Six Helpful Tips for Retaining Your SMS Subscribers

With a 98% open rate (90% within the first three minutes), SMS is the most effective marketing channel when you need to get a message out to your customers. But for all its effectiveness, it can be hard to get SMS subscribers and even harder to retain them. The Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) regulations on text message marketing set forth in the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) require businesses to obtain consumers’ express permission before sending a single text and they require that consumers be allowed to opt out at any point. Most bulk SMS services include instructions for cancelling in every text message and are programmed to recognize words like “STOP”, “UNSUBSCRIBE”, “CANCEL,” and others and automatically unsubscribe recipients who reply with any of these words.

Because it’s so easy to unsubscribe, and because SMS is a rather intimate channel where consumers are more aware of unwanted communications, the unsubscribe rate for SMS is approximately seven times higher than email’s (3.7% compared to email’s .5%). Limiting opt-outs and retaining SMS subscribers should be a primary objective for mobile marketers. The following six tips can help.

Don’t make the introductory too good

Making an introductory offer for first-time SMS subscribers is a standard and commonly used practice. But if the introductory is too good, it sets an expectation for future offs that businesses simply can’t afford to live up to and people opt out when future offers don’t measure up. Promising a coupon or deal to subscribers is a fine tactic, but make sure that the introductory offer is in line with offers you will be texting out to your subscriber list in the future.

Let subscribers know who’s texting them

The average consumer who subscribes to your SMS list will probably subscribe to at least several others. Since many won’t bother to save your short code into their phone as a contact, their inbox will just have a number of text conversations from random strings of numbers and you run the risk of being deleted along with all the rest when the person cleans out their inbox. You can encourage them to save the number as a contact under your name but you shouldn’t assume they will. Include your name towards the beginning of each text so that at the very least, they can see from the message preview who is texting.

Send relevant offers

Customers need to perceive value in being an SMS subscriber of your business. If they find that they’re ignoring 90% of your texts or more because they aren’t relevant, it’s just a matter of time before they unsubscribe. You can avoid this by segmenting your SMS audience according to their preferences and interests so that the messages you’re sending is more likely to be relevant to each recipient.

Be mindful of timing and frequency

People unsubscribe when they feel the intrusion isn’t worth the occasional offer. The major disadvantage of text messaging is also its primary advantage: it’s intrusive. Open rates are high because most phones are set to give an auditory or tactile notification to their users when a message is received but opt out rates are high for the same reason. To limit opt outs for this reason, make sure you’re not texting too often or at inconvenient times. It may be wise to segment your audience according to their preferred contact time as well.

Give them the option to resubscribe

Include in the automated response to opt-outs instructions for opting back in. Some customers may make a spur-of-the-moment decision to opt out during a particularly stressful time or when they’re trying to cut down on digital interference but may reconsider later. They may unsubscribe but not delete the text conversation and decide to come back to it later and resubscribe.

Don’t lose sleep over opt-outs

Just come to terms with the fact that you won’t retain every SMS subscriber. Some will opt out and never come back. Try not to lose any sleep over it; they’re not your ideal customers anyways. Instead think of the money you save when the unreceptive subscribers remove themselves from your list and focus on providing value for the subscribers who remain.

Mobile Technology News brought to you by biztexter.com

Five Mistakes That are Holding Your Content Marketing Back

Content marketing can be an extremely effective and powerful marketing tool when it’s used right. But for many businesses, content marketing ends up draining marketing funds without producing any measurable results. If you’ve started content marketing and have yet to see results from it, chances are you’re making at least a few of the following mistakes.

You’re not using the right tools

If you have a smaller business and you or an employee is trying to create and share content all alone, you’re not going to be as effective as you could be without the right tools. Platforms like HootSuite, Zoho, Buffer, Active Campaign, MailChimp and BuzzSumo are easy to use and can help content marketers automate some of the processes involved in creating and sharing content. They can also give additional insight into the effectiveness of various content channels and what competitors are doing.

