In early 2015 Facebook announced an algorithm change that would lower the visibility of fan pages. Anyone who has manages a fan page will express their frustration with this change.
But why did Facebook do this? “Why? Why? Why did they do this?” lamented small business owners. Because people don’t like ads. Period. It doesn’t matter if it’s TV ad, Radio ad or Facebook Post. Oh … and Facebook makes a ton of money from paid ads. Which is fair. But, back up 7 years and pundits said that with social media you will no longer have to search for products. The products you want will find you through social media. Well it ends up people didn’t like that.
So let’s continue to put SMS to the side for a few more seconds and ask, “well if people don’t like ads then how do you advertise effectively?” In today’s society the answer is Permission Based Marketing. You have to get the consumer’s consent before you advertise to them. This is both contractual and psychological. See, people hate ads, but they love to buy. And, they want to know what their favorite places and brands are up to.
There are a handful of Permission Based Marketing options but in my experience SMS Text Messaging provides the highest ROI and recall. To sign up for your messages a person has to physically type in a Keyword and a Short Code and hit send. The consumer is saying: go ahead and send me an ad, I enjoy spending money here and I’ll spend more, but don’t break my trust. Now it’s on you to send out timely messages and good offers that increase traffic and sales. It’s an opportunity to build trust and build your relationship. Add in the fact that the message is going straight to someone’s phone – the object they love more than anything, that they don’t go anywhere without, that they sleep with at night, and you have a very powerful advertising channel.
Let’s put all the media on the table to discuss their various strengths and weaknesses and you’ll see that the other media cannot compete with SMS on price, delivery, timeliness, or ease of use. In fact, if you turn it around adding SMS to all the other media actually make them better and more effective. Your radio spot can have a coupon, your TV commercial can direct people to your app, your print ad can capture data.
That’s powerful stuff and it’s what we do for Small Businesses.
