Small business owners have to do it all. You’re the accountant, janitor, supervisor, cashier, and don’t forget—the marketer. Community takes the marketing stress off of your plate by helping you capture your target audience, get in front of more eyeballs, and build stronger relationships with your local markets.

The best marketing channel you can use for your small business in 2024 is text message marketing. But not all text marketing platforms are created equal. Community prioritizes people above profits and puts the emphasis on authentic conversations between real human beings. No artificial intelligence or chatbots are involved. Just real people looking to provide personalized content and speak with real people.

Here are the best marketing strategies for small businesses in 2024 using text marketing technology. Read on to learn how you can strengthen your brand’s marketing efforts to ultimately grow your business.

‍

Personal Relationships Are Key

As a small business, you’re a part of what makes your community great. Local consumers want to support you. The key to any small business’s marketing strategy—regardless of the medium—should be establishing and maintaining personal relationships. 

Connect with people in a personal way that lets them get to know what your brand is all about, that way they can get excited about supporting you. Give your prospects and customers the ability to connect directly to you with SMS marketing tactics.

‍

How SMS Marketing is Changing the Marketing Game

SMS or “Short Message Service” marketing is using texts to communicate or send notifications to your audience instantly. Texting is changing the marketing game, especially for small businesses, by paving a direct path to your customers, unlike older marketing techniques. 

Previously, you waited for your customers to check their email inbox or hoped that they would scroll across your ad. Text marketing gets you instantly and directly into the hands of your customers—literally. 

The best part is, 78% of people say they actually wish they could have a text conversation with a business. Modern consumers are craving the simplicity and convenience that texting is able to offer. Give the people what they want—a personal and instant way to connect with your small business.

‍

Community is Different

Community focuses on helping users hold authentic conversations with multiple people at once. Your members will be talking with you, not a chatbot. The Features offered by Community were made with your small business in mind, so you can exchange thoughtful and personal messages. Real humans talking with other real humans.

Hold conversations with multiple audience Members at once using the Clustering response management feature. Clustering allows you to group multiple texts that share similar wording, so you can send one reply to several different people—all at once. 

You’re able to engage with each and every member of your audience, never having to ever leave anyone on “Read” because you were too busy.

‍

Get Creative

Once you’ve signed up to get your small business its Community Number, the next step is sharing it with your customers. 

Promote your Number in fun ways that let your customer base see they have the option of getting to know your brand or business better. Capture every lead that comes through your website and storefront by making it easy for them to subscribe, leading to more conversions and higher sales. 

Here are some creative ideas to kick off promoting your business’s Community Number.

‍

Ways To Promote Your Number To Grow Your Audience

• Website Sign-Up Unit: Capture your website visitors and make it convenient for them to join your audience with Community’s Website Sign-Up Unit. The sign-up form pops up on your website with the registration questions for your leads to fill out. It’s a simple way to ask page visitors to subscribe to your Community and promote your Number.
• Your Custom My URL Link: As a Leader, you’ll get a My URL link to embed on your website or use as a Swipe Up link on Instagram business profile. You can use it across all of your social media marketing, Facebook Ads, or Google Ads. It’s another creative way to promote your phone number and make the sign-up process convenient for your customers.
• Shopify Integration: Shopify integrates with Community to give them the option of opting in, converting your customers into Members automatically.
• Keywords: Strengthen your keyword research with the unique Community Keywords feature when promoting your phone number. For example, tell Members to text in relevant keywords like "Banana" on a specific advertisement. You’ll be able to tell which Members came from that marketing effort by the Keyword they text in.
• Events, Sponsorships, and Pop-Ups: Does your small business sponsor the local high school football games or host pop-up events? Those are perfect opportunities to promote your Community Number on your packaging, signage, or even receipts. Assign a special Keyword to track audience Members that you gain from specific events like this or use the Join Date Filter to easily organize your contacts.
• Partnerships with Other Small Businesses: Local businesses need to stick together. Strike up a partnership in which both small businesses can promote your SMS marketing numbers. Extend your reach by sharing prospective customers with a nearby business that offers a complimentary service or product to your own. For example, if you’re a small bookstore, consider partnering with the locally-owned coffee shop and creating a Community referral program.
• Referral Program: Did you know that customers acquired through referrals have a 37% higher retention rate? Tap into the power of referrals with SMS marketing. Offer a Referral Program that gives discounts to customers who get their family and friends to join your Community. This is an easy way to expand your audience and increase your sales. Keep them subscribed by continuing to offer exclusive text-only deals.
• Locals Only Deals: As a small business, you have an advantage because the local community wants to support you. Offer a special Locals Only Deal and easily categorize these contacts within your audience using the Location/Radius Filter. If you have a company vehicle that drives around town to your events, use it to promote your Locals Only promotion and even assign a special Keyword so you know how they got your Number.

‍

Segment for Targeted Content

You’ve signed up to be a Leader with Community text marketing and have started promoting your phone number—now what? Now, you create segments. 

Add subgroups or “Communities” within your audience by asking Members what their interests are. Assign these different interests to specific Keywords that Community will use to automatically sort people into the correct subgroup when they text it in.

Data shows that 90% percent of consumers find custom content useful and 78% believe that a business providing personalized content means it wants to build good relationships. This means that your audience is noticing and caring if the content you push out in your SMS marketing is personalized to their interests or not. Send the right message by segmenting your audience to provide custom content they’ll find relevant. 

‍

Insights to See What’s Working…and What’s Not

After you get the hang of engaging with your audience via texting, you’ll probably be wondering how your campaigns are doing. Access the Insights feature on Community to track and quantify the success of your text messages. 

Like Google Analytics, you'll see how many interactions each message receives and what the click, open, and response rates are. The Community Insights feature helps you shape the content and timing of your campaigns so you can provide the types of text messages your audience wants to receive. Better Insights mean better engagement which will lead to more sales for your business.

‍

Feedback—But Make it Convenient

Since Community’s texting platform is all about personal communication, why not use that to ask your customers how you’re doing as a business? Are they enjoying that product they purchased from you? Take quick text polls and surveys that ask your audience Members for their feedback directly on their mobile devices. 

Text polls provide the most convenient method for customers to give their opinions—no browser tabs to fumble with or apps to download. Provide a few multiple-choice options (they can even be emojis) as answers to your polling question. 

Group the responses together with the Clustering feature for fast feedback that helps you plan your next product or marketing strategy. 

‍

Summary

Community’s text marketing platform lets you focus on your relationships which naturally leads to increased sales and brand awareness. With Features that help you stay organized and provide personalized messages, you can spend less time worrying about your marketing strategy and more time enjoying the engagement of your audience. 

Promote your Community Number and start reaching more customers easier than you ever thought possible.

Sources:

US Texting Statistics 

15 Referral Marketing Statistics You Need to Know  

11 Content Marketing Statistics [Research]

Photo by erik reardon on Unsplash