Social media networks like Facebook and Twitter are very popular now, and many companies are attempting to leverage that popularity through marketing. But there's one thing they're missing when they approach these campaigns: universality. Simply put, you can reach more people through SMS than Facebook. A lot more.
According to Android Headlines, Facebook currently has 1.4 million users. While that seems like its impressive, it pails in comparison to the 5.4 billion people who use SMS regularly around the world.
Even other popular messaging services like Skype and Snapchat are nowhere close to these numbers. WhatsApp, the messaging service recently acquired by Facebook, is the most popular of these alternatives, but still only has about 800 million users, according to the Disruptive Competition Project.
There's another issue that Facebook and these other services have: a reliance on the internet. While smartphone penetration is growing, there's a huge market of people that still don't have or don't want one. Marketing through Facebook would instantly rule out these people.
Even those with smartphones often miss items marketing through the social network. Ads in Facebook show up in a user's feed, which is based on time. If a user is friends with or follows any more than a dozen or so people, their feed quickly becomes littered with updates, and ads often go unnoticed because of this or missed entirely if a user doesn't check their feed within a few minutes of posting.
SMS, on the other hand, is sent directly to the user and can be personalized based on the campaign's goals. A user receives a notification on their phone upon its reception. This prompts them to open and read the message, something that has lead to near-perfect open rates with text message marketing.
Realize the benefits of SMS for your SMS marketing needs through Swift SMS Gateway's SMS API.
