Have you seen How To SELL Anything?

This incredible sales handbook distils an expert's lifetime of sales and marketing experience and hands it to you on a platter, in a simple, easy-to-follow format. With existing customers being the most valuable source of income for any business, this book will teach you how to increase your return business and make more profit from your most loyal customers - and even how to reduce the costs of dealing with your least profitable customers.

Get it on Amazon (Kindle/Print)

Britons not keen on Facebook marketing

Almost two-thirds of the businesses surveyed said they have, or are developing, a Facebook strategy, which is comparable to the number of businesses with a mobile strategy. However, opt-in messaging is still by far the most popular and efficient form of brand marketing with UK consumers.

The report suggests that brands and businesses should switch their marketing spending from social platforms such as Facebook or Twitter to opt-in mobile messaging in order to maximise the return on their investment.

The average click-through rate for a mobile banner advert is 0.1%, which the report points out is a disappointing return on any level of investment, large or small. Mobile text messages, however, have a wildly more successful read rate, averaging 99.9% overall. The maths is simple enough: in order to ensure that 10,000 opted-in consumers read a marketing text message, it needs to be sent to only 10,010 recipients. And, of those 10,000 messages that are read, some 95% on average will be read within three minutes.

"Facebook is excellent for communicating interesting and entertaining information but it is far from the most effective medium for pushing marketing or sales messages," explained Darren Daws, Textlocal's managing director. "The majority of businesses have been rather side-tracked over the last 12 to 18 months by jumping on the bandwagon to invest in a mobile Facebook strategy, which the majority of consumers actually find intrusive".

Nick Lane, chief strategy analyst for Mobile Squared (who conducted the research for Janrain) added: "SMS response rates average over 30%, so why are marketers and brands still focusing so heavily on email or Facebook initiatives? Even email typically only has open rates of 15% and a click-through rate of 2%."

The research also found that more women opt-in to receive marketing communications from brands, and that the greatest opt-in audience age is in the 35-44 range (representing 5.2 million consumers nationwide). Interestingly, there are currently an estimated 16.7 million opt-ins through smartphones, and 11.2 million opt-ins through more basic 'feature phones'.

"Customers do want to hear from businesses, provided it is on their terms and they feel in control, that's where an efficient CRM platform comes into play," concluded Daws. "While 60% of consumers acknowledged that relevant mobile messaging would maintain their loyalty toward a brand, an additional 14% said it would actually enhance their loyalty."

The full report has been made available for free download from Textlocal's web site - click here (free registration required).

Have you seen How To SELL Anything?

This incredible sales handbook distils an expert's lifetime of sales and marketing experience and hands it to you on a platter, in a simple, easy-to-follow format.

With existing customers being the most valuable source of income for any business, this book will teach you how to increase your return business and make more profit from your most loyal customers - and even how to reduce the costs of dealing with your least profitable customers.

You'll learn to sell yourself, sell your products, and sell your brand on the internet, writing high-conversion landing pages, social media posts, and more. You'll start attracting customers you didn’t even know existed, and learn the top trade secrets for customer retention.

You'll become a lean, mean selling machine. See how the experts do it and learn to adapt what they've done for your own profit. You'll learn to write strong, powerful, effective sales copy, whether it's for a sales script, sales letter, flyer, insert, advert or just about anything else.

You'll learn how to sell whether you're selling by telephone, by mail, or even meeting prospects face-to-face. You'll find out how to size them up, present yourself, nail down their true needs, close the sale, and learn to tackle the tricky ones.

You'll discover the biggest secrets of successful direct mail sellers, sales letter writers, and how to segment and choose the right prospects for each campaign.

Get it on Amazon (Kindle/Print)