Nigeria has a population of over 140 million people. As telecommunications advance in Nigeria today, over 50 million Nigeria now has access to a mobile phone. In Nigeria today, both primary and secondary school students also have access to mobile phones as well. Due to the bloom in the telecommunication industry, it has form a major form of revenue for Nigerians. This also makes it a very effective channel for advertisement using bulk SMS platforms.
Bulk SMS is not a new form of advertisement; however, most people don’t consider it an effective form of advertisement. You will be so surprise what you will achieve using bulk SMS and knowing the right set of people to target with your advertising campaign. This method of advertisement is ridiculously cheap and extremely effective. Just recently my company needed to put up a quick cheap but result yielding advert to a website for a client, the bulk SMS method was employed and to my pleasant surprise the turnout was mind blowing. The client got lot of calls and responses for weeks.
The bulk SMS ad method has a lot of credit to its system because in an unusual way it stand out of all the known methods of adverts used here in Nigeria. Here are some of the many advantages you get from using bulk SMS to advertise your product…
ADVANTAGES
Cost effectiveness : You can send thousands of text messages to consumers at wholesale prices as low as N1.50k per SMS.
Time saving : Instead of crafting a message and then sending it to each mobile subscriber, one message is created and then sent to a whole group of subscribers.
Tracking Abilities: Tracking of delivery and responses is effortless, while delivery of the text messages is almost immediate.
Easy Accessibility: With printed media and other types of marketing such as television or radio, the consumers must for instance, listen to the radio or watch the television for the ad to reach them. With bulk SMS advertising the mobile unit doesn’t even have to be switched on to receive a message. The users receive their messages as soon as the phone is on air.
No Geographical boundaries: Unlike printed media marketing, bulk SMS advertising is not limited to geographical boundaries, which makes it possible to use it in conjunction with existing websites. Users can subscribe on your website to receive text messages regarding promotions and specials.
Fast response time: Most mobile phone users have their phones with them most of the time and check their incoming messages before deleting them. Many consumers store the messages on their phones until a later date and then make use of the specials. The response time on average is however, within 24 to 48 hours of receiving the promotions. This means that sales conversions can be reached within a short period.
Distributed to other consumers: Subscribers frequently forward the text messages to friends and colleagues and thus provide a viral marketing function for which your company doesn’t have to pay extra. With incentive schemes for the forwarding of the promotion and getting other people to make use of the promotions or visiting your site, you create a full scale viral marketing system when you make use of bulk SMS advertising.
DISSADVANTAGES
Lmited Words Per Time: SMS generally has limited word capacity, or you will have to spend more to send more messages. Even with that, it’s still limited word. So you can’t compare the information on it to that of a Press Ad or Handbill.
Challenge of Phone Numbers: With bulk SMS, you will need to know the people you want to send it to. If for example you sell a premium product, and you need to send bulk SMS to the rich. How do you identify these categories of people when you have over 30miilion phone numbers? That is always a challenge. And for some people, they don’t even have much contact to send the bulk SMS to.
If you are thinking of using the bulk SMS to promote your product and services, we can help you identify your market and reach them. We have access to over 20million phone numbers and we do this at very affordable price. Contact us today for your advertising campaign using bulk SMS, good luck in your advertising campaign.
