Text Marketing for Small Business: Reach Audiences in 2025

Let's say you're Bob the Business Owner...

You're well aware that owning (or running marketing for) a small business is always difficult. Therefore, you need to take advantage of all the opportunities you have at your disposal.

And what’s one of those opportunities that’s underutilized? Text marketing.

So let’s also say that you haven’t been taking full advantage of text marketing.

How can you get started? What should you know before you jump into it?

In this article, we’ll walk you through what you need to know to start using text marketing to reach audiences as we go into 2025.

How Text Marketing for Small Business Works

So how does text marketing actually work for a small business? What does it entail?

Small business text marketing would involve a few essential steps…

1. Building your subscriber list

Although enterprise businesses may have a robust CRM with a massive list of contacts, small businesses may have more of a need to start from a small list—or even from scratch, if you haven’t been collecting people’s phone numbers up to this point.

Usually, building this list starts with offering a compelling incentive to get people to sign up. There are a few ways you can do this:

• Opt-in Keywords: Ask people to send in a text message to a particular phone number (provided by your SMS platform) and they'll instantly receive a free or discounted item.
• In-Store Sign-Ups: Encourage customers to join your list at the point of sale by offering a discount on their in-store purchase.
• Online Forms: Integrate sign-up forms on your website, especially on high-traffic pages, and direct people to these forms in emails and social media posts.
• Existing Customer Database: Import whatever existing list you have, or automatically sync with your CRM.

As you’re building your subscriber list, you’re able to organize your subscribers into segmented groups so that you can be more granular about your messaging efforts.

2. Planning effective campaigns

While enterprise businesses may have resources to program a lot of automations, for small businesses, you may do more manual campaigns. (Although certainly you will have automated campaigns as well.) So you may need to invest some time in planning campaigns that will speak to your audience.

It’s also possible that you may not have as much segmentation data as enterprise-level businesses. If that’s the case, you’ll want to do your best to either get your audience segmented or at least keep that in mind as you plan your campaigns—people don’t want to receive messages that don’t actually pertain to them (especially when it comes to SMS), so the more specific and relevant you can be, the better.

Decide what types of campaigns will best speak to your audience and your niche.

You’ll want to evaluate not only mass blast campaigns but also campaigns involving individual messages, since you can have individual conversations with customers and prospects through text marketing software.

3. Scheduling and automating

Although you can send out text blasts manually, you obviously want to automate as much as is feasible so that you can free up your time and energy.

While enterprise businesses may have more opportunities of access to web developers who can set things up exactly the way they want via SMS APIs, as a small business you may not have that luxury.

But you can still automate to an extent. There are a few ways you can do that:

• [If you have the resources] API programming: Program the messages and flows that you specifically would like.
• Time-specific scheduling: Schedule messages for the specific date/time you’d like them to be sent—this can even involve automatically repeating the messages on a specified interval.
• Drip campaigns: Set up a workflow of messages and delays into which your audience can be automatically entered to receive the flow.
• Auto-responses: Designate auto-responses based on conditions under which your recipients send in text messages or respond to your text messages (for example, if they text in a specific word, or if they send you a message within a specific timeframe).

You also want to keep in mind the mobile carrier regulations, not only to prevent potential legal problems (although the official legal requirements aren’t as strict as they used to be)—but also to ensure that you get the best delivery possible.

If you don’t follow regulations, mobile carriers may deem your messages to be spam and may prevent them from being delivered. Some of these regulations include:

• Make sure to register with the mobile carriers (your SMS provider gives you the form to do this and it just takes a few minutes)
• Include your brand’s name in every text message
• Avoid publicly shortened URLs (such as those generated by bit.ly)
• Avoid content related to potentially questionable topics (for example, cannabis, alcohol, and home loans)

As someone involved in a small business, you’re probably wearing many hats, so don’t feel overwhelmed about all the different options and guidelines. Just do what you can!

Better to do SMS imperfectly than to not do it at all.

4. Analyzing results

As a small business, you may not have access to a bunch of external analysis tools and resources.

So your most feasible option may be to use the in-house analytics tools provided by your SMS provider. Keep in mind that SMS doesn’t send back as many data points as emails, so you can’t access open rates in particular. But you can still access data such as:

• Delivery rates
• Unsubscribe rates
• Response rates
• Link click rates

Click rates can be especially useful for small businesses to track text marketing efforts.

These analytics give you some information to help you evaluate how your messages are performing.

How to Get Started with Text Marketing for Small Business

All of the above is well and good. But how does a small business like yours actually get started with text marketing?

Getting started with any new marketing tool can be daunting—especially with a small team in which everyone’s already spread out so thin.

But the first steps are really not daunting at all.

Here’s how it looks…

1. Choose a few SMS platforms to test

There are a lot of SMS platforms (such as Mobile Text Alerts) to try out.

Pick two or three to test. You’ll be able to tell by the website and the pricing if the platform is small business-friendly.

You don’t want to agonize over this too much—just pick a couple and see how you like them.

Most SMS platforms give you a free trial period during which you can test how the platform works.

