Are you one of those marketers or businesses that think you are actively engaged in bulk SMS marketing simply because you’re blasting out bulk SMS filled with “irresistible offers?” Bad news: That is no marketing and you’re just wasting your time and money. Good news: You can turn things around, but first, you need this knowledge…
What is marketing by the way?
According to the market legend Philip Kotler and his co-author Kevin Keller in the book powerful book, Marketing Management, “Marketing is about identifying and meeting human and social needs. One of the shortest good definitions of marketing is “meeting needs profitably.””
And I particular like the definition of marketing by Richard Schefren, “Marketing is bringing the market to desire your product or service.”
So, are you really doing bulk SMS marketing?
Taking into consideration the above marketing definitions, would you say you are really doing bulk SMS marketing? I mean, if you rent a phone number list or even build the list yourself, then send out promotional offers to them, would you say you’re marketing? Would that bring your market to desire your product or service?
Not likely. It takes more than that. That is what people call “sms blasting.” In fact, bombard people with too many offers and they’ll come to dislike you instead of desire you and your product.
That said, when is one said to be doing SMS marketing, really?
When SMS marketing really takes place
First, understand that marketing is a process and it does take time to materialize. To do bulk SMS marketing in the real sense of it, you have to build your own phone number list from scratch or buy a list whose demographics you know, I mean list that has people that are really in need of what you sell.
When you have that in place, identify the human and social needs of these people as Kotler and his friend have said, then meet these needs by consistently providing resources that solve their problems and/or help them achieve their goals… while at the same time demonstrating your competence and quality.
As time grows, your list will get to know you and identify with you. Then selling to them becomes easy. That’s marketing. And let’s not forget the good old of practice of segmenting your list so that you can communicate to them in a targeted and personal way.
So, blasting people with the same message at the same time is no marketing at all. And if you want to succeed in your bulk SMS marketing campaigns, taking the time to market as against blasting is not optional, it’s mandatory. Change course today!