As marketers we have a limited amount of time, and budget, to pursue all the various new marketing technologies out there.  Sometimes we tend to follow what our competition is doing and then try to do it better.  Sometimes this works, but most times it’s better to be first.

Here are 3 reasons your competition is not using text message marketing yet (and you should):

1.  They’re preoccupied with social media and they still believe it’s the key to increasing revenue, even without investing significant time and money.

Your competition doesn’t realize it yet but social media is a not a direct marketing channel where their promotions and offers are always valued by the audience.  Social media is great for branding and creating a community, but unless you have hundreds of thousands of followers it’s not a very good substitute for direct marketing to an interested audience of potential customers.

If your competition had a text messaging database they could send offers and promotions directly to the people most interested in their product or service.  They don’t know there isn’t anything out there that can beat the read and redemption rates of SMS marketing.

2.  Your competition hasn’t bothered looking at their email open rates.

We can just about guarantee your competition’s open rates aren’t over 30 percent, but they don’t know that.  Email marketing was great, and still has a very important place in marketing, but it also has one very big weakness – we’re all getting too much of it.  We all do it.  We scan our inbox and hit the delete key like we’re playing an arcade game.  If the subject or from line doesn’t catch our attention off to the trash it goes.

Your competition doesn’t realize that not only are over 95 percent of text messages opened, they’re read within 15 minutes of receiving them.  They’re still trying to use email to tell their audience to “come out today” or “call now” and not only are 7 out of 10 email messages not even opened at all, some may not be opened until tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that.

3.  They’re waiting for you to try it first.

Your competition loves to follow you.  They’re waiting to see what you do next and then they’ll play catch up by spending more money.  Their audience will question opting-in to their SMS campaign because they’ve already opted-into yours.  You’ll enjoy the first mover advantage while your competition struggles.  You’ll capture more attention, more market share, and more audience.  They’ll secretly think about what a market leader you are and hope they can someday try something first.