Article by Michael Clough

One of the coolest and most exciting things I’ve ever seen in the last few years, besides the Internet itself, is Mobile Text Marketing. Where else can I get a message from my favorite restaurant telling me about this great new dish they have or a special on a great steak that I enjoyed last week?

It’s because I “opted in” allowing them to send me updates on what they are offering. And for them, they are keeping in constant communication with one of their loyal customers who loves to eat!

Or, I can receive a message from a store that carries my favorite brand of shoes, clothing and shirts. Plus other stores that carry household items that are necessary to daily living (groceries, etc).

And I also can receive these alerts from my Concert Promoter, Car Dealer, Mechanic, Day Spa, Realtor, Hair Stylist, and a host of other services that I use. The possibilities are endless.

Mobile Marketing is by far the quickest and most popular way to increase your businesses revenue in an instant! This is the marketing of the future and the future is here!

Mobile Marketing is a direct link for all businesses and organizations to be in constant direct contact with consumers at all times. It is estimated that over 84% of all Americans now carry a mobile device with them at all times. The market place has gone mobile and billions of dollars of products and services are purchased with mobile devices constantly, and will increase exponentially.

Not to mention, if you own a local business, you can text all your customers with specials, discounts, events, happenings or any other relevant news pertaining to your company. This is all “permission based” marketing and your customers will have “opted in” to receive these texts.This type of marketing gives you a leg up on your competition.

97% of all text messages are opened and done so within 20 minutes! Emails are dwindling down now to a 19% open rate.

So, who needs Mobile Marketing?

RestaurantsFast Food / Pizza, BurgersDoctors/ DentistsRetail Shops – AllCar DealershipsSpas and ResortsReal Estate ProfessionalsEntertainersConcert VenuesGolf CoursesChurchesSki ResortsPolitical CampaignsCharitiesSchoolsFinance ProfessionalsCelebritiesCoaches and ConsultantsCasinosAuthors/ PublishersFitness TrainersNight ClubsAntique CollectorsTravel AgenciesAnyone with Repeat CustomersANYONE doing a promotion

The Mobile Text Marketing platform is very popular for repeat customers, however I am seeing uses across all genres.

With this marketing, you have the ability to greatly increase sales the exact same day that your message is sent. Very often new sales can be at your door in under an hour or you can even market to customers already use your business. It is a fact that new mobile messages are read in an average of 14 minutes while the average time for someone to read an email is 7.4 hours.

If you were doing coupon marketing, your customers would have to wait until they are in front of a computer to read it, then go home and print out the offer to bring it in to redeem it. With this type of marketing, the customer just has to show the message to the business to redeem the special being offered.

You along with 4.3 billion people worldwide have mobile phones. 87% of all Americans own a mobile phone. 68.7% are frequent text users. 96% of ALL text messages are OPENED.87% of text message are opened within the first hour.1.58 trillion text messages were sent in the USA last year. That’s tripled since 2007.

53,084 text messages are sent every second.

This is why Mobile Text Marketing will explode in the next several years, and why you should position yourself to cash in on it now!Fact: People are now shifting over to Mobile devices instead of relying on their computers and laptops. Email is slowly becoming a thing of the past. Not totally gone, but not as important anymore.

TEXT MESSAGE MARKETING GLOSSARY

This glossary is a handy reference guide for the business owner who is interested in text message marketing. If you are sick of slick sales rep talking over your head, or being frustrated trying to decipher sales material, this glossary is for you.

It will break down some of the common terms associated with text message marketing. This will allow you to more easily understand any promotional materials you are checking out.

Text Message: A text based electronic message sent from one mobile user to another mobile user. There is usually a limit of around 160 characters.

SMS: Stands for Short Message Service, it is another name for text messaging.

SmartPhones: The new style of cell phone that offers mobile users advanced capabilities. This often means personal computer type functionality.

Opt-In: In text message marketing, this term means that someone has willingly added themselves to “Your List”. This is usually done by texting a keyword, to a short code number.

Your List: This is your list of people who have opted-in. In text message marketing this will be a list of mobile phone numbers from the people who have joined your list. This is who you now can directly market to.