You’re not promoting it

The disembodied voice in Field of Dreams that tells Kevin Costner’s character “If you build it, they will come” clearly didn’t have any experience in marketing. Business owners of all people should know that simply having a great product or service doesn’t guarantee success. The same goes for content marketing. First-time content marketers often think that if they’re publishing good content, people will come seeking it. While some might accidentally stumble across it while searching for keywords that are in a particular blog article or YouTube video, most potential content consumers will never see your content if you don’t promote it. Your existing customer base is a great place to start. Use existing marketing channels like SMS or email that you’re already using to stay in touch with your most loyal customers and encourage them to check out your company blog or your YouTube channel or your Facebook page or any other platforms you’re using to share content. They in turn can share your content with their friends and family that they think might be interested and they can be excellent (and free) advocates for your content.

You’re not testing and adjusting

If your content marketing efforts aren’t working in their current form, it’s not the end of the world. You can make adjustments. But you won’t know which adjustments are working and which ones aren’t if you aren’t keeping a close eye on the metrics as you experiment. Create multiple landing pages and see which ones lead to the best conversion rates. Do some A/B split testing with different headlines to see which ones attract the most clicks.

Write up a few different versions of opt-in forms to see which ones get you the most SMS or email subscriptions. Getting permission to text or email people directly gives you another channel for sharing content with those people. Never stop testing and adjusting; your content strategy can always improve.

You’re not striving for high quality content

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to learn that people aren’t going to keep reading/viewing the content you’re sharing if it’s not particularly good. Every single minute, another 300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube.

Every day millions of new blog posts are published online. Most of that content is mediocre or flat-out terrible. You can greatly increase your chances of people following your content channels if you take a lot of pride in the creation of content. Promotion of content may get you a lot of unique visitors but it won’t get you a following unless you’re publishing content that is high quality. High quality is a difficult term to define but the easiest way to put it is that your content should be offering real value to people who view or read it.

You’re not studying the competition

The effectiveness of your content marketing will depend in large part on what your competition is doing, and more specifically, what you’re doing to differentiate yourself from the competition. However niche your industry, there are other companies that are in it and doing content marketing and their audience and your target audience probably have a lot of overlap. Keeping an eye on your competition can help you see what they’re doing content marketing-wise to be successful and it may give you some insight into something they’re not doing that you can do to entice some of their audience to follow your brand.

Mobile Technology News brought to you by biztexter.com

Source: entrepreneur.com/article/293197

Four Benefits of SMS Marketing

Of the dozens of mobile marketing channels to choose from, SMS might be the only absolute must. Some channels may work for some and not others depending on their mobile strategy but an SMS marketing campaign needs to be a central part of every company’s mobile strategy. SMS has been around since the early 90s, well before smartphones, mobile applications, QR codes, push notifications, and banner ads were even thought of. But even though it’s ancient compared to other channels, it’s not outdated. It’s still the most cost effective way to reach consumers through their mobile devices and there’s no reason that every brand shouldn’t be investing in SMS. Here are four reasons why.

Immediacy

Consider this incredible statistic: 90% of all text messages are read within three minutes of being sent. That can’t be said about any other marketing channel. About 80% of emails are deleted unread, and for the 20% that are opened, less than 10% of those will be opened within an hour of being received. How about a mobile channel like push notifications from a mobile app. Less than half of people will agree to receive push notifications from the app in the first place. Of those that do receive push notifications, they ignore 90% of them.

To understand the incredible open rate and average time between message sent and message read, look no further than how text messages work. Unless recipients’ phones are on silent, there will be an audible or tactile notification that’s hard to ignore. With most phones, this notification will repeat several more times until the text message is opened. There’s no better way to send time sensitive information than through SMS.

Intimacy

There’s a great deal more trust in giving out your cell phone number than your email address. Unwanted emails are easily ignored or sent in bulk to the spam folder either by the user or by spam filters. People are a lot more selective about who they give their phone number to. It’s usually reserved for friends and family and perhaps a few professional contacts. When businesses are granted permission to send texts directly to a customer’s cell phone, it’s a big deal. All of this means two things: it’s harder to gain access to customers through this channel but there’s much to gain when you are able to gain access to it.

