This is a guest post by Paul Rothbein, founder of Placerville SEO (http://placervilleseo.com), a SocialEngine focused marketing and consulting firm. He is also the owner of Myriud.com which is currently in a redevelopment stage. He has also been featured on SocialEngine.
When you send out an email to someone most likely they will only receive the email once they log into their email account. Even if they have their smartphone connected to their email account. With the SMS message people receive the message as quick as any ordinary text message. This is a feature to highlight to your members and attract advertisers to use your site.
The SMS plugin if marketed properly can be a great way to get new advertisers. While also getting your advertisers to advertise you. However, you need to know key benefits of how the SMS plugin can benefit your advertisers. And why advertisers will be willing to use your site even if it has little traffic.
The SMS ability to be integrated with the HE Credits or Activity Points plugin is a great incentive to get advertisers to also be users of your site. People hate being charged every time they text someone.
If integrating the SMS plugin with HE Credits/Activity Points make sure you give a lot of points for advertisers that invite people to use your site.
With this method by having returning traffic from advertisers that use your site it can be effective for making money through other ad portals. Such as Google AdSense.
It’s About The SMS, Not Your Site’s Traffic
Selling banner ads on a site that is brand new with little or no traffic will be hard if not impossible to get direct paying advertisers on board. By providing a service of sending SMS and offering consulting to advertisers it gives you more leverage. An advertiser will get benefit by sending to only ten members of your site. You can offer advertisers a discount if they mention your site’s name on the text message. This way you are having your paid advertisers advertise you!
Tracking Considerations:
When you send an email message to someone there are numerous annoying reasons why someone didn’t respond. Was your message buried in your recipient’s inbox? Did your email message go into spam? Did the person’s email account block your message from even going through?
When you send a text message you know the person received your message. There is no inefficient spam filtering and it is rare for messages to be buried in someone’s inbox. Make this a key selling point for advertisers.
Call To Action:
The best messages are short and brief because the average person’s attention span does not expand beyond seven seconds.
Encourage your advertisers to keep messages simple that demand a simple call to action. Whether it is requesting recipients to visit a link, to attend an event, etc.
For Event Owners:
If an event creator needs to make a last minute change he will feel a need to text each of the attendees. The event owner knows that emailing attendees with last minute changes won’t do the trick. An event creator is not hesitant to spend money when needing to inform people about last minute changes.
Use this to your advantage. It can certainly be a way to get Event promoters to use your site over Meetup.com, Facebook, etc.
SMS Vs. Push Notifications:
As a key selling point for event promoters and advertisers is the fact that almost everyone who uses the internet can receive text messages. The majority of the world does not own a smartphone. However, the majority of the world does own a cell phone, and just about every cell phone owner can receive text.
Facebook and Twitter do not offer any paid advertising service for push notifications. This can be a key selling point to advertisers.
Anytime and Anywhere:
SMS ads are delivered to advertisers customer base anytime and anywhere. If a coffee shop wants to advertise they might be eager to reach people in the morning. An advertiser can send a message to recipients at 7am with something like “need a coffee for work? Come to Pete’s Coffee Shop.”
Emails typically only get delivered to people’s inbox when they are in front of a computer which is often only when someone is at home or at work. Since cell phones are with people all the time and people receive text instantaneously it is something advertisers will like.
Why Pay?
In many ways using the SMS plugin can be more convenient than conventional ways of sending text messages. For example, an advertiser with clients overseas might have a reason to use your site’s SMS feature as opposed through the advertiser’s own personal cell phone. This can be a key selling point by itself for why advertisers might use your site to message their customer base.
Legal Considerations:
Make sure you make advertisers sign an agreement to not send solicited to non opt-in contacts. Make sure the advertiser agrees to only send text messages to recipients who agree to receive text messages.
Competition:
There are no big social networks offering this SMS feature including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. This will give your site a competitive advantage. This feature alone is enough to attract new visitors to your site.