Permission Based: Permission based marketing is based around the general concept that you first get people to give you permission to market to them through the opt-in process. This increases your return on investment, and customer satisfaction.Keyword: In text message marketing this is the term that people will text to a certain number to join your list.

Short Code: Short codes (also known as short numbers) are special telephone numbers, significantly shorter than full telephone numbers, that are used for text message marketing campaigns. This will be the number that people text the keyword to.

Subscription Based Pricing: This is a pricing structure that text message marketing vendors use. This method is based on the number of subscribers and usually includes unlimited messages.

Message Based Pricing: This is a pricing model in which you will be charged per message you send. It usually works out to pennies a message. Opt-In Offer: This is the offer that you use to entice people to opt-in to your list. For most business this will be some sort of freebie, coupon or discount.

Characters: When text messaging, this term means all of the numbers, letters, symbols and spaces of a text message. Anything you input is a character and most text messages are limited to around 160.

Analytics: Your text message marketing vendor should provide you with some kind of reporting system that will give you an idea of how your texts are being sent, opened, how many unsubscribes etc… These tools are sometimes known as Analytics (Metrics as well)

SMTP: Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is an Internet standard for electronic mail (e-mail) transmission. This is a much slower and less reliable way to send text messages.

SMPP: The Short Message Peer-to-Peer (SMPP) protocol is a telecommunications industry protocol for exchanging text messages between yourself and your list. This is a much much more effective choice when text message marketing.

Provider: This is the company or vendor who provides the back end and technology for you to run your marketing campaigns.

Carriers: Carriers are your cell phone providers. Some providers only work on certain carriers. An example of a carrier would be Sprint in the US, and Bell in Canada.

Blast: A blast is when you send a message to everyone on your list. This can be an update or an offer designed to get people in the door.

http://MobileTextMessageMarketing.net

Jennings Social Media Marketing Incorporates QR Codes & SMS Into Services
The company represents publicly traded to medium-sized businesses across the US and overseas including technology, sports, sustainability, entertainment, travel, financial, health care and real estate ( www.jenningssocialmedia.com ).
Read more on MarketWatch (press release)

Find More Text Message Marketing Real Estate Articles

This is a common question for people who are looking to sell their current home. There are a few positives and negatives associated with the appraisal of your home, but generally speaking, the advantages of getting your place appraised will far outweigh any potential negatives. We will list some of them here.

1.) When you get your home appraised, you are getting as close to the market value of the property as possible. Don’t let your buyers tell you how much your property is worth. If you do, you might end up losing out on tens of thousands of dollars. Compare those two prices. The cost of home appraisal is in the $300 to $400 range. Would you pay that much money in order to potentially save yourself a few thousand dollars?

2.) Getting your home appraised can help to remove some of the uncertainty that goes with selling a home. When you hire a real estate agent, part of what you are paying for is the legitimate image that makes people believe you are not trying to scam them. The same goes for getting your home appraised. Now that you know the official price, you can tell your potential buyers and it will make the buying process much more comfortable for them.

3.) When you know the market value of your home, you get the peace of mind of having much less uncertainty with regard to the price you are offering. Nobody wants to spend their lives worrying about every little detail and whether one is being accurate or not. You can cut out at least one unknown in your life by getting your home appraised. It might be small, but the small things can add up to much bigger problems.

Seen this way, it is always a good idea to get your home appraised before selling it. You don’t have the time or desire to worry about the value of your home. It is much better if you hire a specialist who is trained in determining the market value of your home for you. They will be much more efficient and will do a better job than the ordinary person who does not spend all of his or her time studying the market value of homes.

Hiring a professional home appraiser is no different from hiring a doctor to check out any health problems you may face. Doctors go through ten years of school to know what they know. They can solve problems that you either don’t understand or don’t have the time or money to try to understand. They have tools available to them that make them extremely efficient at diagnosing and treating your health issues. You wouldn’t try to take your health into your own hands because you will make mistakes and you won’t be nearly as efficient. The same goes for estimating the value of your home. Leave that to the experts so you can save a bundle of time and money.