Loyalty

SMS marketing is a very regulated channel. The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) sets forth strict guidelines for businesses sending text messages to customers. While this presents mobile marketers with a challenge, it also means that the audience for this particular channel are going to be very loyal. Every time you send out a text message to your SMS subscribers, every single recipient will have given you their phone number and permission to send them texts. And every recipient will have refrained from opting out, when all it takes is replying to a text with a single word: “stop.”

Simplicity

Crafting a text message to send out via SMS is far easier than writing and shooting a TV or radio commercial. It’s easier than designing a print ad or publishing a blog article. Text messages ha ve a 160 character limit. It’s this simplicity that makes it so effective. A one- or two-sentence text concisely worded and complete with a direct call-to-action is all it takes to drive results. Getting started with SMS marketing is also a breeze.

It’s just a matter of choosing a bulk SMS provider, registering a shortcode for your business, and selecting the keyword that customers will need to text to opt-in. Finally, just advertise the keyword and shortcode in-store and across other channels to start building your SMS subscriber list.

Mobile Technology News brought to you by biztexter.com

Source: augustafreepress.com/benefits-sms-marketing-business

Seven Elements Every Inbound Marketing Campaign Needs

In recent years, outbound marketing (when businesses tried to cold call or reach out in some other way to potential customers) has taken a back set to inbound marketing (where businesses focus on offering value and letting customers come to them). Part of it is that consumers today are savvier and inherently suspicious of people trying to sell them something. Today’s average consumer prefers to seek out the product or service they need themselves. The following seven elements are all things your business’s inbound marketing strategy will need to succeed.

Search engine optimization (SEO)

Long gone are the days of flipping through phonebooks to find local businesses. Search engines are the new gatekeepers in the world of business and your success will directly correlate to how far up or down the search results page your business is. It should be every company’s goal to be at the very top of the search results page. One option is to target specific keywords and pay to make sure your website is listed in the sponsored search results at the very top. But the most important way is to have a solid understanding of how these search engines’ algorithms work to prioritize certain websites over others so that you can increase the odds of being at the top of the list.

Social Media presence

After search engines like Google, social media platforms are the next place people go to find local businesses. Social media is no longer just for friends and family to stay connected. It’s a great way for businesses to stay in the public eye and interact with customers on a daily basis. You need to make it easy for customers to find you across all of the relevant social media platforms.

Pay-per-click (PPC) marketing

Though PPC could be considered outbound marketing since you’re paying to place ads, it has some overlap with inbound marketing since you’re usually trying to place those ads on influencer blogs where your ideal customers are already looking for info relating to your business’s industry.

Excellent landing pages

Whether they’re clicking on a link in an email or text message, clicking on a link from an affiliate site, or finding you on Google, when they click on that link to get on your website, the landing page needs to keep them from leaving. A good landing page will be rather minimalistic usually containing just one key call to action that you need to get them started on the path to eventually purchase and become a customer.

A good content strategy

A good content strategy is at the heart of an inbound marketing campaign because it’s where you’re offering value to your potential customers and asking for nothing in return. The goal of content marketing is to take the time to produce high quality, relevant, and valuable content that people will want to seek out and see more of in the future. You want people to subscribe to your blog and newsletters, and to go to you when they want an opinion from good authority about a given subject.

Email marketing

Through email marketing, businesses can compile a database of loyal customers who have given their permission to receive regular correspondence with a business. It’s a great alternative to printed mailers and newsletters and can be a great content marketing channel and coupon distribution method.

SMS (text message) marketing

Like email marketing, text message marketing (or SMS marketing) allows businesses to build up a loyal customer base. While it’s more expensive per message than email, it’s also much more effective because of the significantly higher open and click-through rates. SMS can be used to distribute mobile coupons as well as micro content, order status updates, appointment reminders, and any time sensitive information that a business might want to communicate with their most loyal customers.

