local business marketing strategyYou’ve hired your bulk messaging provider and you’re ready to get started with a mobile marketing local business marketing strategy. Congrats! You’re on your way to a boom in business and more customers than you ever thought possible.

Or you’re wasting your money and the whole thing will die a quick death. Mobile marketing is easy and effective, but only if you do it right. Here are the 8 things lots of businesses do that screw up their mobile marketing campaigns completely.

Buy Your List

Mobile marketing only works if you have a list of subscribers. If you buy a list from somebody else, those aren’t subscribers. They’re random people who have no interest in your business and they’ll toss your messages in the trash. Use an opt-in form or short code and get their permission first.

Message at Midnight

If you send messages late at night or early in the morning, people won’t open them. They’ll groggily delete them and possibly block you from their phones. Send your messages during the daytime and experiment with different times to see what gets the best response.

Cram Your Messages

Your mobile messages need to be 160 characters – at most! That’s not a lot of characters, so don’t cram your messages full of too much information. Each message should be focused on one thing. If you’ve got two things to tell your subscribers, break it up into two messages.

Abbreviate Messages

You also might be tempted to use text lingo like LOL and OMG. This saves you space in your messages but it makes you look like a teenage girl. They look unprofessional so stick to actual words in the English language.

Ignore Stats

Most bulk messaging services provide you with analytics so you can see how you’re doing. If you don’t pay close attention to these, you’re lost. This local business marketing strategy is how you learn what works and what doesn’t.

Be in Too Much Touch

With SMS marketing, you don’t want to be texting them daily. You should be consistent but if you send too many messages, they’ll start turning you off. Strike a good balance between staying in touch and going overboard.

Think ‘Sales’ Only

When crafting your messages, start by asking, ‘How can I help my subscribers?’ Don’t start by thinking about sales. If you focus on helping them and offer information or promotions that give them value, the sales will come.

Rant, Blog or Otherwise Not Deliver

Whatever you do, make sure you send the messages you promised them. They signed up because they wanted what you said you’d give them. Make sure you deliver.

Mobile marketing is a great local business marketing strategy for businesses, but you’ve got to make sure you’re doing it right. Stick to these guidelines and your mobile marketing campaign will be everything you want it to be.

I specialize in helping small business owners drive more traffic, generate more leads and increase sales using proven strategies in lead generation and conversion, Internet marketing and social media. Feel free to contact me contact David Carleton http://LocalBusinessMarketingSuccess.com at 858-442-3131 for a free, no obligation consultation!

David Carleton is a San Diego Local Business Marketing Consultant who specializes in showing small business owners how to spend less and get more from their marketing and advertising using low cost strategies in local business marketing, lead generation and conversion, Internet marketing and social media. To download a copy of the free report, “7 Steps to Website Success”, go to http://LocalBusinessMarketingSuccess.com

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Topic: Local Business Marketing Strategy