Peiman is a Realtor in the Toronto Area. You can find all the information you will need to purchase or sell a home at http://www.peimanb.com

When you choose Peiman as your Realtor to sell your home or help you purchase a new home, you will experience a whole new level of service. In Peiman’s opinion a good Realtor is more than being a member of the National Association of Realtors. He works diligently to provide total customer satisfaction. His intent to detail speaks of his passion.

With his reputation for excellent communication, knowledge of the real estate market, and master negotiation skills, Peiman offers his clients an unequalled level of service. Peiman gets involved in the transaction as if he is the buyer or the seller! For this reason you can be confident that when you approach him with your buying and selling needs, he will treat your real estate transaction as if it is his own.

Starting a real estate sales practice could be quite a risky business.  Commonly, one would go days without closing a sale, receiving a phone call, and all the time the expenses and bills keep coming. However, success at real estate generally results out of maintaining fundamentals, such as:  knowing all the information about your area or property, getting sales leads, and developing real estate referrals.

One of the key aspects of real estate sales is the sales referral.  Most prospective property buyers looking for a new home, office or any real estate, usually approach family, friends, and colleagues to ask for recommendations for a good broker.  Also, most property owners or homeowners selling their real estate will go to the same network to ask for brokers who can help them sell a property.  Unlike blockbuster lawyers or specialist doctors, there is no ready information available that calls out the skill and experience of a particular broker.  So traditionally, referrals are done person-to-person and by word of mouth. 

At first glance, it would seem like an unreliable way to build a business.  But, if a broker knows his business and his properties well, all it would take is a few successful real estate referrals, and his sales would start to pick up momentum.  Referrals to brokers are more significant because they could give direct contact to someone seriously considering buying a property.  This gives a real estate practitioner access to his main target market, whereas regular advertisements through the media would have a very wide audience, but not the actual people wanting to buy homes or properties.  In terms of marketing, a referral is like a slam-dunk promotional lead. 

It is good that real estate referrals are such a “direct-to-market” lead.  Because there is another aspect to the business:  Property acquisitions are almost always the one most expensive purchase that a family would make.  So, although referrals give you persons interested in buying a home or property, buying decisions are not always quick or a sure thing.  The sheer cost, location, design, need for repairs or renovations, ease of mobility or transport, and a multitude of other decisions are considered before a buyer commits to a house.

But then, after all this consideration, when a broker manages to deliver a satisfactory sale to a buyer, then the broker will be awarded with a wider and perhaps more enthusiastic referral to other potential homebuyers.  This would widen your referral network, and expand your file of potential contacts for real estate referrals.

The high price of your product also means that even if only a fraction of your referrals translate to actual sales, the income and commission from these sales are already considerable.  Maturing in the business will teach a broker the ways of cultivating and screening referrals to further improve sales and growth.    

Therefore, we should understand what most successful realtors and brokers know — that Real Estate is a business of relationship.  Regardless of the current external or economic conditions, the most adaptable method of generating ready revenue is through building a real estate business by developing relationships to cultivate referrals.

Several strategies or techniques can be used to build a strong referral-based sales business.  But when you look closely, all these require that you stay in touch with your network regularly, preferably once a month.  
 
It would be most helpful to plan out different methods of maintaining contact with your network on a monthly basis.  The different ways of keeping in touch are:  personal visits, telephone calls, handwritten notes or short letters, periodic newsletters, news and updates through email, client thank-you cocktails or parties, sending postcards, sending birthday/special greeting cards, organizing house-warming events, promos or contests.
The best practice is to try combinations of these contacting techniques, tailor-fit to your personality and the background of the particular contact.   
 
As well as staying in touch, you need to be mindful of the following aspects of your referral business:

-Organizing contact files by priority

-Creating and maintaining a network management system

-Studying the best way of asking for referrals

-Not using standard all-purpose solutions

-Setting your goals and planning a budget

-Memorize figures and numbers

-Organize your time

-Hire an assistant

-Engage a business coach

The real estate business is also a customer care business: take care of all your referrals and grow your real estate business by getting more real estate leads.

[tags]real estate brokers, real estate referrals, lead generation, real estate contractors[/tags]