Print advertising has been a go-to way to reach potential customers for over a hundred years. Although it remains a viable marketing channel, digital and mobile marketing platforms have become more popular in recent years. One reason for this is that mobile marketing appeals to companies on a budget. The cost of reaching customers via mobile tends to be lower than creating a print marketing campaign.

Your current customers should be the first group to target with your ads.

One of the best ways to use mobile to connect with your customers is text message marketing. Commercial texts have an amazing 98 percent open rate. If you are deciding whether to spend your marketing budget on traditional print advertising or text message marketing, the following six benefits of texting will help you decide.

Reduced Costs

Print advertising can eat up your advertising budget, between the cost for the print supply and design, not to mention the fees for advertising in various magazine and newspapers. It can cost up to $20,000 to set up a print advertisement and another $3,000 to $30,000 to run it, depending on the magazine or newspaper, according to WebFX. Although you can have a relatively high return on investment with a successful ad, it remains a significant cost for businesses with a smaller marketing budget.

Reduce your marketing costs with text messaging.

Text message marketing costs much less. Most mobile agencies have a service fee of as little as $30 per month, or as high as $150 to $200 depending on the number of messages you send and any additional services you need. In addition to a lower service fee, text messaging also has a significantly lower development cost. You need to have a member of your team managing, writing, and sending the messages, but the overall cost of creation is much less than a print campaign.

Increased Impact and Engagement

Not only does text message marketing cost less, it can also result in a much larger return on investment because open rates and engagement are high. Text message marketing is an opt-in service, which means that 100 percent of the people receiving your messages want to see the offers, services, tips, and other information you send out. Additionally, with an open rate close to 100 percent, you can ensure that almost everyone will actually read your message. Even the best print advertisement does not have this level of customer impact.

Offer redemption is also higher with mobile marketing than with other forms of advertising. According to eMarketer, around 54 million consumers were expected to use mobile coupons in 2014, and mobile coupons are redeemed 10 times as often as print offers.

Direct and Immediate

When you distribute a text message, it is sent within seconds. This means that you can share information, offers, and deals instantly. Texting is a great way to communicate with customers about last-minute offers in order to boost sales. You can also quickly tell people about any changes, whether to your menu, the schedule of events, or other information. Alternatively, print advertisements are often designed and developed weeks or months in advance, making it difficult to create timely messages if you do not have all the information ahead of time.

Take advantage of the information you have to create specialized offers.

When you distribute text messages, you are sending messages to mobile users that most likely patronize your business. Therefore, you also have the capability to use further information about the recipients, such as their previous purchase data or geographic location, in order to personalize and customize your messages for a more direct impact.

Flexible and Easy to Quickly Change

Text messages are also quick and easy to change. If you find a mistake on print advertisement after it has been published, you have no recourse to take, unless you are re-running the ad at a later date. With text messages, you can quickly send out a second message retracting the first message and then share the correct information.

There's also flexibility with regards to message content and audiences. You can choose to send a message to a few people, or you can distribute a mass text to everyone on your contact list. You can easily adapt your messages, creating customized texts like appointment reminders, or sharing a special offer with a larger audience.

Easier to Track and Respond

It is very difficult to track your conversion rates and return on investment with print advertisements. You can only estimate the number of people who saw your ad, as well as whether it had any impact. Alternatively, it is easy to track and analyze the data for your texting campaign. You have real-time access to important metrics such as which customers have opened your messages and which have responded.

With real time data, you can adjust your plan right away for better results.

Eco-Friendly Approach

Another way that text message marketing tops print advertising is that it is a green channel. There is no paper waste; instead, everything is handled digitally. Offer redemption can be done by text message, rather than by a print coupon. With such a large number of people now looking for eco-friendly ways to conduct business, this may help you gain more customers.

These are just a few of the ways that text messaging may be more beneficial for your business than print advertising alone. But remember, the best way to utilize SMS marketing is to integrate it with a larger, cross-channel campaign that takes advantage of print, radio, TV, and digital advertising.

If you are ready to get started with your first text message marketing effort, try Club Texting for free.