From emergency alerts to notifications of promotional offers, parcel distribution and sales right through to appointment reminders, SMS has given marketers the ability to be more dynamic than ever.
Now one of the most obvious tools of choice for those advertising or communicating with the average consumer, mobile has transformed the marketing landscape with the ability to reach consumers on the go with personalised, better targeted and more relevant messages.
But can mobile marketing’s versatility stretch to more than just B2C?
We use mobile in every aspect of our lives. From organising events, to communicating with friends, and now communicating with our favourite brands and businesses.
As a business yourself, you’ll only be too familiar with how your company is choosing to keep its employees in the know. Furnishing employee’s hands with a mobile phone in order to enhance communications, making sure everyone is up-to-date on mission critical information and are able to make key business decisions while they are on the go.
Communicating, marketing and advertising within a B2B environment has always been alluded to as being far more complex than targeting within a B2C environment. Not only is it crucial to understand the nature of the company you are directing your communications to but also to understand the customers that deal with that same company.
With this at the forefront of any marketer’s minds, it would seem that putting together the best marketing strategy for B2B is far more difficult than one for the average B2C consumer.
Or so you thought…
Behind every business are stakeholders, key decision makers and consequently real, human people. An everyday consumer.
So what does this mean for B2B marketing?
Well much like a typical consumer wants solutions to problems, simplicity for complexity and convenience in place of difficulty – so too do businesses. With this is mind, why wouldn’t you adopt a marketing model which enables your businesses to communicate and market to the companies that you do business with in a personal and better-targeted manner?
With a focus on building loyal and professional relationships with these companies, this is where the mobile phone comes in.
But how can you use SMS marketing in a B2B capacity?
Well it’s simple. Much like keeping in contact with B2C customers you can keep your customers up to date on important info, updates on product launches, product developments, deliveries or scheduled appointments, where applicable.
You could even capitalise on developments within SMS marketing which offer two-way SMS communication that make way for phenomenally better response rates and an even better quality of data.
Take these as examples:
Hi [NAME] our brand new services are now ready to be explored. Click to take a look www.urllink.com & text SERVICE to 88802 with your opinion.
Hi [NAME] your products have now left the warehouse and are our for delivery. For tracking info visit www.businesstrackingsite.com
Hi [NAME] your software engineer will be with you between 2pm and 4pm today. To reschedule text FIX to 88802
With SMS, whoever you are targeting it is always important to bear in mind that there is a real person at the receiving end and one which will always want to build a close relationship with your brand. This begs the question, is there still such a thing as B2B and B2C?
Should we not just be focusing on B2P (Business 2 Person) relationships?
If the person on the other end of the message always wants relevance, value and personalization irrespective of where they stand as a consumer then surely SMS marketing is always going to be a winner…
Image source: Text Marketer Ireland