The Hustler's Digest StaffOver the years technology has seen massive changes and improvement. Things just kept getting easier with the advent of the internet and new innovations. Social media revolutionized communication making the world a global village. The effects can be seen across all industries, especially entrepreneurship. Today social media has become quite an important part of life while other communication methods like SMS still hold onto their relevance even with changing times.
Mayur Patil, head of TikTok growth & strategy at Bustle Digital Group, a holding company knows all too well the importance of growing in new platforms, and the Power of SMS in growing brands. He is strong at growing social audiences and his techniques have proven to work for any company across any network.
Meet Mayur Patil
Mayur Patil knows what it takes to grow a brand across multiple social media platforms and leverage SMS to nail marketing. He has experience building out SMS lines, email subscription lists, and social channels. The 21-year-old is about to finish his bachelor’s in Computer Science at Purdue University. Mayur built an SMS line to over 172k female contacts, which is only one of his many accomplishments.
Mayur is well known for leading growth & strategy at 10PM Curfew, a women’s network founded by Bella Thorne. He built two TikTok accounts to over 5.6M followers each in 5 months making the largest and most-engaged women’s fashion & beauty channels on TikTok. Apart from TikTok, Mayur has also driven 150k followers to 10PM Curfew’s Instagram channels in one week. At this point, he has built over 15 million social followers in the fashion and beauty space and has joined Bustle Digital Group to lead strategy and growth across all of its brands’ TikTok channels.
Growing Your Presence
In today’s marketing world, the internet plays a vital role in selling products and services. Almost everyone today has a smartphone, tablet, or computer. The number of people on social media is on the rise, and social media platforms are increasing as well. Today there are more than 50 social platforms. This makes the online space a gold mine for anyone with something to sell.
Maintaining and growing an online presence is more important than ever. Patil emphasizes the importance of focusing on acquisitions & growth across new platforms. Being present in all these platforms gives you an advantage over competitors. Since there is no limitation to the number of social media platforms one can join, it is only wise that you join all or most of them. Patil thinks that many people are focusing on the wrong things. He advises that staying stuck on one social platform is a mistake and people should utilize all the untapped potential that is elsewhere. A bigger social media presence will make it easier for you to grow on new networks as they emerge. That way you don’t start from zero when a new platform comes up.
The Power of SMS
Ten years ago, SMS was thought to be so
mething that would become extinct in a few years. Technology advancement has swept through the communications industry, but text messaging seems to be going nowhere. Not any time soon too, it seems. Text messaging is only growing, especially SMS messaging for marketing. We see new mobile apps emerge every day, but no messaging app can equal SMS. Patil says people should realize the true power of text messaging.
Research shows that the open rate for SMS is about 95% and the read rate is 98%. On the other hand, the open rate for emails is just 20% and 22% read rate. The difference is clear and big. Patil himself is a testament to the effectiveness of SMS. After building an SMS line to over 172k female contacts, 172k women in the USA subscribed to their SMS line.
That only proves that SMS marketing works better than emails. This is mainly because every mobile phone has access to SMS messaging while email only works if you have a smartphone or computer and an online connection. Today there are almost 5 billion mobile phone users. That means that almost all of them would receive and read a message sent to them.
In addition to having a high read/open/response ratio, SMS is relatively cheap to send and automate, hence better deliverability. You also get a higher engagement rate with text messaging since the messages are usually short by default. The longest message you can send can only have 160 characters. Over the years SMS technology has evolved to enable the use of links in the message without depending on other external services.
Clearly, technology has come a long way since the introduction of the internet. Even to this day, not much has changed about SMS and it still remains to be one of the most effective ways to deliver a short message. The fact that it has the highest open, read and response rate means that text messaging will not end soon. Don’t lose out on this advantage.
