Are you trying to expand your brand awareness? Do you have a new product to present to your fans? Are your promo nights still running the old-fashioned way? I think you will find that mobile text marketing will have an immediate and direct impact on your marketing efforts.

By contacting a local bar and scheduling a “tasting event,” you can post a few flyers and a banner showing that your brand will be there at an upcoming date. Bar owners will welcome the opportunity to have the additional business it will bring. Now, do you want to increase your sales and have bar owners begging to put your kegs on the tap or bottles on their shelves? Here’s how to use text marketing: At every event, advertise and post flyers inviting fans to sign up for your VIP list. They will send a text message with a keyword like “your winery” to a short code (a five-digit phone number like 12345). By doing so, they are opting in to give you permission to send future notifications. It’s also better to give them something as an incentive to join your list. Maybe it’s a percentage or dollar amount off any purchase that night. You will create a growing database of clients at each event. Now, you’ll be able to text this customer list whenever you launch a new product or have special events or tastings elsewhere.

Think about the power of this for a minute. Consumers carry their mobile phones with them wherever they go. Industry studies verify that 94% of texts are opened and read within minutes of being received. And 22% of recipients forward invitation text messages to their friends. As your list continues to grow, you’ll pack bars (they’ll love it), increase your sales, and have an ever-increasing number of followers who feel a real, genuine relationship with your brand. You should also consider putting your “call to action” to join your list in your tags and in any other form of marketing you do. We can even create a unique QR code to make it easy for customers to scan and join. Continuously building a responsive customer list will help you gain market share against your competition. Don’t hesitate as others are jumping into this simple, profitable and highly effective form of marketing.

The New York Times called mobile marketing “the most powerful advertising medium of all time.” This is the most profitable and highest ROI form of marketing you can do for your business and it’s all easily accomplished from your desktop.