In the last five years a phenomenon has been growing at a rapid rate and that is text messaging. Simply put, if you are not taking advantage of the following mobile marketing techniques you are missing out on a goldmine of opportunity to not only grow your business but be able to offer your products and services to a new and hungry market. Many people across the world are using text messages to stay in touch with family and friends, and they are doing it many times a day.

The great thing about this medium is that texting is not just a social medium anymore–it is a mobile marketing medium that can be utilized to help expand awareness about your business and your products. But how can you use texting to increase your internet marketing sales? Let me show you FIVE great techniques you can start with.

1. Promotional Giveaways – To get a higher opt-in rate, offer a special price or discount on a product. You can even set it up as a game so that your newly acquired leads send you in answers. This accomplishes two things. One you get an opt-in and with the answers you receive for your questions you can do market research.
2. Breaking News Is King – Update your opt-in list with breaking news on your biggest blog posts, on your biggest product offerings or your biggest discounts. If it is worthy news and will get people buzzing be sure to send this to them!
3. Who Doesn’t Like Discounts? – Coupons reign supreme in the mobile marketing world. Offer a free trial, 50% off. Just get people talking about your business and products!
4. Additional Member Benefits – Make texting opt-in users feel special by giving them information first! So if you run a membership site send a text message to your mobile list the night before you tell everyone else about your newest product.
5. Conduct Polls – Ask a question that is on the minds of the community and have them text their answer to you. Take advantage of people’s natural ability to tell you what is on their minds and use it for market analysis!

Those are FIVE really great ways to start taking advantage of the mobile market and build your business brand with a new kind of audience. Something that you do want to keep in mind though are:

• Don’t annoy your mobile list. This means not texting them every hour, keeping track of your list’s time zones and keep messages short and to the point. If a user has to scroll to read your message, IT IS TOO LONG.
• Subscribe to a service that will handle all of the backend duties for you. Nothing is worse than a marketer who has to spend time being technical instead of promoting their business.
• Tell your subscribers that you will be sending them promotional offers. Don’t hide anything. Yes, people will opt out, but that is better than annoying 25,000 people with so many messages that they start contacting their service providers.

Mobile marketing is by far one of the best ways to reach out to a new audience and begin building your brand. The market is still young, which means there are plenty of mistakes to be made–but just imagine if you start making your mistakes NOW and your competitors begin making those same mistakes two years from now.