One Local Pizza Restaurant’s Text Marketing Mistakes…

One Local Pizza Restaurant’s Text Marketing Mistakes…

Sometimes even the smartest marketers make mistakes… don’t make the same mistakes these guys did!

It happened again. My local pizza restaurant made a text marketing mistake… and a number of them.

It always drives me crazy when a company is using a technology like Text Message Marketing… but does a half-assed job of the actual marketing.

It’s like ordering a steak at a fancy restaurant, then only eating the salad!

This pizza place is on the cutting edge of technology… and will clearly jump ahead of it’s competition… but only if it does some of this stuff the right way!

So, let’s look at this company’s advertisement and talk about what they did right… and what they did wrong.

What did they do right?

Well, they made the text messaging a critical part of their business. The texting call to action is at the very top of the advertisement… which is great.

If you hide your texting number, you’ll never get anyone signed up!

What else did they do right?

They used an easy to use Keyword “Catering.”

That goes a long way to helping customers sign up for your texting service and add themselves on a list. It’s always a good practice to use easy to spell, short, words for your Keyword… oh, and avoid making up words… smartphones have auto correct, and that will cause problems!

What else?

This pizza shop made an OK offer… “Want exclusive catering deals?” It’s crystal clear what a customer gets for signing up for the texting service. They’re going to get exclusive deals.

Wonderful.

Three good things about this texting advertisement.

Now the question is, what did they do wrong.

This pizza restaurant’s made a few text marketing mistakes.

Let’s look at the advertisement closely… This offer is a good one… but it’s targeted at the wrong crowd. “Catering deals?” This flyer was mailed to my house… not to my office or a business.

The offer needs to be targeted at the customer… since this is clearly NOT a Business to Business offer, the catering deal isn’t very attractive.

Personally I’d have gone with the simple offer of “Want Special Pizza Deals?”

If you’re a pizza person – and who isn’t right – you’re going to get a ton of people signing up for that offer… right!?!

The next problem is the Keyword.

Yes, they used a good Keyword and it was easy to spell, but it’s got nothing to do with the company. “Pizza” would have been better!

Now, I know they probably can’t use PIZZA as a Keyword because they’re sharing that texting shortcode with 5000 other businesses. Someone already took the PIZZA keyword… but there are other options…

“Slice” for example… or “Coke”… or even “Sauce”… Get creative… just remember to keep it easy to spell!

Or even better, DON’T share a shortcode, get your OWN number with betwext.com!

Now, here’s the next problem…

I signed up for their text club… you know what I got back?

Nothing.

Yep, that’s right, absolutely nothing.

It means that they have not set up any kind of welcome text or auto-responder.

That’s what I call LAZY marketing.

If you’re going to get people signing up for your list, at least send them a welcome text!

Now, one more problem… there’s no disclaimers or privacy policy listed. Normally you can send those in the welcome message… but since I didn’t get one, they should have put it on the page. Or at the very least said “Msg & Data rates apply”

Let me say this, I’m happy this Pizza shop is using text messaging. They are on the cutting edge of customer communication, and it will certainly help grow their business…

But, I’d like to see restaurants like this one really understand and use text message marketing technology the right way. Who knows how much growth they might see if they “dial in” their marketing.

So, if you’re running a pizza shop and you’re using Text Message Marketing… don’t do what these guys did… don’t make these big mistakes.

Clean up your act and make Text Message Marketing really work for you and your business.

Text Message Marketing is powerful. And if you use it the right way, you’ll see your business grow and grow and grow! Try text message marketing today with Betwext.com