Mobile Technology News brought to you by biztexter.com

Source: forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2017/09/13/six-key-elements-of-an-effective-inbound-marketing-strategy/#131bdc88326f

Eight Things Your Small Business Needs To Be Doing To Increase Content Marketing Engagement

The goal of any content marketing campaign isn’t to get readers to read any one specific article, you want to create loyal followers of your brand who will await every new article or video you publish, who will share your content with friends and family across various social media platforms. To create this kind of user engagement with the content you publish, you need to do more than just create awesome content. Here are eight other things you need to be doing.

Faster loading times for webpages

In marketing lingo, the bounce rate is the percentage of people who leave your website after viewing just one page on that site. Ideally, when someone ends up on a blog article, they read another and another. Or even better, they go to other parts of your website to learn more about your brand and maybe check out your products. The bounce rate doubles when load times increase from one second to six seconds. People don’t want to stick around if they have to wait more than a few seconds every time they try to click over to another page.

Mobile website load times

If you think load times are important, on traditional websites, it’s nothing compared to the importance of load times on mobile websites. Half of website visitors bounce after a load time exceeds three seconds. Mobile users are less patient than their desktop/laptop counterparts.

A high quality, mobile friendly website

Even if your content is attracting people to your page, they’ll have a negative opinion of your brand if the quality of your site doesn’t measure up to the quality of your content. Your site needs to be well designed, following principles of symmetry and organization but also contrast with an attractive color scheme. Your site should be easy to navigate so that the most important things are displayed prominently. You either need a completely separate mobile version of your website or at the very least, a responsive design site that will properly display your website on mobile devices. Images need to be of a high quality–no stock photos and no low resolution images that will appear blurry on larger screens.

A second set of eyeballs

Establishing trust is a huge part of content marketing. You want readers of your blog to see you as a reliable source of good information. If your content has typos or mechanical/grammatical errors, it reflects badly on your brand even if the content itself is solid. Even if you’re choosing to tackle the content marketing yourself, you should be paying someone else to proofread it before publishing.

Clear key performance indicators (KPIs)

One of the challenging things about content marketing is that it can be hard to measure the direct effects that your content marketing efforts are having on your brand. Part of the problem is that many companies start a company blog because they know it’s what they’re supposed to do but they don’t really know why and what they’re trying to accomplish. A good content marketing strategy will have well-defined key performance indicators that are monitored to track effectiveness of the content marketing. If new customers are what you’re after, then unique visitors is going to be a more important metric than total website visits. If a solid, loyal customer base is the goal, then fewer unique visitors and higher overall website visits is what you’re striving for.

Cast a wider net

Just because you’re publishing great content, it doesn’t mean your target audience is finding it. You need to make sure your content is reaching the people you’re targeting. You may need to do some influencer and affiliate marketing so that bloggers social media personalities with a more established viewership can help you get recognized.

More channels

Another way to cast a wider net is to diversify the channels you’re using to publish content. The company blog on the the company webpage is often the only form of content marketing that a company invests in when this should be seen as just one part of a wider effort. Video content can be uploaded to Youtube or directly to social media platforms. Live streams, tutorials, infographics, and even micro-content sent via SMS are all great ways to diversify your content marketing and reach a wider audience. You can even recycle some of your content to reuse it on various channels.

A “you’re-never-finished” attitude

Even when you’re pleased with the results you’re seeing from your content marketing efforts–you’re getting plenty of web traffic, customers are coming back for more, and your posts are being “liked,” commented on, and shared across social media platforms, you can’t stop improving your content marketing efforts. You should always be paying attention to metrics and fine-tuning your strategy.

Mobile Technology News brought to you by biztexter.com

Source: inc.com/molly-reynolds/7-impactful-ways-to-increase-content-engagement.html

Five Ways To Make Your Content Marketing Stand Out from The Rest

The sheer amount of digital content that we create collectively each day is staggering. Approximately 2.5 quintillion (that’s a million trillions) bytes of data are created every single day. In any given day, Facebook users will share 2.2 million pieces of content, Twitter users will send more than a quarter of a million tweets, and Instagram users will upload 216,000 photos. To say that the internet is a crowded place is a huge understatement. With such a vast amount of content being created and shared online every day, how can you expect your business’s content to get noticed by the right  people? It is possible, but you’re going to have to work hard to make sure your content stands out from the rest. Here are five ways to accomplish that.

