In the modern age, one of the best ways for a company to engage its audience is through text message-based marketing. Also known as SMS marketing, text messages are less likely to be ignored or screened before reaching the intended receiver, especially compared to traditional methods like emails and phone calls. This allows businesses to engage with their customers directly, which can hopefully result in an increase in revenue. Obviously, this makes SMS an important marketing strategy for business.
What is SMS Reselling?
A company that uses SMS marketing will send text messages on a much larger scale than an individual. This large scale of text messaging requires third-party intervention to run smoothly. This is where bulk SMS reselling comes in. In its most basic form, SMS reselling works the same way as any other reselling enterprise.
First, the SMS reseller must purchase many text message “credits” from a reliable SMS provider. Then, the reseller sells those credits to businesses for a profit. Along with facilitating access to bulk text messaging, SMS reselling also requires understanding digital marketing and customer support. The reseller is the middleman between a business and an SMS provider. With that said, here are four key strategies for obtaining success via bulk SMS reselling.
Key Strategies for Success as an SMS Reseller
1. Analyze Your Customer Base
Ultimately, the goal of any business is to secure growth by finding and retaining customers. As a reseller, your customer will be any business that requires SMS marketing to reach their audience. Individual businesses will have different needs depending on their location, industry, size, and other factors. You can’t target every business globally, so it’s best to narrow your focus to one industry or business type.
From there, build your understanding of your potential clients. Does the business provide a service? What are the demographics of their target audience? Knowing the answers to these questions will help you identify your potential client’s needs and customize your offerings accordingly.
2. Analyze Your Competition
Like any other emerging industry, SMS reselling can be highly competitive. An incomplete understanding of the market, including competition catering to your customer base, can hinder potential success.
Along with identifying your customer’s needs, you should also identify your competition by researching their pricing, offered services, and branding. Doing this allows you to stand out from the competition by offering better, more personalized marketing solutions.
3. Partner with the Right Service Provider
Once you have identified your customer base and analyzed your competition, the next step is to choose an SMS provider that meets your customers’ needs while maximizing profit for you. Your chosen provider should be reliable enough to facilitate large amounts of text messages with minimal technical problems.
At the same time, they should also provide diverse features specific to your customers’ needs, such as scheduled messages, A/B testing, or cross-platform integration. Remember that your chosen service provider’s quality correlates directly to your brand’s quality. Prioritizing profitability over all else may result in poor customer service or unexpected technical issues, ultimately damaging your credibility. In all likelihood, you may have to sacrifice affordability for quality service or vice versa.
4. Provide Premium Service for a Fee
Upselling allows you to increase your revenue by tapping into your existing customer base. You can achieve this by providing more in-depth services for an additional fee. The key to this strategy is to identify the premium services that your customers are willing to pay for.
Typically, businesses will pay extra for solutions that help them save time, money, or both. Some examples include in-depth analytics, mailing list management, 24-hour customer support, and messaging automation. Once again, this is a situation where researching your competition can give you an edge.
Benefits of SMS Reselling
reselling has a relatively low bar of entry compared to other entrepreneurial pursuits. This type of business requires nothing more than a small initial investment to get up and running. However, success depends entirely on your preparedness and ability to plan. By understanding the needs of your client and the strategies of your own competition, you can lay the foundation for a successful SMS reselling business.