There’s one thing that businesses owners can’t get enough of and that is finding new customers but before you get new customers you need to generate leads, right?
Leads are important because it shows you exactly who is interested in your solution, they’ve put their hand up to learn more about what you have to offer and what your specific solution can do for them.
While there are plenty of ways to generate leads for your business, they’re not all created equal, some are great and some are just ok says Angus Barrett from smspapa.com.au.
In this article you’re going to learn why using Bulk SMS is one of the best ways to bring in fresh new leads for your business.
SMS Leads Are Ready To Buy
Ask any business owner what kind of leads they want – that answer? The ones that are ready to buy.
Not all leads are created equal and because of this it means that you need to treat leads differently, based on where they came from.
For example, if you generate a lead from email then chances are, that person is still at the top of the funnel.
They’re aware that they have a problem, and they are now aware that you could potentially help them solve that problem but they’re not ready to commit, in fact if you have your sales person reach out to them at this stage you’re going to get a lot of push back and will probably scare that lead off.
Email leads are generally still in that info seeking stage and are not ready to have a conversation about buying, they want to learn more about the types of options you have and whether they line up with their needs, then they will reduce the options down to 1 or 2 then they’re ready to talk with your sales person.
This is why email nurturing is part of any solid email marketing program, you need to continue to educate and guide them down a specific pathway to get them ready for a sales conversation.
SMS on the other hand is different, chances are that these people are very close to making a buying decision, why? Because they’ve given you their direct personal mobile number.
When someone gives you their personal mobile number they are ready to talk shop (or very close to it).
I’ve worked in sales for years and I can tell you that email leads are very low quality at first, once they’ve been nurtured then it’s easier to close them, this takes time and sales people hate having to wait.
With an SMS lead I can shoot them a quick message to set up a time to talk and 8 times out of 10 they’re ready to talk.
Bulk SMS Has 98% Open Rates
The more people who see your marketing offer the more sales you will get, period.
Most marketers will say that the offer is the most important part of any marketing campaign because that is the part that gets a person to take out their wallet and spend.
I disagree, with that approach. I think the offer is the second most important part of any campaign with the first being the open rate whatever that is for your campaign.
My rationale is simple if no one opens or clicks to read your offer it doesn’t matter how good that offer is, the campaign is dead in the water.
Even if you had an “ok” offer you can make that offer do exceptionally well just by getting more opens i.e. getting more people to see your offer.
For example, imagine you run two identical campaigns. Campaign 1 receives a 20% open rate. Campaign 2 receives a 98% open rate.
Campaign 2 is going to generate more sales just by math alone, it may not be 5x the sales but you would expect a noticeable lift nonetheless.
Fast Response Times
According to smartinsights.com it takes 3 minutes on average for a person to respond to a text message.
Compare that to email, which can take up to 24+ hours.
This is especially useful if you’re wanting to get people in quickly for example a restaurant owners who may have had a large booking cancel or perhaps they’re expecting a slow evening.
They can send out an SMS campaign and within an hour have tables filling up again.
In fact this is what I would do when I was working for an Italian restaurant – sometimes we’d have a slow night on a typically busy night mostly due to a special event in the area we would send out a quick bulk SMS campaign before 4pm and we’d have bookings coming in within the hour which was a lifesaver.
Low Inbox Competition
One of the other reasons for low open rates is just the sheer competition that exists inside the inbox.
According to Radicati the average person today receives around 120+ emails per day and climbing.
If you’re in email marketing then then that is a staggering number to try and overcome and is why most marketers will create multiple variations of different subject lines and run A/B spilt tests.
With bulk SMS there is virtually no competition especially from direct competitors so you know that when you send a promotion it is not only going to land inside the inbox (most emails land in the SPAM box) but it is also going to get seen by the recipient.
This is a massive upside for text messaging.
Conclusion
When you combine highly qualified ready to buy leads with 98% of them actually opening your message and reading your offer and who respond within 3 minutes on average AND where you have almost no competition you have a solid foundation for generating sales.
The best part is that most businesses and marketers are still yet to include Bulk SMS as a part of their marketing mix giving anyone who is using this amazing marketing channel a distinct competition advantage over the competition.