Be concise and be yourself

Much of the content that is created for the purpose of marketing sounds stilted or unnatural. Content writers mistakenly believe that they need to adopt a certain formal tone in order to sound knowledgeable and credible.

But this kind of writing is uninteresting and it blends in with everything else that’s written in the exact same way. Feel free to use humor. Break grammatical rules with the situation calls for it. Use fresh and interesting language and never include any words that don’t need to be there or your writing will be overly wordy.

Don’t neglect visual content

The saying, “a picture is worth a thousand words” is not only cliche, it’s a huge understatement. A great image can communicate emotions in a way that no amount of words can. Posts that include an image are forty times as likely to be shared on social media as posts that don’t include one. Just as you want to avoid cliche or boring writing, you want to avoid stock photos. Infographics are an underutilized visual element that you may also want to consider.

Try creating some video content

Even more underutilized than images is video content. You may feel that you don’t have the expertise to create high quality video content. You don’t need a high end video camera, lighting, and other special equipment, although that might help. The occasional live stream or even simple how-to videos or interviews with influencers is usually enough to make you stand out from the majority of your competitors.

Get your content out there

If you’re relying solely on your website’s blog or your social media pages to publish content, you’re not casting as wide a net as you could be. Make it a goal to get published outside of these places. Submit guest posts to online magazines and newspapers that your audience is likely to encounter. Build relationships with influencers who can mention your brand in their blog posts or YouTube videos.

Be willing to experiment

Finally, find ways to experiment with your content creation. Not everything will work but some of your ideas will. One trend in content marketing that you can get ahead of is micro content marketing. Think one or two sentences sent via text as opposed to a several hundred word blog article or social media post. Micro content is a great way to offer your SMS subscribers value beyond the mobile coupons they’re accustomed to getting.

Mobile Technology News brought to you by biztexter.com

Source: netimperative.com/2017/08/cutting-clutter-creating-engaging-social-media-content/

Six Digital Marketing Trends Small Business Owners Need To Be Aware Of

As a small business owner, you know that on any given day, you will wear several different hats. Small business owners don’t have the luxury of hiring an in-house IT specialist or a human resources team. You often have to fill in for sick employees so you might be a cashier or an assembly line worker or a customer service agent all in the same day. It can be hard to manage your small business’s marketing needs when you can’t afford a content strategist, a social media marketer, and a website designer. With that in mind, we’ve compiled a list of six digital marketing trends you should be aware of since you probably don’t have time to stay on top of the ever-changing world of digital marketing yourself.

Mobile

Mobile devices are becoming an increasingly important part of our day-to-day lives and it’s the single most important channel into a prospective customer’s life. You need a mobile optimized website at the very least and you may want to invest in some in-app marketing as well since the average person spends several hours a day on mobile apps.

SMS

SMS is really just a subcategory of mobile marketing but it’s important enough to deserve a separate mention. It’s the cheapest and most effective mobile marketing channel thanks to SMS’s 98% open rate so it’s really a no-brainer.

Social media/video

Almost all social media platforms today have some kind of integrated video playback feature and nowadays, posts that are just words or pictures no longer cut it. You don’t need a huge, expensive video production team, but the occasional live stream can go a long way it boosting social media presence.

Influencers

As a small business owner, you probably can’t afford to hire Beyonce for a 30 second TV spot, you probably couldn’t even afford to pay her to mention your brand in a tweet. But that doesn’t mean you can’t pay for influencers. It may be a niche blogger or Youtuber who regularly reviews the kinds of products you sell. You may even be able to pay him/her with free products in exchange for a fair assessment of those products that will be posted in places where prospective customers will see it.

Personalization

It’s not enough to start of a mass email with your customer’s first name. You need to be gathering data on customer’s online behavior and segmenting your audience to provide a more relevant and personalized advertising experience.

Metrics

Finally, you need to have access to the metrics that can clue you into how effective or ineffective your various marketing efforts are. These metrics are often built into the platform itself whether it’s your business’s Facebook page or your bulk SMS provider so you can see how many people are seeing your posts, opening your texts, clicking on embedded links, and redeeming special offers.

