The Best Way to Text Videos for SMS Marketing

One outstanding way to connect with prospects and clients is to text videos. Incorporating these videos into your SMS marketing strategy can go a long way in helping you build relationships, concisely pitch your product or service, and generate more sales. And being one of the fresher mediums, SMS marketing offers you a great chance to connect with prospects and customers in a new way.

All of this is well and good. Combining video and SMS can unlock tremendous value for your prospects, customers, and your business itself. Yet while many creators and businesses want to take advantage of this opportunity, texting videos as part of your SMS marketing strategy can be somewhat tricky. In the worst-case scenario, those creators and businesses who want to send video SMS messages may not see the traction that they expect and then move onto something else. 

While this is a discouraging fate for these companies and individuals, it doesn’t have to be this way. There is an easy and extremely effective way to text videos in your SMS marketing work. Using this strategy, you can get all of the benefits of these videos and save time when doing so.

So in this post, we are going to take a deep dive into the best way to text videos for SMS marketing. By the end of this post, you will pick up many different tips and insights, including the following:

• Text videos can be extremely effective ways to build relationships with prospects and customers. 
• When sending a text video, it is absolutely critical to respect your audience’s time. You also don’t want to be overly annoying or spammy.
• Actionable pages are key tools for achieving your SMS marketing goals.
• Dubb provides you with a wealth of tools, including automatically-generated video action pages, that can help you get the most out of text videos. 

The Power of Sending Your Videos Via SMS

So why is it so powerful to text videos for your SMS marketing work? After all, we always hear about so many other marketing channels and how powerful they are. You can opt for so many different things, including Facebook Ads, a consistent email newsletter, and search engine optimization (“SEO”). All of these things are important, yet I believe that your marketing portfolio should include videos sent through SMS.

There are so many benefits to incorporating text videos in your SMS marketing plan. For starters, you implicitly get all of the benefits of recording and sending videos. Video is powerful for countless reasons. That being said, it lets the creator leverage storytelling and humans’ affinity for visual images. By creating and sending a video to your audience, you get to form deep, authentic connections with them. Even if you don’t make a sale right away, those deep connections can lead to many more sales in the future. In other words, there are substantial short-term and long-term benefits by incorporating video into your marketing strategy.

Ultimately, with video, you have a much more powerful sales presentation. Your prospect not only gets to see your body language, but he or she can hear the tone of your voice. If you use a tool like Dubb, you can even create screen recordings, which are extremely effective ways of showing off new types of software. One person that may have said it best is Isacc Guzman, who is the Head of Agent Growth at Beer Home Team. Isacc said, “We always say our crappy video will beat your non-existent video every day.”

But with sending videos themselves, text videos are so powerful because of the text element. It goes without saying, but we are all attached to our cell phones. Whether we are at home or on-the-go, we can’t get away from our phones. Businesses like yours can use this habit to your advantage. By texting videos to your audience’s cell phones, you can quickly reach them on a device that they religiously check. Moreover, you are sending your video to their messages app, which is likely one of the most popular apps on their phones. This type of access is really difficult to find, which is what makes SMS videos an extremely effective outreach tactic.

These are just two of the ways that SMS videos can be so helpful for your video marketing strategy. Whether you are a solo entrepreneur or work in the marketing department of a much larger company, there are plenty of ways that SMS videos can help you with your goals. 

Sending Text Videos for SMS Marketing: Some First Principles

With those benefits in mind, a natural question emerges. That question is how you can easily send text videos for SMS marketing. While the advantages of sending video through SMS are clearly there, it can become somewhat tricky when you are actually doing it.

As a starting point, it isn’t too difficult to send videos via SMS. However, the way that you are sending that video is super important. 

I think a large part of this comes down to a few key principles: if you are going to leverage SMS marketing and send text videos, you must ensure that you are respecting your audience’s time. You must also provide valuable information so that the brief interruption of their time is worth it. If you only follow this guidance, you’ll find that your video SMS messages are far more effective. 

Respect Your Viewers’ Time

The first thing that we recommend when discussing SMS marketing is to respect people’s time. This is a given with any marketing strategy, but it is especially true when you are sending videos via SMS. In fact, some marketers would argue that SMS marketing should only be opt-in. 

Ultimately, I think the key to text videos and SMS marketing is to step into your target’s shoes. Understand that he or she has taken time from their schedule and busy day to read your message. Consequently, your text video needs to be really good and informative. It needs to not only be trim and concise, but it must offer them significant value. It’s important that you don’t forget this point. By prioritizing empathy, you don’t waste your audience’s time and deliver extremely effective videos. 

