subject: 2 Way Sms - The New Age Marketing Model [print this page] SMS is the new mode of communicationSMS is the new mode of communication. It is convenient to use and does not require your immediate attention. If you are in a meeting, and your cell phone keeps ringing, it becomes inconvenient. However, if the person calling just leaves an SMS, things get simplified. You can read the message and get back to the person when you have time, or immediately if it is an emergency. Nowadays, SMS is being used as a mode of advertisement and promotion.
For advertising products and promoting services, companies are using the bulk SMS formula. This has given rise to several bulk SMS resellers who are finding this business opportunity quite lucrative. The work scene has a simple mechanism. The reseller is the intermediary between the SMS provider and the consumer. So what the reseller does is, he/she buys SMS in bulk from the bulk SMS provider and sells it to the one who needs it. The reseller usually has a client base that is the companies who are in need of the SMS for marketing their products and services. Now a reseller can make a lot of money out of this business. The simple reason being there is no fixed rate at which the SMS need to be sold. Whatever is the difference between the buying and the selling price of the bulk SMS, is the profit for the reseller.
For those who are marketing their services and expect a response to their messages, they use short codes. SMS short codes are nothing but special phone numbers that are not as big as the normal mobile numbers. They are usually 4 to 5 digits long. The numbers are designed in this way to enable people call back or SMS back. The small numbers enable the receivers to remember the number easily and respond. To understand this better, let us see a few examples. While watching news, we often see and hear the readers urging the viewers to respond to a particular news item by sending a text message. The number in which the viewer replies is an SMS short code. The numbers being small helps people to type less and send the message quickly. There are reality shows on the television that encourage public voting. Here too the numbers set for voting are short codes. These codes are ideally used for generating revenue. These codes give maximum visibility to a product and also make it popular.
Clubbed to these short codes is the facility of 2 way SMS. The SMS ads are designed in a way so that you can respond to it with your views. The views that you can express are somehow conditioned by the goods or service provides, like you can only message "YES" or "NO". But even then, your opinion counts. Marketing has reached a different level and interactive messaging is all the more effective as it makes the target group feel involved in the process.
