As the number of mobile devices explodes around the globe, so does the number of regular texters, who use SMS to stay in touch with friends and family.
Also, since the number of text platforms has gone up, you can expect even more texts to fly through the air.
While texting is only a small part of a typical marketing strategy, even those businesses that are using it fail to see their texts as an SEO opportunity.
If you aren’t looking at your texts with the same keyword-driven eye that your other marketing channels get, follow these strategies and put your SMS campaigns in a different light.
Use Keywords
You’ve added widely searched keywords to your emails, website and social media pages. Adding them to your text messages will create more consistent marketing messages and make it easier to create more effective messages.
You don’t need to hire an SEO service to identify the best keywords; you just need a good keyword analyzer to find the best options.
If you’re already performing analytics on your other marketing channels, use those results. Your text campaigns may yield different results over time, but at least you have a good starting point for your text strategy.
Personalize Your Texts
Most texters aren’t used to being called by name when they get a text from a friend or relative. Frankly, they don’t need it, because most of those senders are already known. But they don’t know you, so you need to be more formal. A personalized greeting does the trick.
You don’t have room in your text to be chatty, so make it simple – “Hi John” or “Dear Susan” works just fine. If possible, try to personalize the text to customers’ specific interests.
For instance, there are tools that enable websites to highlight previously viewed products. Your text messages might be a great way to follow-up and close that sale once and for all.
Add a Call to Action
You might not mind a friend sending a text just to say hi, but you’ll definitely mind if some strange person or company contacts you with nothing to say. Avoid this awkward moment by including a clear, enticing call to action in every text you send.
The term “call to action” immediately brings to mind a sales promotion, but it doesn’t have to be about revenue. It could also be a call to engage. Maybe you want to bring more people to your website, so you text a link to a great new video on your homepage. Whatever your goal, let text recipients know what you want them to do.
SEO has taken over online marketing, but in some circles text messaging hasn’t followed suit. Give your text campaigns an SEO boost and watch all your marketing efforts go further.
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