Mobile Technology News brought to you by biztexter.com

Source: huffingtonpost.com/entry/5-digital-marketing-trends-for-busy-small-business_us_598b5e95e4b030f0e267c97a

Three Ways To Build Your Brand With Mobile

In 2016, smartphone’s market penetration finally surpassed 80%. That means more than 80% of mobile phone users are using a smartphone as opposed to a more traditional mobile phone. Gone are the days where talking on the phone was the primary use of phones. The vast majority of time spent on smartphones is spent within applications.

In fact, Americans now spend more time using mobile apps than watching television–more than five hours a day on average. Mobile social media use, TV/entertainment, mobile gaming, and texting all surpass talking on the phone as well. Because of this trend, businesses are starting to put more and more of their marketing budget into mobile and that trend is continuing into 2017. If you’re not focusing on mobile yet, you need to be. Here are three ways you can build your brand through mobile.

Create a mobile app (maybe)

It’s already been established that mobile apps dominate mobile phone usage. Developing a mobile app can be a great way to establish your brand on mobile. But you shouldn’t do it just to do it. The majority of apps are downloaded and used once or twice, then never again. Experience has shown that the apps that stick around and that people continue to use after downloading are the ones that offer real utility. Don’t spend valuable marketing budget money developing a gimmicky app that offers no real value to your customers. So while a mobile app can be a great way to build your brand on mobile, it’s not essential and there are a number of other ways that are probably more cost effective.

Get seen in existing apps

Whether or not you want to develop your own app for your business, you can still capitalize on all the time people are spending in mobile apps. Though Facebook and Youtube aren’t exclusively mobile platforms, they are increasingly being accessed via mobile device more than desktops or laptops. Creating and maintaining an effective Facebook page and Youtube channel where you’re regularly posting and sharing content are going to help establish mobile presence since those platforms are so inseparably connected to mobile. Things like infographics, short videos, and live streaming will get you noticed.

Use SMS

Short message service (SMS), or texting as it’s more commonly known is a great introduction into the world of mobile marketing because it’s one of the least expensive forms of mobile marketing and it’s also easier than developing a mobile app or managing a Facebook page or Youtube channel. Through a bulk SMS marketing service, you can automate the process of obtaining permissions and managing a database of numbers. You can craft your message and then set a time for it to go out and then stop worrying about it. Best of all SMS, is something that works on regular cell phones in addition to smartphones.

Mobile Technology News brought to you by biztexter.com

Source: huffingtonpost.com/entry/3-mobile-branding-tips-for-your-business-to-consider_us_59569dc6e4b0c85b96c66174

Five Tips for Mobile Marketing Success in 2017

US consumers are relying on mobile more than ever before to go about their day-to-day lives. From laptops to tablets to smartphones to wearable tech like smartwatches, this is a mobile age and business owners who ignore or underutilize mobile channels in their marketing efforts will have a harder and harder time competing with each passing year. Here are five tips that businesses can follow to find mobile marketing success in 2017 and beyond.

Mobile friendly website

It’s absolutely essential in 2017 to have a mobile-friendly business website. With each year the percentage of people accessing the site through a mobile site increases and sites that aren’t optimized for mobile display poorly on tablets and especially smartphones. Metrics show that mobile users accessing desktop versions of websites don’t stay on them very long. They have to pinch and zoom and squint to see what’s on the page and the likelihood of filling out information to complete a purchase on a site not optimized for mobile is very slim.

Mobile coupons

Coupons are one of the oldest marketing tricks in the book but it can be adapted for the mobile age. Mobile offers like coupons that are texted to loyal customers can be a powerful marketing tool. In fact, mobile coupons are far more successful than print ones that are mailed out or placed in magazines. Mobile coupons are more than ten times as likely to be redeemed as print coupons.

