Social Media Marketing (SMM) has been touted as the best way to market a service or product today and reach the most people for the least expense. Some of the larger platforms used for SMM are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and YouTube. In the Huffington Post is an article about Social Marketing that says “Social media has been the game changer in almost everything that surrounds us. With the birth of social platforms, custom targeting of prospective customers is easier than ever. One of the greatest innovations of technology is social media, not just in our ability to communicate but in our ability to market directly to those we want to reach.”

It is our belief that those very words could be said about Text Message Marketing (SMS) and that SMS marketing in fact is the best form of marketing at the lowest cost of any marketing system and far better than SMM or Social Media Marketing can ever be. It is one thing for a marketing campaign to go “viral” regardless of the platform used. If and when this happens there is no doubt the return can be phenomenal. But short of that, you have to look at this on a dollar for dollar or rather, data for data basis. (However it also needs to be said that with the sharing capabilities of SMS an SMS campaign can go “viral” as well so this phenomenon is not limited to social marketing platforms alone).

In the Huffington Post article it is stated that with a social platform you have the advantage of custom targeting of your prospective customer. However, compared to SMS marketing this targeting is limited. For example you are targeting according to the audience based upon books they read or movies they watch. But in and of itself this is not finely tuned. If you’ve ever watched a movie via a Netflix account you will know what I mean. Netflix will then target you with a bunch of movies they think you’ll like “because you watched XYZ” and more often than not there is a bunch of movies in this group that are not even close to anything you want to watch. Targeting this way has its value and use but it is not ultra specific regardless of what you do. It is still mass marketing.

SMS marketing on the other hand is much more specific to your individual customer or prospective customer and is not mass marketing, per se. The marketing is sent to your customer or prospect because they REQUESTED it. People tend to pay more attention to and engage more in something that has been requested rather than an advertisement that is simply dropped in front of them because of a book they read or a movie they watched or anything that seems to be targeting them based upon a general interest. Don’t get me wrong I believe there is a place for targeted marketing and advertising and it has value I am simply saying it is not as finely targeted or as great a return on value dollar for dollar than SMS marketing is.

They key to successful SMS marketing is first knowing how to get people to sign up to receive your messages and then understanding how best to craft your marketing message, what to send and when to send it.

There is argument that can be found as to how effective targeted advertising is in Facebook News Feeds for example. We’ve heard that as high as 80% of Facebook news feeds go unnoticed. We’ve also seen data that over 70% of Tweets go unnoticed and 85% of marketing emails go unopened. On the other hand, 98% of text messages are opened, most within minutes of receipt. So there is no doubt when it comes to terms of seeing and reading a marketing message SMS marketing wins every time. and being seen and read is the first step to great success with a marketing message.

Facebook shows 156.5 million active U.S. users in 2016. Yet 83% of Americans own cell phones and 75% of them send and receive text messages (source: http://www.pewinternet.org/2011/09/19/americans-and-text-messaging/) That is over 327 million cell phone users more than double active Facebook users! That means there is much more potential to market to people with cell phones than people with active Facebook accounts.

About 90 million people use Facebook on a daily basis and they send about 3.2 billions likes and upload 300 million photos. Yet over 170 million Americans are texting every day sending and receiving over 6 billion text messages. Usage of text messaging is second to none in comparison to the largest social marketing platform on the planet! This proves that the acceptance of text messaging and its use in conjunction with the proper use of text message marketing cannot be ignored as a viable marketing platform.Based on a survey by Bluehornet the average person checks their email at most about 4 times a day. According to the same survey they look at their phone over 150 times daily!

When you look at the high usage of phone and text messaging, the exceptionally high open rate of text messages, the ability to target your customer or prospect with specific messaging they have requested to receive rather than simply blasting to a large audience that may or may not see or read your message it becomes very clear that text message marketing is simply better than social media marketing when it comes to dollars and sense. Now it is simply a matter of creating the right kind of program to fit your particular business, understanding how to get people to sign up to receive your messages and then knowing what kind of messages to send and when to send them.

Our text message marketing company eTEXTco has the best text message marketing program on the planet and we know the answers to help you craft a program that will work for you. Simply give us a call at 866-622-5710 or visit our site for more details.