Introduction

You might think that SMS marketing is something that only large corporations with massive marketing budgets do. This isn't the case at all, many local businesses that use our services enjoy the benefits of a well-thought-out bulk text campaign. But why do marketing texts work so well for local businesses?

You can be more personal

As people are bombarded with marketing messages all day, every day, they are becoming much easier to ignore. The beauty of marketing texts is that they allow you to talk to your customers on a more personal level. Most companies do this by adding a person's name to their texts (which is great) but as a local business you can go one step further.

Make your marketing messages even more personal by linking what you say to something happening in the local area or to something you know the local people care about. This could be a local festival, local traditions, stories, news or sports. You could even tailor your texts to the local dialect; a Yorkshire company might start a message with 'Ay up Alice, since you were last in we've added a new line of yorkshire teas. By heck they're good! Why not pop in and try one soon?

Your results are more instant

You've probably already heard that bulk text open rates are the best around when compared to other forms of marketing. That's because it's true! Sending a text is a very direct way of contacting someone and isn't easily ignored. As 98% of people will open your texts, it's much more likely they'll act on what they read straight away. This is even higher for local businesses because your customers won't have to go to as much effort to take advantage of your offer because you're close by.

A local pizza takeaway might send a bulk text offering a deal to their customers at about 4pm on a Friday (when they're getting hungry), making the pizza place their first stop on the way home after a long week.

People love to buy locally

It's no secret that as huge corporations have grown and take up a lot of industry space, people are opting to buy locally and support local businesses where they can. People like to have options, and while there are local businesses (like yours) giving them the chance for something new and different, you have a great advantage.

SMS marketing is one of the best ways to promote your business locally, because you can send printed leaflets out or create a Facebook ad for your local area asking people to opt-in to receive your marketing texts. Because of the local connection people are more likely to be interested in what you offer because you're close by, so your opt-in rate will be higher.

If you have a Google ad with keywords for your local area you might want to try adding the Google message extension so that people have the option of clicking on your ad and texting you. This is a great feature as the number of people that would rather text a business than call is growing rapidly.

We've explained how to do this in an earlier article; How to Use Google Awords Message Extensions for Business SMS if you need help setting it up.