SMS Marketing as an Marketing Tool

SMS marketing can be a very effective marketing tool for an existing customer base or for customers who have shown interest in receiving information about your products or services. . However, in line with Australia’s ‘Do Not Call’ register it is imperative that you have permission from your intended recipients to contact them.

Overuse
SMS is one of those media that you should wary of over using. Like email spam, SMS spam can be very annoying and with overuse can lead to compulsive unsubscribing. So be sure not to over do it and make sure it is a worthy communication.

Character Length
Obviously SMS messages need to be succinct. You need to be aware that there is a 160 character limit for SMS messages. If this limit is exceeded the message will still be but will be sent in chunks of 160 characters (e.g. multiple messages). On some SMART phones like the i-phone, it will reassemble the chunks into one piece. However, note that charging will still occur in chunks of 160 characters. e.g. if your message is 320 characters long, you will charged for 2 messages. Though SMS campaigns are in general very cost effective, multiply this by many and you will significantly increase your costs. Note that the 160 characters should be limited to 135 characters of text to allow for an opt out mechanism.

Content
In terms of the content of your message, be sure to make it enticing and targeted. Ideally an SMS marketing campaign will offer a discount for a product or service and a simple way to add urgency to it is to put a timeframe on it. e..g. 20% discount on spare part purchases ordered prior to 99/99/99. Another option that adds urgency may be to offer a discount to the ‘first 40 callers’ for example. Make sure that your message is not ambiguous and is genuine and there are no trick mark ups involved.

Call to Action
A clear call to action, words that urge the reader to take immediate action should be apparent. A phone number or website link is ideal .

Unsubscribers
As with email marketing campaigns, ensure that any unsubscribe requests are duly actioned. Your customer just may not want to be contacted via SMS but may be happy to receive your marketing messages via other means. The surest way to infuriate and possibly lose a client is to ignore their instructions.

How to use online marketing for your eCommerce business

So you’ve spent months preparing the content and appearance of your online store, it’s looking just the way you always dreamed it would and the products are in stock and ready for send-off. There’s just one problem. Your customers are nowhere to be found. When you first opened the site there was a decent amount of interested shoppers, but that traffic seems to have dwindled in recent months and you’re trying to avoid your accountant because you’re terrified of hearing about your profit vs. loss. Sounds like your ecommerce website is in urgent need of an online marketing strategy!

There are infinite plans of action when it comes to online marketing, but let’s look at some of the top choices that are particularly useful in ecommerce:

Sharing: Install plugins that enable shoppers to tell their friends and colleagues about your store by easily sharing links to pictures and descriptions of products through social networking channels, such as Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, or by email.

Content: Revamp the written content on your website information pages and your product descriptions to make sure that it is professionally edited and incorporates the key words related to your industry in order to be search engine friendly.

News: Create and send out professional looking newsletters to advertise company and product news. Install a box on your home page that offers incentives (discounted shipping for example) for shoppers to sign up to your newsletter and refer a friend.

Blogs: Start a blog on your website with daily entries about new products and industry trends and send out customer email alerts to promote fresh stock, sales and specials because blogs and email updates are proven to be some of the best online marketing strategies available today.


Videos: Search engines love video. Try to find a way to incorporate short video clips and slide shows into your ecommerce website. For example, if yours is a fashion store, you may want to include clips from catwalk shows where the garments have featured.

Wiki: Prepare and publish a Wikipedia entry about your online business or product. Wikipedia is one of the most popular websites worldwide and ranks highly in search engine listings and a wonderful cost-free method of gaining notoriety.

To measure the success of all your online marketing strategies, don’t forget to measure your visitor statistics. This data will tell you how your visitors arrived at the site, which products they viewed, what they purchased, and how long they spent in your store.

Infinite IT Solutions is a Melbourne-based premium web design and online marketing company Melbourne that specialises in maximising the online presence of your business. As well as bringing ten years of industry experience to their web design and comprehensive online marketing services, Infinite IT offers outstanding SEO, web development, website redesign and content writing solutions tailored to your specific needs. To find out more about how Infinite It Solutions can tailor your online marketing strategies to grab the attention of your target customers, call us on 1300 881 594.

How to use videos for website promotion

Increasing average consumer bandwidth has meant that online videos are much more accessible and reliable than only a few short years back when bandwidth limited user’s consumption. These days, viewing of videos online is par for the course and the success of You Tube is indicative of this.

Online videos, as part of a website design, can be utilised for several purposes. Online videos can be used to introduce yourself and your company thereby creating a relationship and connection with the viewer. Online videos can also be used to provide real life testimonials from your existing clients. It is imperative that these be managed carefully to ensure that integrity and authenticity is maintained. Online videos are also a great tool for learning. Think of the time and resources that can be saved on that regular query that comes through to your office that could perhaps be answered with a video tutorial. In this way, a process procedure can be explained both audibly and visually and remains on your site as an excellent reference tool. And of course online videos can be used to promote your specific products and services and provides the ability to show them in action.

It is important that you use high quality video and audio equipment. Consumer expectations are very high and anything short of this will be quickly passed over. It is also equally important that the video is produced, directed and edited appropriately to ensure that key information is imparted succinctly but fluently. At the same time, depending on the target audience, there may be merit in producing video that is not too polished in an effort to portray authenticity. A good video production and editing service will be able to advise you on appropriate strategies for your business.