Have you ever wondered how you could tell everyone about an event that is happening in an hour? Try sending a text message.

Texting is a great, under-utilized tool for businesses. More than 90 percent of the nation’s population uses mobile phones and nearly 20 percent of U.S. households are completely wireless.* Businesses can use texting to increase their chances of communication.

Texting is more than a spam message or a “text-2-win” buzz-builder, which is unfortunately the first type of text-message marketing seen by many. If used wisely, text messaging can sustain long-term customer loyalty and positive word-of-mouth marketing for a business.

Think of your market. For people 18 years old or younger, the ratio for mobile communication is 12 texts sent for every one call made, and not until the age of 44 does communication average out with one text for every one call.* This age is increasing all the time as people are forced to communicate by text with younger generations of family and friends, thus encouraging more comfort with this new form of communication.

Any business can use text message marketing to its advantage, but there are some considerations to make before taking those first steps.

1. Do you have information that is time sensitive? Will it make a difference to your bottom line if you have the opportunity to drive additional traffic to your location at specified times?
2. Do you have room in your budget? Unlike social media, you pay for text message marketing, even if you try to do it yourself. Therefore, consider hiring someone to make sure costs are recovered.

To test drive some live local texting, text SOFTEC to 88202 to hear about an upcoming technology conference, text BUTLERZ to 88202 for a Chamber Member’s text-2-win contest or text SLOCHAMBER to 74700 for the SLO Chamber’s text-alerts/reminders.

Plascencia Projects helps businesses better engage their patrons through the use of Interactive Text Message Marketing including games, contests, coupons, discounts, value-added messages and more. Interactive Text Message Marketing offers more than just a message with information that can be found anywhere else, it allows a special loyalty and fun relationship to build providing long-term word of mouth marketing for the business!

*All statistics are taken from Nielsen Q4.