Written by Neehar Mishra, a happy customer of the best SMS Marketing platform.

So you have this great, unique, out of the box business idea that you think will be a sure-shot hit. You have everything you need in place – capital, a team brimming with expertise and enthusiasm and, of course, your business acumen. Your brain-child  looks dressed for success and is raring to go. Now all you need is to go out there, let people know that you’ve arrived and convince them to use your product or service – the most crucial and dicey rung of the ladder – marketing and promotion. Crucial and dicey because no matter how brilliant your business idea may be, the way you go about marketing and promoting your product and how effectively you communicate with your prospective consumers is what makes or breaks your business.

In a world where new forms of media and communication are emerging and growing at unimaginable rates, especially with the advent of mobile phones, internet and other multimedia devices like Blackberry, the pressure to choose the right channel and medium can throw you in a tizzy. This is where UZ Marketing makes your life a whole lot easier, by introducing its innovative, effective and efficient model of Multi-channel marketing. What is multi-channel marketing? As the plethora of mass media is drastically moving

towards a trend of convergence, the best bet that any enterprise has to communicate to its clients and customers is by tapping as many media as possible and utilizing them to maximum capacity. This is where multi-channel marketing comes into play. Multi-channel marketing, as the name suggests, involves using a number of channels to communicate to your customers, be it for informing them about your product/service or for promotions through sales, events, drives and so on. This includes anything and everything from print media, television and radio spots, mobile marketing, social media marketing, email marketing to word of mouth. By the way, to catch a glimpse of how this works, go ahead and text the word CuttingEdge to 96362.

The importance of multi-channel marketing cannot be undermined, especially in the present scenario. For starters, it addresses one of the biggest hindrances faced by the marketer – the intense audience fragmentation, which is most likely here to stay and even expand. Take your own case, for instance – you probably use a Blackberry or other such device to handle your emails, chats and mobile communications. You watch T.V. and probably listen to the radio on your ride to and from work. You look at billboards on the road. You surf the net and check out videos on youtube. And most of all, you spend a majority of your time on Facebook, Twitter or some such social media portal.

In the course of one day, consumers come into contact with at least seven to eight major media channels, each signaling tremendous opportunity for  advertisers to reach their fragmented audience. Realistically speaking, a multi-channel approach is the only way to reach and influence consumers throughout the various stages of marketing:  brand awareness, consideration, preference, purchase and loyalty.  Integrated marketing plans across mobile, social, video, online display, search and affiliate channels ensures that you are reaching your audience comprehensively, yet also through very targeted means with measurable return on investment. It simply gives you, the advertiser, a greater chance to influence and succeed.

Let’s see what all an effective and efficient multi-channel marketing model must incorporate, shall we?:

Best SMS Marketing platform ever:

Mobile marketing (also known as SMS marketing) has several forms and approaches which allow us to customize a campaign and give it a characteristic magnetism. Also mobile marketing can be used to build an extensive database of consumers we reach out to everyday by incorporating QR codes and Text Keywords.

Here is how you can benefit from mobile marketing:

• ·Mobile campaigns are easy to create and execute; messages are delivered to recipients within seconds
• ·The reach is worldwide and delivery is guaranteed
• ·Content is usually directed to people who subscribed to it and the communication can be personlized
• ·Allows us to reach users on the go and setup an effective two-way communication
• ·Allows us to integrate new innovative forms with existing strategy to enhance their interactivity and impact
• ·The ease with which mobile communication can be shared increases the potential of the message being shared with new audiences

Talking of how we can customize a campaign is clearly variable depending on what the campaign is meant to achieve:

• ·SMS/ MMS Mobile marketing is a direct approach and is used to inform the target audience about what’s new, attractive offers, buyer incentives, service/product details, customer loyalty programs, etc.
• ·QR codes are one of the most integral part of new age marketing. They allow us to build an extensive database, easy data management and tracking
• ·Proximity Systems at times are the most desirable option to promote local campaigns or businesses that require targeting an audience belonging to a specific geographical area
• ·Location-based services are best used to send customized marketing communication to subscribers based on their location. It allows us to personalize the communication and render it tailored to the desired goal

Social Media:

In recent years the emergence of ‘social websites’, blogs and other channels have changed the way people communicate. The biggest advantage of this boom in social media is that every brand now has a potential target audience which it can reach with great ease.

Social media and business are now interdependent with each other. Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and YouTube are household names and lacking a presence on these social media giants is no longer an option. Every organization – big or small – is on this ever-expanding social network. It’s a wise tactic to build a group of fans and followers in facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc over time so that you announce the publication of every single content/blog post to all of them who are willing to hear more from you and read your ideas as you publish them. If your social sites’ policies have worked to your benefit and people like to read your content, you will be able to bring them to your site any time you create some new content.

Social media allows us to build a highly interactive and personalized approach to marketing with direct involvement of users.  Also, being on the most versatile medium – the internet – it facilitates sharing pictures, videos, texts and links to reach out in a variety of sorts.

Benefits of social media:

• ·Social profiles can rank themselves on search engines increasing your online presence
• ·It helps us in injecting some personality into the brand and allows users to engage
• ·Its impact is measurable and optimizes itself based on the number of views, shares and sign up’s
• ·It is a live medium and allows you to connect with your target market as a situation develops. Also, it allows you to interact with the press and journalists allowing more PR penetration and a larger scope for crisis management

E-mail Marketing:

We consider e-mail marketing an integral part of an efficient campaign. Of course, the success of a mailer campaign is dependent solely on whether the database belongs to the relevant target market. Users are always delighted to find information that they subscribe to or is useful to them in their mailbox. E-mail blasts to a desired target market have long been one of the most basic approaches to direct marketing. The communication is usually customized to the user’s needs. We use our database collection modules and employ it through e-mail marketing to reach out to existing and prospective customers.

Benefitsof e-mail marketing:

• ·Generate repeat business and run customer loyalty programs
• ·Helps gain valuable feedback
• ·E-mails also contain opt-in and opt-out options that allow you to reach a target audience that is genuinely interested
• ·An e-mail campaign is executed much quicker than a direct mail campaign and the two-way communication is much swifter
• ·You can select you target market though pre-packaged lists and filter them based on age, geography, income, expenditure and many other parameters

UZ Marketing provides you with an all-in-one marketing campaign to reach out to whoever you want, whenever you want and however you want by integrating all of the above. Here’s how:

• ·Collect contact information with our sure-fire methods by using mobile keywords and QR codes to automatically build your database
• ·Connect to all your prospective customers through myriad channels like e-mail blasts, social media, pictures and videos on youtube and other such websites, mobile calls and text messages
• Initiate action on part of your customers through innovative marketing tools like mobile coupons, e-cards, etc.

Now you can launch a successful, integrated marketing campaign which is also cost effective. Instead of investing in various media separately, we offer you reach and visibility on the necessary platforms at the price of one. So, all you need to do is invest in one place and yield benefits on multiple fronts. Ensure your messages are delivered, understood and responded to, right away, with UZ Marketing.

Review for UZ Marketing. A better way to get known. Faster.