Create Informative Videos

I think it’s important to spend a little more time on the informative part of SMS videos. Like I alluded to above, when you send someone a quick link to a video that they can watch on their phone, you create trust. This trust may not have existed before you contacted that viewer—especially if your business is contacting him or her for the first time. So when the viewer opens up your text and sees your video, you are going to need to offer substantial value to that viewer.

There are many ways to provide “value.” This can be everything from pure entertainment to a distraction from the viewer’s busy day. With that being said, I recommend that you provide education in your SMS text videos. Education is so powerful because you are making a real difference in your viewer’s life. Granted, you don’t need to solve a huge problem here. “Education” can mean a cool feature that many people miss with your web app or a sneak peek at how your new product or service can improve your viewer’s life. Or you can go deeper and talk about how your product solves a key problem that your viewer is facing. 

When educating your audience, make sure that you keep it human. Keep it authentic and all of the barriers that are impeding your viewer from connecting with you and your cause. Constantly thinking about viewers and what problems they are facing can go a long way in helping you create informative videos for your SMS marketing campaigns. 

Stray Away From Perfection

All of us at Dubb recommend that you send low-production, instantly created videos. This is great news for any sort of creator. The simple reality? Your SMS videos don’t need to be perfect. In fact, investing the time to make a perfect SMS video often isn’t worth it. What is important is that your viewer can see you, hear you, and get value from your message. So when you are actually creating your SMS message, don’t feel the need to invest the time in making a “perfect” video. Instead, be authentic, informative, and keep the viewer at the top of mind.

Sometimes, small tweaks to your video can be a great way to increase its quality. You can do this in the editing phase of your content creation. 

Using a tool like the Dubb mobile app, for instance, you can easily make those edits and send them out to your audience. You can easily record professional videos and leverage different editing tools to enhance your creation. You can easily chop things together, add music, text, and emojis, and then fire that off through a text message, email, or social media. 

These tools are certainly available to you. However, I’d strongly encourage you to spend less time on the editing process and more time creating compelling content for your audience. A very sleek, well-edited video will not make up for video content that is irrelevant or non-educational. On the other hand, an educational and valuable video, even if it isn’t the sleekest video on the Internet, will still likely resonate with your viewers. 

Why Actionable Pages are Key for SMS Marketing Campaigns

Along with getting into your audience’s shoes and creating valuable content, you need to send your SMS video with an actionable page. Like you, nearly everyone with a cell phone is reading their text messages on-the-go. When they are reading their texts, your audience members likely don’t have much time. They are looking at their cell phones, juggling other tasks that are in front of them, or are even taking care of their children. While you may not be exactly sure what they are doing, rest assured that they are likely looking at your text and are doing something else. 

Because of this, your viewers don’t want to be distracted by things like YouTube links. As you likely know, links to YouTube videos are inundated with advertisements and recommendations to other videos. These things are distracting and can cause your viewer to quickly leave your YouTube link and completely ignore your video.

A great solution for this issue is through action pages. Action pages are key tools in getting the most out of video SMS marketing campaigns. Yes, video is a better way to communicate—no matter how you are sending your videos. But having said this, you want to send videos in a way that will galvanize some sort of action from your viewer. After all, your viewer may enjoy your video, but if he or she doesn’t know what to do after that, you may be leaving lucrative opportunities on the table. 

Action pages are the tool that can solve this problem. You can think of an action page as a website that not only hosts your video, but can direct viewers down different marketing and sales pipelines. Importantly, the action video is about enticing your viewer to take action during or after the video. This action can be anything, but the bottom line is that your relationship with the viewer doesn’t end immediately after the video.

While we may be biased, our preferred way to send a video is with Dubb. Dubb offers so many features and advantages, but one of the most prominent is that you automatically get access to video action pages. Using these video action pages, you can get immediate results from your SMS marketing campaigns.

One of the most prominent features of Dubb action pages is the many calls to action (“CTAs”) that you can plugin to your videos. CTAs are the tool that leads viewers from your video to other aspects of your business. Dubb CTAs are located right below your video, as you can see in the gif below:

There are so many CTAs that you can use with Dubb action pages. Some of the many include the following:

• Call scheduling: After viewing your video, members of your audience can automatically book a call with your team. This is a great CTA if you are texting your audience members for the first time and/or you are sending introductory information about your business.

• Download a file: This CTA can help you in so many different ways. For example, if your video briefly discusses your product or service, you can direct the viewer to download a white paper about that product or service. You can even have your viewer download an eBook about you or your business. The choice is yours.

• Complete a form: This is another great CTA if you are interacting with prospects for the first time. After viewing your video, the user can input certain information, which can then be used in your follow-up marketing and sales campaigns.