(We’ll have more insights on choosing the right SMS platform below.)

2. Load in your first contacts

If you have any contacts already that you’d like to text, you can load them in by importing a spreadsheet or by connecting via integration to wherever your database is hosted.

If you don’t have any existing contacts yet that you’re ready to text, you can add a few contacts to get a feel for how it works.

Or you can use one of the other methods of getting people added into your SMS database.

3. Create your first campaign

You don’t need to overthink your first campaign—SMS is a pretty straightforward channel.

Decide what type of campaign you want to send.

A flash sale? A new product promotion? A seasonal message? A customer service outreach?

It’s best practice to keep your SMS as tight as possible—if you’re a small business on a tight budget you also need to keep in mind that sending longer messages can end up costing you more messaging credits.

It’s pretty much as simple as that!

How Text Marketing for Small Business Is Different from Enterprise Business

Text marketing for small businesses will look a bit different from text marketing for enterprise businesses.

Here are a few differences you’ll want to keep in mind.

1. Available funds

While enterprise businesses may have a large budget of funds to draw from, small businesses often have a more limited (sometimes non-existent!) budget.

In those cases, you have to operate under a lot more scrutiny with every dollar spent being evaluated—even minimal expenses.

In other words, every marketing dollar must be spent wisely.

This can be challenging because text marketing costs can add up more quickly than, say, email marketing costs.

2. Available resources

Enterprise businesses tend to have larger teams devoted to more specific tasks and projects.

With small businesses, on the other hand, there’s a small team of people who seem to have their hands in everything—or at least, in several different things.

What that means is that while enterprise businesses can devote a larger number of team members and resources to efforts such as text marketing, in a small business text marketing is probably one of the many tasks someone carries out.

The team member(s) in charge of text marketing may not have as much time as those in an enterprise business to invest in making the text marketing initiative as good as it could possibly be. And there may not even be developer team members with the expertise to take full advantage of the API offerings of text marketing platforms.

3. Red tape

Small businesses have an advantage over enterprise-level businesses in that small businesses tend to have less red tape to jump through.

In regard to text marketing, less red tape means that you can get things done more quickly. You can make decisions about your SMS campaigns without having to go through layers and layers of approvals.

On the other hand, the diminished accountability that comes with a small business environment could mean a lower quality result in your text marketing efforts.

But although enterprise businesses can benefit from more extensive resources, their sheer size can sometimes hinder the quick, nimble actions that small businesses excel at.

4. Audience pool

Small businesses typically have a smaller client and prospect base than enterprise businesses.

The smaller audience pool can be limiting in terms of how feasibly you can segment your recipients, test your messages, and see outstanding results from your messages.

That’s not to say you’re unable to see good results from text marketing when you’re a small business, but simply that there’s a bit more opportunity with the larger audience that enterprise businesses afford.

5. Risk-taking opportunities

With enterprise businesses, since there’s a larger budget, more resources, and a larger audience pool, there can be more of a willingness to take risks and test the effectiveness of different text marketing approaches.

With small businesses’ more limited resources, you need to make sure every dollar and every message counts. What that means is that you may not be able to afford trying a lot of new things—you may need to stick with what’s more tried and true.

Small Business Examples of Text Marketing for Specific Industries

So what does text marketing actually look like for a small business?

Here are some examples. (Note that these are not real customers but are examples based on real or potential use cases.)

1. Retail

Example: A local boutique specializing in women’s fashion uses text marketing to announce flash sales and exclusive offers.

“

Flash Sale! 30% off all dresses today only. Show this text in-store or use code DRESS30 online.

Strategy: SMS helps small retail businesses communicate urgency around sales events, new arrivals, and seasonal promotions.

Benefit: Text messages create a direct line to customers—ensuring they don’t miss out on time-sensitive offers, and leading to both increased foot traffic and increased online sales.

2. Restaurants and Cafés

Example: A family-owned pizzeria uses SMS to promote its daily specials and encourage repeat visits.

“

It’s Pizza Night! Enjoy 2-for-1 pizzas tonight only. Reply PIZZA to order for pickup.

Strategy: Restaurants can use text marketing to share updates such as daily specials, limited-time discounts, and event invitations. Sending out timely messages before meal times can drive immediate orders and reservations.

Benefit: Text marketing gives restaurants an opportunity to reach customers right in front of their faces—which could increase the likelihood of traffic, orders, and sales, particularly during slower periods.

3. Health and Wellness

Example: A local gym offers SMS reminders for class schedules, membership renewals, and special events.

“

Don’t forget! Spinning class at 6 PM tonight. Reply YES to reserve your spot.

Strategy: Health and wellness businesses can use SMS to send appointment reminders, class schedules, motivational messages, and (of course) special offers. These reminders can help reduce no-shows—and increase customer engagement.

Benefit: By keeping clients informed and motivated, text marketing can enhance your customer retention.

4. Salons and Spas

Example: A neighborhood spa uses SMS to fill last-minute appointment slots.

