How SMS Marketing Services Compare with Other Digital Marketing Methods

When it comes to digital marketing methods, SMS marketing services outperform all other marketing platforms hands down. The statistics are overwhelming with the costs affordable and SMS yielding the greatest return on investment. SMS or short messaging service was developed in the 1980s for sending and receiving character-based text messages. Through an explosive mobile marketing trend ushered in by the surge in smartphone usage, text message marketing has become the dominant method of communication.

The answer is simple. Your customers and probably you as well, live on their phones. Customers prefer to get quick and easy messages by text. And if you offer them great deals, and information they want and need related to your products and services, it is more likely that your SMS text messages will be among the 98% that they open.

There is no doubt that search marketing targets buyers in contrast to general offline ads that capture a much lower number of leads who attract impulse shoppers. Search marketing includes organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising including retargeting.

SEO can be quite costly and especially in competitive industries, can take months to years to achieve high rankings. This is why many businesses opt for PPC for achieving immediate access to a motivated market where they pay only for click conversions. Even at its best conversion rate, the return on investment from SEO and PPC can be quite low unless the value of a customer is high.

The average PPC conversion rate based on clicks and across all industries is about 3.75% for search. For display networks, it is about 0.77%. Of course, the click-through rate varies for different industries. Dating and high demand services such as personal injury attorney services can be as high as 9%. PPC conversions also depend heavily on effective ad campaigns and landing pages as well as site speed.

But even with a 9% conversion which is well above the norm, PPC results cannot compare to SMS where deals, coupons, special offers and more are almost instantly available in the customer’s phone and the conversion rate averages 45%. Optimal conversions depend of course on a properly optimized SMS campaign for timing, design, and value. But unlike SEO or PPC where the goal is to acquire new customers, SMS is ideal for customer retention – the best source of recurring business and profits.

Although email marketing remains an important lead generation and sales strategy, its effectiveness is waning. Email marketing generally produces at best, a 22% conversion rate. Many people do not check email on a regular basis or at all. Spending time going through an inbox with hundreds to thousands of emails to find a few that are not junk mail, is not how most people want to spend their time. For deliverability, open rate, cost and conversions, SMS marketing services offer the best digital marketing solution by far.

There is little doubt that social media marketing is a major platform for branding as well as engaging and converting a market into leads and customers. From Facebook, to Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn, social media is a very powerful strategy. The downsides include time, ongoing content development and the costs to build and interact with a following – all of this can be significant and overwhelming. SMS in comparison, is a quick, easy and affordable way to deliver a message. Over time and with continued delivery of valuable content at strategic times, SMS can strengthen a company’s brand and reputation and help a business to acquire new customers as well as to retain valuable existing customers.

The bottom link is this… It is far less costly to sell to an existing customer than to acquire a new one. And customer retention is where SMS marketing services outperform all other digital marketing methods. Using SMS marketing in combination with other digital marketing strategies can be highly effective in building SMS lists where SMS is the best solution for sustainable business growth and profits.