5 Reasons Why Old-School Marketers Think SMS Marketing Sucks (And How to Convince Them It Doesn’t)

Today, more than 50% of the population, worldwide, have access to the internet. The growth of the internet has influenced almost every single aspect of day to day life. Now, you can access all the information you need online, shop from almost every major store in the world from your living room, and communicate with billions of people on social media.

As the internet has blossomed, digital marketing has taken the world by storm.

Old-school marketing techniques: flyers, signs, direct sales, posters, and promotional gifts, are still around but their use has dwindled. Despite this, old-school marketers are still coming up with reasons why modern marketing sucks and can’t compete with the classic tried and tested methods.

One such form of modern marketing that has been thrust into the spotlight is SMS marketing; arguably, a revolutionized form of direct sales marketing.

So, what are old-school marketers saying about SMS marketing, and how can you prove them wrong?

Here are five reasons why SMS marketing is criticized by the traditional marketers, and an insight into why they are mistaken…

Reason One: SMS Marketing Isn’t Personal and Doesn’t Connect with Customers

Marketing has changed in a lot of ways, and in some ways, it hasn’t changed at all. It’s still very true that the power to make marketing personal lies solely in the business organizing the campaign. A personal campaign doesn’t just appear, preferences need to be researched and bespoke content needs to be created.

Amusingly, SMS marketing is much more effective at gathering information on these preferences and implementing them, than almost all types of traditional marketing. Any campaign can be tailored with the right know-how, and with so many additional features that can be implemented in an SMS campaign, it’s fairly easily to get to grips with that know-how.

Through text-based software, businesses can connect with customers through quick polls that generate important data, they can create contests that engage their audience, and send out birthday wishes to each customer on the right day, with ease.

Reason Two: There Is Nothing Creative About Sending a Text Message

Vibrant posters, enormous billboards, and spinning signs with mascots is only one side ‘creative’ when it comes to good marketing. What you can achieve with traditional marketing, you can achieve with an SMS campaign, just in a different way.

Text message marketing is as far from uncreative as possible, and certainly doesn’t just consist of sending bland ‘grey’ texts over and over again. From unique contests to the creation of loyalty-building kiosks and the use of loyalty punch cards, there are countless ways to get creative with text messaging campaigns. A business can run text vote polls, generate QR codes, and integrate their campaign with social media – the possibilities are extraordinary.

Reason Three: Sending Text-Based Messages Is Invasive and Ineffective

The privacy side of marketing with SMS has been widely debated, as has email marketing and even traditional marketing, like door-to-door leafleting, which can be considered invasive. However, while there is no off-switch to having posters plastered all over your neighborhood or having multiple leaflets pushed through your door, there is an off-switch to receiving texts.

All SMS campaigns are undertaken with a list of voluntary subscribers, if an audience doesn’t like the content they are receiving, they can unsubscribe from the list with ease. Most businesses have a long list of subscription preferences for their customer’s, so an audience is always receiving what they want to receive.

In terms of effectiveness, the recorded open rate of texts is almost 100%, which is exceptional in comparison to any other marketing method. It also has speed and reach working in it’s favor.

Going back to the leaflet vs SMS marketing comparison: as of 2017, there were 126.22 million households in the USA, which translates to 126.22 million letterboxes to post leaflets through. As of 2018, around 95% of Americans own a mobile phone; with the USA having a population of 325.7 million, that translates to a larger number of phones to receive messages than there are letterboxes to receive leaflets.

Reason Four: You Can’t Attract New Customers by Only Targeting Existing Customers

Word of mouth is a powerful thing, and marketing has relied on it for as long as there has been marketing. A good advertisement gets people to talk, share the news, and ultimately, create a buzz. Just like an eye-catching billboard, text marketing is designed to create an impact and give customers a reason to communicate.

While text marketing is directed at subscribers, it also helps to keep the list of subscribers growing. The ability to integrate the campaign with email and social media also means that the reach of SMS marketing is even larger than what it may look at face value. Unlike traditional marketing, digital marketing is easy to share, with the potential for one message to reach audiences that are much larger.

Reason Five: Texts Are Boring and Uninspiring

It may be difficult to imagine being inspired by a text, and for a long time, it probably was difficult to cram enough inspiration into the character limit to really make customers stand up and pay attention. Today, it couldn’t be easier to inspire with a text message.

SMS marketing campaigns are not limited to just text, they can incorporate multimedia, links, polls, contests, coupons, voice broadcasting, and 2-way chat, to name just a few of the options available. This variety, and ability to incorporate video and sound, is the future of advertising, with video content online predicted to become 80% of the entire consumer traffic by the year of 2020.

Text messaging campaigns are only as good as the effort put in to make them good – the same with any form of advertising; traditional or modern. The latest in innovative software provides features galore, just ready and waiting to be used. The only world in which SMS marketing sucks, is a world where there’s not enough creativity to make something unique and use the advantage of direct marketing to share what makes your brand brilliant.