Peter Shankman is a marketing consultant and founder of the HARO website that provides qualified sources for reporters working on tight deadlines. This week, he spoke at the Wisconsin Governor’s Conference on Tourism and had a lot of good mobile message marketing tips. “I would give my right arm for a 3 second attention span,” he told the crowd. Nowadays, a person only has 2.6 seconds to make a favorable impression, he says. He added that this may sound a lot like the length of time it takes to read a tweet, but it’s most important that people consider the concept, rather than any one particular brand.

“The Future of Marketing Is Mobile,” he said.  

One of his most salient mobile message marketing tips was that business owners need to produce better writing.

He explained, “Bad writing is killing America. Bad writing will kill any chance you have of bringing customers in. Make sure the people talking on your behalf know how to write.”

Instead of spending time texting people are boring company news or how great you are, Shankman recommends posting messages that make people smile, laugh, want to share with others. You want to send out messages that have value and thoughts that really enrich someone’s day. According to Shankman, “No one cares about how great you or your state are if you have to tell them. Your job is to get other people to do it for you. That is true social.”

He offered four other tidbits of advice for mobile message marketing (and online marketing too):

• Be brief, whether it’s a blog, a call-to-action or a mobile message marketing text.
• Respond to problems right away. “If you have a problem, own it,” he said.
• Ask customers how they prefer to communicate, be it email, social media, or mobile, to increase loyalty.
• Network regularly and be nice. “Your network is only as strong as the weakest person in it,” he said.

Have A Backup Plan For Success For Your Mobile Message Marketing.

One of the problems people often make is that they have a contingency plan for failure, but they don’t have a backup plan for success, Shankman said. One time a USA Today article picked up a story about these Titanic t-shirts he was making and overnight, his servers crashed with over 10,000 people flooding to buy. In retrospect, he wish he had developed a plan for success. With respect to mobile message marketing, you need to understand the power of text marketing for promotions. On a slow day, you may send out a flash sale to your subscriber list with a juicy coupon, but you need to make sure you have enough people on-staff to handle the volume to avoid leaving an unsavory taste in customer’s mouths.

For more mobile message marketing tips, visit AvidMobile. We have over 20 hours of mobile training tutorials and powerpoints!