Mobile payments

As mobile payment solutions become more prominent, more and more customers are getting in the habit of leaving their credit and debit cards at home instead opting to use their smartphones’ built-in pay features like Android Pay or Apple Pay. Brick and mortar locations that don’t have the capability of accepting these kinds of transactions may miss out on a sizable amount of business. Similarly, websites should accept these payments because they’re more convenient for customers who don’t want to spend time filling out card information but would prefer to just authorize a payment with stored card information and their fingerprint.

Mobile-only social network platforms

Social networking platforms like Facebook or Twitter can be powerful indeed but many businesses are starting to recognize the advantage of branching out into mobile-only social network platforms like Snapchat or Instagram, especially if your target consumer is younger. To be successful with these platforms, it’s important to understand that different rules apply to mobile-only platforms than apply to sites like Facebook.

In fact, each social network varies from every other platform so it’s important for business owners or social media marketers to know the ins and outs of a new platform before launching marketing efforts utilizing them.

SMS marketing

Finally, small businesses absolutely must adopt SMS marketing in addition to their email marketing. The open rate for email advertisements is around 20% while the open rate for business text messages is about 98%.

Today’s consumers practically live on their mobile devices and the best way to get a message to them is through those devices in the form of text messages.

Mobile Technology News brought to you by biztexter.com

Source: entrepreneur.com/article/287939

NEGATIVE PUBLICISM

Negative Publicism is a poisonous dart in a business. They are mostly delivered through the blow gun mechanism of Yelp for that matter. Before the owner can even realize he is being targeted, the poison dart takes hold and throws him into the tailspin of recovery.

Such was the case of a recent vacation I took in the beautiful country of Costa Rica. The Air B&B we used was cozy and warm like a fuzzy blanket on a cold night. We were flabbergasted by the owner’s comments of two negative reviews on Yelp that caused him pains and constrictions, emotionally and financially. They were surreptitiously sent using the poison dart mechanism, and they stuck their insidious poison at him and his fledgling establishment. Those negative reviews were over the inconsequential blown light bulb and a dripping pipe.

The poor fellow lamented, “Why wouldn’t they tell me about those things!” and intoned that he could have easily fixed them. Pleading with us, he went on to beg, “If you ever have a problem, please don’t hesitate to tell me, and I’ll get on it right away.”

Poison Dart Shield

What if business enterprises who have these sniper poison darts trained at them that seems to go off with the least wind had a poison dart shield? One reminiscent of the missile shield? One that could actually neutralize those incoming shots before they took root in the veins of a business, and what if they could stop the ensuing tailspin?

To note! Lawsuits have been filed by companies to protect themselves, and to recover from Negative Publicism. Time has to be taken in the scrambling of counter responses, management negative reviews, and methods of stopping them. I wonder how much all these measures cost? And how about the agonizing moments of customer relations? Customer acquisition and retention? Indeed, this has now become a nightmare for these business entrepreneurs and establishments! Yes, the big bad wolf of Negative Publicism is blowing down their doors. In fact, there is one such shield that is based on the principle that you cannot catch a bee with vinegar but honey instead.

The Vinegar

While there are those people who cannot say anything good, there are those who will not say anything good, and those who want to help in correcting a flaw and turn a vinegar experience to a honey sweet one. One such case was where a family dined at a particular restaurant in my neighborhood. They were so blown away by the great taste of the food. Its quality and service were superlative, they said. However, the vinegar poured over that experience on the discovery of a bathroom dirtier and filthier than a pig’s backyard. No complaints were made to the management, but they still decided never to return to that restaurant again.

The Honey

A manager/owner cannot always be everywhere at every time, and sometimes things happen even unbeknownst to them. But what if there was a number visibly posted and dedicated to take all comments? What if the comments were followed and responded to with immediate responses of apologies, and thanks… and then the HONEY!

The Honey could be in the form of a discount coupon code for the next meal, a “call before you come” code to avoid waiting or that allows special seating, a free dinner, free drinks, discount catering for family, etc. What are the chances that that now customer will be satisfied or will not even entertain the idea of Negative Publicism. You even afforded yourself the ability to send special sales and advertisements.

Indeed this is where biztexter comes in. Biztexter to the rescue folks! Biztexter the missile shield averting the insidious poison darts. Learn more about this patented software by clicking the banner below.