9 Tips for a Successful Mobile Text Marketing Campaign for Your Medical Practice

1. Select Your Target Audience

Mobile text messages are used commonly all over the world, and you can leverage it as a marketing tool for your healthcare practice. However, it is critical to use text promotions in the most effective way possible to maximize outcomes. Read on for nine essential tips on how to run a successful text marketing campaign.You want your audience to read your text message and not to overlook it as yet another spam SMS. To ensure this, you need to know the type of audience that is reading your texts. The aim is to make the person reading the message feel that the text contains information that is relevant to him or her at that time. So how can you achieve this? Some ways are:

• Through the integration of your CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system with the messaging platform.
• Focusing on demographics and search history of the audience.
• Tracking of campaigns using texts that receive more attention from viewers.

2. Short is Successful

For a message to hit the mark, it should be able to engage the recipient in a short time. This is achieved with brief messages that concisely express the key points, with a call to action or link included.

Lengthy or wordy texts lose viewer attention quickly, and he or she may not bother to go through a long-drawn-out message entirely, that reveals the crucial points only towards the end. Your texts should briefly state the following:

• Purpose of the message
• Benefits offered for the recipient
• How to avail the service or contact
• Last date, or expiry of the offer, or services provided

3. Time it Right

One timely message can achieve more for your practice than multiple ill-timed ones. The message you send should target the appropriate time slot for the client and also provide enough leeway to act on the text. For example, dinner coupons may be sent around 7 p.m., allowing sufficient time for a diner to use one.

4. Freedom of Choice

As you send messages, you will find there is a golden period for your particular business when you will note maximum clicks and customer engagement. Look out for these time slots and time your messages accordingly. A frequent buyer can sometimes be sent messages related to his or her previous choice.The viewer of your messages should never feel railroaded into choosing your product or service. The decision to opt for your texts is one that lies with the client, and a definite informed consent must be asked for before you begin sending any texts.

5. Be Upfront About All Details

This can be done with a clearly worded link or message asking for the subscriber’s permission to send further messages. This protects you from legal complications by ensuring that you have the receiver’s explicit consent.You need to be transparent about the details of text subscription to gain a subscriber’s trust. Your clients must be informed of:

• Text messaging rates that may apply
• The number of messages you will send per day or week
• The time at which you will send texts
• The type of content you will send, and the options available to modify it
• Information on how to opt out of receiving messages
• How to change user settings

6. Make Your Texts Worthwhile

Once a viewer has opted-in for your messages, he or she needs to have a reason to continue to subscribe to them. You will need to add value to your texts consistently to retain the client’s interest by:

• Offering discounted products and services
• Mention opportunities to avail greater benefit on opting-in for a text subscription. For example, an extra 10% off on signing up for texts.
• Engage the audience with new services or combination deals

7. Easy Come, Easy Go

It is essential to provide an unsubscribe option at every step of text marketing to allow users to leave at any time they wish to. This may seem detrimental to business, but an upfront unsubscribe policy tells the user that you value their time.

8. Mobile-Friendly Interface

9. Track it to Hack it

Additionally, a user who is not interested in your healthcare services or products is not likely to contribute to your business in any way, and so the loss of such a client may not be very adverse.It is critical to make sure that the landing page that your marketing link leads to is mobile-friendly. Landing pages that do not work on mobile can put off your client from engaging with your campaign.You need to measure your success by tracking and measuring the response to your text marketing campaign. Analyze the statistics obtained and use it to modify your marketing for maximum efficacy.

Use these tips to super-charge your text marketing campaign and attain the target results you desire!

Related Articles:

• 12 Tips for Successful Email Marketing for Doctors
• Maintaining Brand Awareness for Physicians and Medical Practices

About the Author:

Naren Arulrajah is President and CEO of Ekwa Marketing, a complete internet marketing company that focuses on SEO, social media, marketing education and the online reputations of doctors. With a team of 180+ full time marketers, www.ekwa.com helps doctors who know where they want to go, get there by dominating their market and growing their business significantly year after year. If you have questions about marketing your practice online, call 855-598-3320 to speak one-on-one with Naren.