The Merger of Giants

One could argue that there are two giants that have changed the face of marketing. I’m not talking about companies as much as platforms. One could only imagine what would happen if these two giants were able to seamlessly work together.

Before we get too far into the scope and magnitude of this possible merger, let’s define these channels and the impact they’ve had on consumers as a whole, while working “alone.”

Facebook

Since Facebook was established in 2004 it has quickly become a social phenom. Originally built as a social “hot or not” game for college students, it has now become one of the “go-to” marketing platforms due to its reach and ability to target granular audiences.  Some interesting facts about the social mecca:

• Facebook has 2.74 billion monthly active users
• 63% of the U.S. population over age 12 uses Facebook
• Facebook users spend 34 minutes per day using the platform
• 54% of American social media users say Facebook is the platform they use most often
• Facebook clicks on searches for local businesses increased 23% from February to May 2020
• Facebook has an advertising audience of 2.14 billion
• An average Facebook user clicks on 12 ads per month
• 86% of internet users with $100k+ income use Facebook
• Two-thirds of Facebook users visit a local business Page weekly

Many companies understand that being on Facebook could greatly impact the growth of their business, but don’t completely understand how to create engagement.  Or even worse, they don’t have the tools to communicate back with interested customers once they engage. To be honest, it’s not the easiest platform to advertise on…understanding audiences, uploading lists, traffic vs lead generation…what does it all mean? And even if you hire an agency to help you over the hump, how do you follow up with the leads that you spent all this money on to make sure they become a source of revenue so that your advertising ROI makes sense?

Facebook is great, but you need help to close the sales cycle.

If only there was a way to integrate a communication tool that would allow you to seamlessly continue a conversation with a Facebook lead, even off of the marketing platform. A communication tool that consumers understand how to use and are comfortable with using. Can you think of such a tool? Let’s talk about it…

SMS

Does anyone even remember a day when we couldn’t text? Seems like the ability to reach out and send a common message to someone has been around for ages, but it’s actually only about 18 years old…not even old enough to drink. And that was just the first text going out, the phone application didn’t come around until 1997, and then you still had to press “5” three times to get the letter “L.”  In the year 2000, the average person texted only 35 times a year according to mobivity.com.

Today text messaging is the number one form of communication with 81% of Americans texting on a regular basis. Some other interesting facts about texting that you may not know…

• Over 6 billion texts are sent every day.
• Over 180 billion texts are sent every month.
• 27 trillion texts are sent every year.
• 97% of American adults text weekly.
• America is responsible for approximately 45% of the world’s text volume.
• Americans text twice as much as they call, on average.

Okay, so we know SMS is a great way to communicate but isn’t it illegal to use SMS for marketing?

SMS as a Marketing Tool

There have been many regulations regarding using SMS for marketing, making it challenging for companies to take advantage of this widely used phenom. What this article is focused on, isn’t the aspect of using SMS to blindly market to consumers, but as a tool to maintain engagement and communication lines with prospects that are interested in your product or service.

So how do we do that?

In the DirectMail.io platform, it’s actually quite easy. You can choose to run your campaigns within the system, or simply add our SMS integration into your current Facebook strategy (in case you have some wicked mojo in your Facebook strategy that is very customized).  When a lead comes into the system, we’ll send them a preset text message. Once they respond, the entire communication sits in our platform so that any manager on your team can respond back and forth with the customer in real-time. It makes it super convenient for the customer, and gives you access to communicate with them via SMS with future events, specials, or just to say “Thank you for your business.”

Our process follows the TCPA guidelines so you don’t have to worry about getting in trouble. We also have some wicked automated tools if you’re interested in taking customers through a conditional survey, qualifying leads while the customer’s interest in your product or service is high.

It’s the next big thing in marketing. Click here to test it out and see first hand how the engagement tool works.