How To Turbocharge Your SMS Marketing In 15 Minutes A Day
A marketer’s work is never done. And while the novelty of your shiny new opt-in group SMS service is fun to play with at first, after a while it can also be easy to neglect—and that’s when you’ll find yourself slipping back into more passive methods of promoting your business. But mobile marketing is way too important to give up on. So how can you stay on track and headed toward success?
Scheduling. No, not scheduling your messages—we’ve covered that before. Scheduling your work. There is something to do every day of the workweek that will keep your group SMS campaign headed in the right direction. These tasks won’t take up much time. Many can be done in 15 minutes or less. But it’s important to do something SMS related every workday so it can become routine without getting boring. Below is a sample schedule:
Monday – Implementing a new idea. Whether it’s a new sale, promotion, or product, Monday is a great day to roll out a change in your campaign. The beginning of the week brings about fresh eyes and five whole days to test the results of your new experiment.
Tuesday – Sending the message. Remember: having a specific day and time to send your message conditions your group to expect something from you. See the post on SMS marketing discipline for more details.
Wednesday – Goals and analytics. There are many SMS analytic tools you can use to track your campaign’s progress. Get acquainted with some and start setting goals for growth and improvement. Perhaps you want more group members. Maybe you want an uptick in coupon code redemption. Whatever your goal is, establish one day to check the progress of it and only that day. Just like in weight loss, constant analysis of progress can drive a person insane. Besides, there’s plenty to keep you busy the rest of the week.
Thursday – Recruiting new members. When was the last time you actually promoted your opt-in SMS group name (sometimes called a “keyword”) for new customers? Is it printed on your receipts? Do you have a couple of signs up in your business? Have you tweeted it to your followers on Twitter? Use Thursdays as the day you and your staff reminds customers and visitors that they can join your SMS group for future perks and promotions.
Friday – Brainstorming new ideas. Marketing is fueled by freshness. Stale ideas go ignored; new ideas pique interest. Sit down with your staff on Friday mornings to talk over some new angles for your SMS campaign. Remind your team that SMS ideas must adhere to demographic and brevity constraints of the medium. If your brainstorming session produces a particularly exciting idea, implement it the following Monday. Then just let the cycle restart naturally.
Maybe a different ordering of this weekly schedule will work best for you. Maybe there’s something else you can do instead of one of these suggestions. Either way, getting into a weekly routine will constantly give you something to look forward to and, most importantly, it will yield results. So sit down with your weekly planner and find a place for your campaign every day. By the end of the year you’ll wonder how you ever got along without it.
