which more often than not lead to a win-win situation for the customer and the business.
About The Author
Catherine Mong’ina is the Founder and CEO of E-Technology Africa a digital marketing agency based in Nairobi, Kenya offering social media, S.E.O, website and app development services. She also regularly contributes to Hire Me Kenya a jobs board and career advice platform. You can reach her catherine@etechnologyafrica.com. You can also follow her on Twitter @KatlyneMona or on Instagram @catherinemongina or by visiting her website https://etechnologyafrica.com/
