I don't really appreciate this kind of comment. I spent a lot of time responding to this thread and what not, but I'm out there selling now and have my head down focused on doing what I wrote about and making money.
I posted this excerpt from the guide in response to another guide thread when I was still hoping to complete the guide in full. Mobile marketing is real and works. I have shut down all my other business lines (SEO, Regular Website Building, Adsense, FB Marketing, etc) and am working full time selling mobile websites and text message marketing.
When I originally proposed the guide it was because I was working on making a white label text message platform which was the reason I thought the guide would be necessary to make, and I figured I would share with you guys. White labeling turned out to be such a pain in the ass to have coded and a lot more trouble than it is worth, so I just have my own system now that I use and deploy for my SMS marketing in different niches. (do not think restaurants are the only ones to sell to!)
I've given away a lot of tips and what not in here, and you are free to ask my any more questions, and I will try to answer them. It's not as easy as one thinks to write a guide. I set out to do it it and the thing is, when you're busy doing the stuff that you are supposed to be writing about and actually making money, the guide falls to the bottom of the list of things to do. This forum is full of awesome information, but you'll get the best knowledge by going out and doing it.
Note: I did post this on someone else's thread, but you guys may have missed it.
Introduction
Welcome to my guide on text message marketing. Whether you are just starting out, or an expert in text message marketing, I hope that this guide will provide you with some tips and resources to help further your understanding of the way mobile marketing works.
The knowledge I am sharing with you comes from my many attempts, many failures and many successes in mobile marketing. Some methods originated in marketing books, others in forums, and many I?ve come up with myself from experience in the field. You should remember that this is a guide and is useless unless you take action. The map is not the territory; the best techniques are the ones that work for you out in the real world, and you will never know which those are unless you try them. So get out there and take some action and as long as you persevere, you will succeed.
Chapter 1: The Basics of Text Message Marketing
A customer walks into restaurant, at the register or on a table, he sees a sign that reads:
Quote:
Text "deal" to 55555 to get an instant coupon for a free soda and to join our VIP customer club.
The customer texts the keyword (deal) to the shortcode (55555) and they instantly receive a message back that says:
Quote:
Thank you for joining our VIP Customer Club, show this text to get your free soda.
The customer is now legally opted-in and can be marketed to. The reply message is also required to say how many times per month or week they will be texted, that standard messaging rates apply, and that they can text "stop" to stop. Most providers will include this automatically though, so you don't really need to worry about it.
This is a very simple and effective flow for growing an SMS list. If you have experience with e-mail marketing, you'll notice the similarities with the idea of a free and enticing giveaway in order to encourage subscriptions. And just like e-mail marketing, you will be sending out timely and effective messages that entice the subscriber to carry out an action, which in this case, is patronizing the business. This guide focuses on offline marketing for brick-and-mortar businesses like restaurants and nightclubs. You will be trying to grow the list of subscribers as large as possible so that you can bring in as many customers as possible with each weekly blast.
Since the people we are targeting have already been to the restaurant, they are warm leads, and so it's not that hard to get them to come back. The idea is to bring them in at least one more time per month, because if all of their regular customers came in an extra time per month, it would essentially double the restaurant's revenue. This is the general principle behind the business model of SMS marketing and I want you to understand this because it is important to really understand and believe in the service that you are going to be offering. If you're confident about the success of text message marketing, you will make more sales. And you should be confident about the service because it really does work. Text Message coupon redemption rates average around 20%, which is really high, but can go even higher depending on how good the offer is. For example, Starbucks recently achieved a 60% redemption rate with an SMS coupon.
It is simply a lot more efficient to bring in existing customers an additional time, than to bring in a completely new customer. Research shows that most people have a pool of less than 10 restaurants that they regularly eat at, especially around their work or home. They are typically satisfied customers who come in every other week or so, and because of this they can be easily incentivized into returning to restaurant sooner.
New customers on the other hand, are more cautious about exploring and taking the risk of having a bad meal at a new place and so they have resistance to new places. Bringing in new customers is what a company like Groupon specializes in, and because of the hurdles of doing this, their services have a high cost. Groupon charges businesses up to half of whatever the deal price is. For example, a $20 Groupon for $40 worth of food, might only bring the business $10. Groupon takes the other half for themselves and can take up to 60 days to pay the business the money they are owed. The restaurant is effectively expending $30 of value to get a new customer, but as many businesses are now learning, a lot of these customers are cheap deal seekers who will never come back and so the return on investment is not there.
Other forms of marketing, such as advertising in the newspaper, billboards, magazines, etc, have similarly high costs, and similarly dismal returns. These old-media marketing buys have no direct visible return on investment and are ripe for disruption by such an amazing technology as SMS marketing. This is the beauty of text message marketing: the return on investment is so much higher compared to the old ways and it is a visible and measurable. I will go into depth on techniques that deal with how to get leads directly from Groupon customers and print advertisers in a future chapter, but for now it is important to know the type of marketing you're competing against and why SMS is so much better.
You may understand SMS marketing already, but for someone who isn't a marketer and is unfamiliar with the concept of list building, it can be a difficult concept to grasp. The best way of getting the idea across to business owners is by giving them a demonstration, not by verbally explaining it. Once the concept is demonstrated, it is a lot easier to understand. For this reason, it is important when trying to make a sale, to push for a demo instead of explaining the details and mentioning terms like "keyword" or "shortcode."
When talking with them it is fine to mention that SMS marketing is direct to customer and instantaneous, but when pushed for details, it is better to try and set up an appointment for a demonstration. It is hard to complete a sale and get someone's credit card info or money right over the phone during the first conversation (without a referral) even if they understand the concept. Try to keep in mind that you will greatly increase your likelihood of making a sale if you schedule an appointment and get in front of the decision maker.
Another important element of SMS marketing is timing; it can work to your benefit or to your demise. You do not want to send out a message in the middle the night, because that will result in many opt outs and angry complaints to the business owner. You can use the fact that text messaging is instantaneous to your advantage though, by sending out a lunchtime focused deal at 10:30 AM, right when people are thinking about where they're going to eat that day. Remember that most people keep their phone within a few feet of them at all times, even while sleeping. A phone is in the same category as keys and wallets in terms of importance, so keep this in mind when scheduling campaigns.
Now that you know what text message marketing is, you'll need to focus on the next steps: finding a provider, finding customers, making sales, setting customers up, learning what prices to charge, and more. This is just the beginning of a great journey down a new and lucrative path of your career with text message marketing.
There is a large opportunity out there for long-term recurring revenue with SMS marketing, as long as you know what you?re doing. With this guide, you will not only know what you are doing, but you will be an expert in no time.