• Communicate via Facebook Messenger: Some of your viewers may prefer to communicate over Facebook Messenger. If so, you can give them the option to continue their interactions with you on Facebook.

• Collect video testimonials: This is an extremely effective tool that you can leverage in future marketing campaigns. Video testimonials are powerful for so many reasons, yet they can sometimes be hard to collect. With Dubb, it is as easy as clicking on one button. 
• Make a purchase: This is definitely appealing for businesses that are laser-focused on driving revenue through SMS campaigns. Through a Dubb action page, you can integrate a payment page so that viewers can easily make purchases. While you certainly want to be tactical when using this CTA, you can do so on Dubb. 

These are just some of the CTAs on our platform. I encourage you to check them out for yourself. To register for a free 14-day trial of Dubb’s paid product, go ahead and click here.

Once again, one of the best parts about Dubb action videos is that they are created automatically. This is different from virtually everyone in this space. Because your free time is limited and valuable, this is a great way to save time and drive action through your SMS campaigns. 

The Power of SMS Videos and Calendar Booking

So by this point, we have talked about the power of video SMS campaigns, some important first principles on text videos in your SMS marketing campaigns, and how Dubb action pages can help you get the most out of your campaigns. As Isacc says, your message may be really great and well-crafted in an email. However, if no one reads your email, that message is essentially worthless. On the other hand, even if your message isn’t as well-crafted, you will have a much more powerful sales presentation if it is delivered via video.

You may already have many different use cases for sending text videos in your SMS marketing campaign. Or you may have come across this article with no prior idea of SMS marketing or how you wanted to leverage it. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

But with all of that being said, I think one of the more attractive use cases is using SMS videos with calendar booking. This is a huge use case because of its sheer utility. Often, you will want to follow-up with a prospect that you met in real life. While it is much harder to do this throughout Covid-19, there were certainly times where you met a prospect at a conference, at their office, or even on the street. In those situations, you may have gotten the prospect’s phone number and wanted to schedule a follow-up meeting.

Upon getting their phone number, you’d most likely think of following-up by email. However, I would recommend that you send a video SMS. It is a much more personable way to reach out and schedule a meeting. Better yet, your video doesn’t need to be that long. It can be a quick 10 to 15-second video, saying that you enjoyed your last conversation and that you want to meet them again. If you are using Dubb, you will automatically get an action page, where the prospect can immediately book a time on your calendar. It’s all too easy.  

Going Forward With Text Videos

So throughout this post, you have seen the many ways that text videos can supercharge your SMS marketing work. Even though this is a relatively new marketing strategy, I think that you’ll find it extremely useful.

When you are creating text videos and sending them through SMS, however, there are a few additional things to keep in mind.

First, make sure that your recipient has opted-in to your SMS messages. This is important not only for etiquette reasons, but for legal reasons. Ultimately, make sure that your prospect is prepared to receive a text message from you. Be super honest with how you will be using the prospect’s phone number. Better yet, in the form on your website, you can say that their phone number is only going to be used rarely and for important updates. Ultimately, prioritize transparency and make sure that you get their consent. While this isn’t legal advice, you definitely want to confirm that your SMS marketing strategy is complying with applicable laws. 

Related to the above, make sure that you aren’t spamming your audience. While many of your audience members want to hear from you via SMS, that doesn’t mean they always want to hear from you. There really aren’t any strict rules here. However, make sure that you are being strategic with how many times you’re texting your audience. In nearly every circumstance, less is more.

Finally, provide an easy way for your audience to opt-out of further messages. Typically, you will want to place this at the bottom of your messages. You can say something like “If you don’t want to receive further messages from us, reply with STOP.” Again, this is a way of expressing empathy for your audience. By making it extremely easy for them to opt-out, you won’t annoy them, thereby preserving your chance of making a sale in the future. 

Get Started Today

Text videos are an awesome way to supercharge your SMS marketing work. They can be effective tools in your toolbox for communicating with prospects and clients. Not only that, but they can be great ways to build long-term relationships with those individuals. 

In the end, the most important thing is to jump in and try it out for yourself. If you want more information about leveraging text videos in your SMS marketing campaigns, I invite you to check out our YouTube channel. There, we produce videos for our show format. Ultimately, we are big believers in creating instantaneous videos that are easy to make. Using these types of videos, we can easily communicate with virtually anyone. From there, it’s important to make that video actionable with the toolset that Dubb provides. From CTAs and data tracking to a whole bunch of other tools that you can leverage, Dubb can help you get the most out of your text videos.

To learn more about Dubb, go ahead and click here. You can also click here to sign up for a free 14-day trial.