Since text messaging first became available in 1996 it has a mass market communication platform and a cultural phenomenon of the 21st Century.

The use of SMS will continue to grow as companies turn the service into a critical business function. Text messaging's ability to immediately reach a customer anywhere and its low cost offer the ability to reach customers (external and internal) with a personally targeted message delivered “into their pocket in real time”.

Used properly SMS marketing is really effective Electronic Customer Relationship Management as it goes a long way to giving information, knowledge and empowerment to customers and the understanding that “my supplier is really looking out for me”. For example: an insurer or broker sending details of local emergency numbers such as hospitals and consulates.

It’s not all about ring tones and logos. There are many different uses for SMS including notification, emergency advisories, scheduling, news and information and staff collaboration.

SMS can generate very high levels of response, but a campaign must leverage the medium’s strengths and minimize its weaknesses. The key element of a successful campaign is value and entertainment. To market to someone effectively you must provide them value and / or entertainment in each SMS message.

It is also important that your campaign targets recipients who have expressly given their consent to receive messages from you. You must also provide them with a simple and free method of opting out from further messaging.

Successful SMS marketing is about:

• Saying the right thing.

• To the right person.

• At the right time.

The greatest strength of SMS is its immediacy. Examples of how to use it are:

Voting

Voting is an exciting way to engage your audience and let them have their say. Big Brother 3 created 3 million votes.

Instant Win

Instant win prizes where customers can find out if they have won a prize straight away really work.

Timed Vouchers

Timed vouchers drive footfall into your store, bar, club, theatre, cinema, petrol station etc and if you want user interaction then using a viral campaign where vouchers can be sent onto friends and family increases response. The SMS advises time the voucher becomes invalid.

Customer Service

Daily recipe ideas, special promotion alerts, diet tips, cocktail recipe ideas, music reviews, release dates, Top 10 charts, in store promotion alerts.

You are only limited by your imagination!

ECommerce

The proportion of small to medium businesses in the UK retail sector that own ECommerce web sites may be as high as 25%. The web provides a marketing tool that puts small businesses on equal footing with the 'big boys'.

But how do you know whether ECommerce will work for you? Well here are some tips:

1. What looks good to you is not necessarily right for your audience. This is the biggest mistake small businesses make over and over again. They come up with an idea, they think it's great. Friends & family give them the thumbs up and they do it. When it doesn't work, they just can't understand why. Do market research and test your strategies on your target market. Big companies do lots of market research before launching a product or service. An SME doesn't have the resources to match this but that doesn't mean don’t do it - online surveys make it much easier and more cost effective these days.

2. Make your offer clear as if not clear what is being offered, even for a second, and potential buyers have moved on. Don't be cute or clever. Make it simple and clear.

3. Make it clear “what’s in it for me” (the buyer). Don’t make me guess. Make me want to buy.

4. Show me I can trust you. Can I find out your address, phone number, EMail within 10 seconds? Why should I trust you if all your contact information isn't on your web site.

5. Give me an emotional as well as a rational reason to buy. Make me so excited that I want to tell all my friends.

6. Always follow up people who join your list or buy from you by e-mail, telephone, etc. 80% of sales are made after five or more contacts.

7. Any ECommerce website is only as good as the number of sales it makes. There are products that seem to sell particularly well online, from travel, hotels and books to music and office supplies. If your target market is highly local (for example, you are a hairdresser with one salon) an ECommerce site probably won't be necessary as a brochure site that displays your prices, contact information, testimonials and opening hours would probably suffice - though you might want to take bookings via the web. But if you are keen to expand your reach nationally or globally, have an easy to dispatch product or service to sell and your competitors are already operating ECommerce sites then this could be the ideal opportunity to grow your business. And if your competitors aren't yet running ECommerce sites, being the first to offer your target audience the chance to buy online could be a great move. If you have a niche product or service (such as the Jane Austen Centre in Bath) or you can segment into one then you also have a major opportunity.

8. Plan your ECommerce venture carefully and set realistic expectations for how much you are likely to invest and what you will get back.

Pay per click (PPC) marketing

The two most successful techniques for enhancing your online image are: search engine optimization, and pay per click advertising campaigns.

Basically it's all about helping customers find your website and business. A pay per click advertising campaign is easy to start. You open an account and deposit some money as a starting balance with the search engine company that you are advertising with. You enter your site's URL, title and description and bid on relevant keywords. A site selling wine might bid on keywords such as "wine", "red wine", "wine club" etc.

When someone searches for "wine club" the details of your site appear, in the form of a search result with the URL, title and description you entered. If they then click on your listing, your account is debited the amount you have bid on that keyword.

Pay per click offers a high level of assurance that your campaign is reaching the proper target. What makes them so effective is that someone who has searched for your product is already qualified when they come to your site, which is selling the product or service they are looking for. Pay per click campaigns, however, are not perfect. Without constant monitoring, you sometimes risk incurring advertising costs that can spiral out of control, focusing on terms that don't convert well for your product or services or lose out during a bidding war.

It is important that your keywords are relevant and link to the page that contains information relating to that keyword. Bidding on keywords can be expensive. An alternative strategy is to bid on related keyword phrases which no-one else is bidding on. You may then be #1 in the rankings, monopolizing the traffic for those searches and only have to pay the minimum amount per click through. Related keywords and phrases can include synonyms, incorrect spellings, alternative words and phrases, closely related words/phrases, and so on.

Then, perhaps most importantly of all, you need a ‘landing page’: (a) specific page(s) created for visitors referred from marketing campaigns to maximize conversion. Landing pages can be a series of related pages within an existing site structure or they can be a microsite, which is specifically setup for a campaign, typically with its own campaign URL - an example is Norwich Union’s (faintly annoying?) www.quotemehappy.com

There are different types of landing pages that work best depending on the campaign objectives – a landing page integrated into the sites structure or a landing page specifically created for the campaign.

Integrated pages may not work so well in terms of conversion. Bespoke landing pages tend to produce higher conversion rates but it requires more effort and maintenance. So you need to work out whether the cost of producing this type of page is offset by the potentially higher conversion rates and better campaign results.

Some simple guidelines for effective PPC are keep ads and landing pages relevant; provide enough detail for a decision; capture the audience’s imagination and their data as quickly as possible; forget the guru’s page length, graphics and menu options type arguments and FIND OUT WHAT WORKS, as in all direct marketing test, test, test.