SMS Offline Business. Profitable?

The only way really is to work out your sales pitch and go and speak to them. Business is all about relationships, and if they like you, like what you have to offer because they can see the benefit, and the price is right, they will buy. And this is true whatever success or failure others have had. That can't be your yardstick.

SMS campaigns were all the rage, but I have not seen very many real campaigns at restaurants where I live. I saw a couple go up and then come down.

Restaurants don't like to have satisfied customers come back to dine with them multiple times per month. Look at it as a restaurant owner or manager will. It simply isn't a good idea to send messages to people who like your restaurant to invite them back for something special. With an average net profit margin of 5% nationally, restaurant operators have enormous budgets they can invest in new ideas just for speculation. 90% open rates and measurable responses will just make the average general manager nod off to sleep. Better try something else. Maybe you can build them a facebook page where they can get lots of "likes." Offer to do it for free at first, then maybe they will offer you a sandwich or something once a month if you do a good job. The restaurant people I talk to tell me that they just can't get enough people offering to do that for them.

And don't forget Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram. All free and all produce fantastic results in the real world. Just ask around.

Based on your answer above SMSagent, it looks like you got to change your name soon to SOCIALMEDIAagent!

Where are you located ? I started such a service, which I was able to grow into a full service marketing firm that does customer acquisition and customer retention for the bar & restaurant vertical in NYC. We still specialize in Mobile Marketing.

Aaron Doud is correct. I did the market research personally. That meant hitting the pavement and walking in, and talking to business owners for several weeks. They are NOT tech savvy. That is why they run a restaurant. It has to be a managed service. If you set up the organization correctly, you should not have too much fixed costs. The majority of your costs, unless you are investing in proprietary technology, should be variable.

Also take a look at some of the top companies in the market like tatango, mobivity, trumpia. I like tatango a lot. They provide a LOT free value added services to the community. Their blog and instructional videos really helped me out when I was starting out.

Remember to read the industry best practices report. Its about 150+ pages. You need to know that cover to cover if you want to do anything in the industry. The fine for sending ONE illegal text message is $1,500.

Mobile Marketing Best Practice | Mobile Marketing Association

Some other nice links are:

Mobile marketing statistics 2013

Global mobile statistics 2013 Home: all the latest stats on mobile Web, apps, marketing, advertising, subscribers, and trends... | mobiThinking

Poll Database Search Tips | Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project

Pew Internet: Mobile | Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project

And of course this : Mobile marketing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


-DVK

Selling SMS Mobile Marketing can be extremely profitable if positioned correctly. The above advise is spot on, many of these restaurant owners are either too busy running their own shop or quite frankly their not tech or marketing savvy to run a mobile marketing campaign.

Therefore if you can come in, present a nice bundled fully managed SMS mobile marketing package, you should be seeing quite a bit of success.

My personal advice, when walking in and speaking with businesses, prepare samples and a demo mobile keyword. Having the owner text and get back a coupon will really hit home with the power and impact that SMS mobile marketing could have for their business.

Were you developing your own platform or looking to white label and reseller from a provider in the mobile marketing industry?