Mobile Marketing (also referred to as SMS Marketing or Text Message Marketing) is the perfect solution for the auto service shop owner. Your messages will get seen over 97% of the time and users are hyper-active because mobile coupons or offers have a 10X higher redemption rate than any other format.
But how do you create a mobile marketing campaign that is going to work? Start with your strategy.
Like taking a long road trip, you map out the trip to your destination. Likewise, you need to map out your mobile marketing campaign. The 'destination' is really the purpose. What do you want the campaign to accomplish?
Mobile or text message marketing campaigns can be used for a number of reasons; They could be created to get new customers; retain existing customers, build brand awareness or just make offers to drive visitors (and customers) to you.
The best Text Messaging campaign starts with a great offer. Most think that a great offer is just about the price. In Text Message Marketing, your offer must also be relevant. For best results, it must provide an immediate solution to a problem or a deal that the user can't pass up.
As an example, for your auto repair shop, you could create a text message offer like: Text "799oil' to "54321" to get your next oil change for just $7.99 - Limited Availability - Expires on (date).
Ask yourself if that would inspire new customers to contact you? Do you think a $7.99 oil change would make people text in? Most likely it would.
What's so good about this type of text message offer is:
- There is a clear call to action
- There is a clear benefit or solution to your prospect
- You instantly build your list of prospects and customers so that you can continue to market to them with other offers
- Because you've stated "Limited Availability", you can stop the offer whenever you want (although my strong recommendation would be that if it's working... keep it going)
Still not sure about this strategy? Compare the cost of creating the Text Message marketing campaign including all the costs related to doing the oil changes at a 'crazy' discounted price to that $1,000 ad you placed in the newspaper last month that only brought in 2 customers. Each of those customers cost you $500. Your Text Messaging campaign and all the related costs is much more cost effective. And you still have all those customers on your list to continue to market to and turn them into repeat customers. Now that's where the money is!
