How to Maximize SMS for Effective B2B Marketing

Orla Forrest

May 5, 2017

How to Maximize SMS for Effective B2B Marketing

A marketing campaign is only as good as its return on investment, and that can only be maximized if the most ideal communication channel is utilized. SMS often leaves the rest lagging behind in terms of effectiveness as a marketing channel.

For SMS marketing to work, though, messages must be tailored to suit your target audience. Generic, off-the-shelf texts from a company will be ignored, deleted and detested. Therefore, B2B marketing and B2C marketing are two different animals.

SMS Marketing for B2B

With B2B marketing, it’s essential to remember that your recipients are corporate parties, so a formal tone must be maintained. Would you use a casual tone in an email to a client or supervisor? Thought not, so apply the same policy to SMS marketing. B2B text messages should efficiently outline your product or service and how it will directly impact corporate clients. Refrain from using emotive, sensationalist phrases.

B2C campaigns often encourage instant action from target customers, but B2B buying cycles tend to be longer in their duration, as there is likely to be a need for inter-department consultation. An effective B2B message will impress a range of people in different roles, from management with their eye on the bottom line right through to the buyer who simply wants a solution.

This longer timeframe also dictates the scheduling of B2B messages. Instead of cutting to the chase right away, start with an educational, non-promotional message to pique people’s interest and then follow up with a more direct message outlining how they can avail of what you’re offering. Your message schedule should maximize the impact at each phase of the buying cycle.

A big difference between B2B and B2C concerns the times at which messages are sent. With B2C, target customers need to be contacted during downtimes such as evenings and weekends. For B2B campaigns, recipients should be contacted from lunchtime to early evening while they are most likely still at work. Don’t send messages before noon, as business people generally like to get their morning workload out of the way without interruption.

SMS Marketing Infographic

The infographic below, from Neon SMS (http://www.neonsms.ie/) shows how SMS marketing campaigns can be utilized effectively. While these examples pertain to B2C marketing, there are many key takeaways which are also applicable to B2B, such as calculating the correct amount of messages to send, striking the right tone and ensuring that the message content is relevant to targeted recipients.

Over To You

Have you dabbled with SMS for your B2B marketing? Do you have any further suggestions regarding how people in the B2B realm might use it, or any questions at all? Please comment, below

About the author

Orla Forrest is a Business Development Executive with Neon SMS, a bulk SMS messaging company based in the Irish city of Cork (www.neonsms.ie). She has worked with Neon SMS for six years and she is involved in a diverse range of telecommunication projects. She hugely enjoys developing her expertise and knowledge of technological matters and she often create content on this subject.