In the world of mobile marketing, interactivity is the key to more engagement with your customers. Each interaction needs to be simple to use, easy to understand, and easy to remember. That’s why it’s so important to select the right text keywords for your mobile marketing campaigns.
So, What Is A Text Keyword?
A text keyword (or sms keyword), is a single word or short phrase (without the space in between, but we’ll get to that later) sent via text or SMS through a short code phone number. The short code is not a standard phone number, but a short one, typically between four and six digits long. Businesses can acquire a dedicated short code, but it is cheaper to lease one or use one that’s shared with other businesses. The keyword can be sent by any consumer to that short code.
Here’s how text keyword marketing works. Once you’ve developed your text messaging strategy, you can announce your keyword and short code in all of your advertising—digital and print. Your keyword allows potential customers to quickly accept an offer or opt-in to your database. You can also set up an automated response that lets them know how and when they will receive future offers via text. It’s that easy.
Choosing Your Keyword
Generally speaking, people don’t have a lot of time or patience. That’s why choosing the right keyword is really important. You want them to be able to quickly remember it and make it easy to type it on their phone.
Another major consideration for keywords is to focus on your brand. Your brand is what makes a strong image in people’s minds. The keyword that you pick will connect customers with your brand. So, you’ll need to really think about the keywords that are quickly associated with your brand identity.
Some Advice
In order to make a high impact keyword, you need to consider the following:
1. Keep It Short
A long keyword will turn people off because it’s too much to type. Plus, a short keyword is easy to read and remember from just a short glance. People also need to remember the code, so the keyword shouldn’t complicate it.
2. Make It Connect
Customers need to connect your keyword with the brand or the offer. It has to be relevant to what the customer is looking for. That’s part of the memory game, making a quick connection between words and products or services. This may feel restrictive, like the box of choices is shrinking, but this is also where you can get really creative.
3. No Special Characters
On a mobile phone, it’s a pain to tab through screens looking for special characters. This is where mistakes lead to frustration or people will abandon the process entirely.
4. Plan for Autocorrect
We know you want to be clever with your keyword. You want to be unique and brand-centric. But, any clever spellings for your keyword will fail to get past autocorrect.
5. Capitalize the First Letter
The default setting for all text messages is to begin with a capital letter.
Advantages of Text Keywords
With text keyword marketing, you can easily track how people discovered you. If you use multiple sms keywords, you can track different marketing activities and advertisements. This will let you know what’s working and what’s not. Over time, text keywords will help you target your audiences and in return save you money.