“

Want a break? We have an opening for a 1-hour massage today at 3 PM. Reply BOOK to claim it at 20% off.

Strategy: Salons and spas can leverage SMS to manage bookings, send appointment reminders, promote special packages, and offer discounts.

Benefit: Text marketing helps reduce missed appointments and fills open slots quickly, which can help you maximize your revenue.

5. Real Estate

Example: A local real estate agent sends SMS alerts to potential buyers about new listings that match their preferences.

“

New listing! 3-bedroom home in [Neighborhood] just hit the market. Reply INFO for details or schedule a viewing.

Strategy: Real estate agents can use text marketing to send updates on new properties, open house invitations, and follow-ups with potential buyers.

Benefit: Text marketing allows real estate agents to stay top of mind with their clients. They can also ensure their clients stay informed about new opportunities and feel supported throughout the buying process.

6. Professional Services

Example: A small accounting firm uses SMS to remind clients of important deadlines, such as tax filing dates.

“

Reminder: Tax filing deadline is April 15th. Contact us today to get your documents in order.

Strategy: Professional service providers, such as accountants, lawyers, and consultants, can use SMS to send reminders and promote their services.

Benefit: SMS reminders ensure that clients don’t miss important deadlines—and help make sure they keep you in mind for their professional service needs.

Text Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses

We could give some generic suggestions on text marketing strategies, such as:

• Personalize your messages
• Create a sense of urgency
• Coordinate with other marketing channels and efforts

But what particular text marketing strategies are best for small businesses specifically, as opposed to more enterprise-level businesses?

1. Super-Personability

Small businesses have the advantage of being able to be super-personable with their customers.

For example, we have a local exterminator company who comes out every year to spray for bugs or any other extermination needs.

This company also offers texting. And the great thing about working with a small local business is that when we send them a text message, we get a personal response back—from a real human.

They address our specific needs and help answer our questions.

This is an area in which small businesses can thrive more easily than enterprise businesses.

2. Direct Owner-Customer Communication

Depending on how small your business actually is, one strategy would be to actually have your owner or CEO interact with customers directly via texting.

Because, let’s face it, you’ll probably never receive a personal text message from Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk. But you might be able to get a personal text message from the owner of the flower shop down the street.

For example, if you’re an owner, you might send a personal thank-you message to customers who order frequently.

And this kind of personal touch can mean a lot!

3. Quick, Feedback-Based Adjustments

Larger businesses can take a long time to implement changes because of systems and processes. But small businesses can act quickly.

You can use this to your advantage when you’re going about SMS.

How? First, gather feedback from your audience through text messages. Next, quickly analyze the feedback and prioritize what’s important. Lastly, make the change ASAP.

Though this is easier said than done, customers will be impressed by your prompt attentiveness to their feedback.

How to Choose the Right Text Marketing Platform for Your Small Business

As a small business, you need an SMS platform that’s not basic but is suitable for (and preferably highly compatible with) small businesses.

The good news is that most mainstream SMS platforms have the features you need. (Although we’d recommend staying away from free options.)

This means that evaluating main differentiators you want to be on the lookout for includes steps such as the following…

1. Look at Pricing

As mentioned above, budgets are often (though not always!) tight within small businesses.

So price is an important consideration.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that you want to go with the cheapest option—because usually things are cheap for a reason. But it’s unnecessary to go for the most expensive option as well.

For a small business, we’d recommend going with a text marketing platform that has middle-of-the-road pricing.

2. Test Their “White Glove” Service

Since small businesses have fewer people dedicated to particular aspects of their marketing initiatives, you don’t want to be stuck in a customer service loop. Being unable to get help when you need it is a frustrating experience for anyone!

A small business therefore can seek out an SMS platform that gives thorough, friendly, and helpful “white glove” customer service.

Customer service that doesn’t brush you aside. That doesn’t take days and days and days to respond. That doesn’t “escalate” your problem a million times.

Get a free trial account on the SMS platforms you’re exploring and test out having a support interaction.

See how they treat you, how long it takes to get a response, and how quickly you get a resolution.

If the experience isn’t good in a free trial, it will only get worse if you become a paying customer.

3. Test User-Friendliness

Try out the different platforms you’re looking at and see how easy it is to use their online interface.

Will it be a pain to try to use them on a regular basis? Does the UI make the experience frustrating?

Some other factors to consider would be:

• How clear is their support documentation?
• How often do you run into issues that lead you to need to ask questions of support? (You know what they say—”The best customer support is no customer support.”)
• How easy is the onboarding process?

4. Research Reviews

You can do a quick Google search of an SMS platform’s online presence to see the reviews people have left.

These reviews can be helpful to give you a sense of some potential issues you could run into with a particular platform.

However, take reviews with a grain of salt—they aren’t necessarily accurately indicative of what your own experience of a platform is going to be. Usually the only people who leave reviews are those who either really love a service, or those who really hate it. Plus, companies typically (and understandably) only ask happy customers to leave reviews. And reviews can be tainted by smear campaigns from competitors or bad actors.

All that being said, you can mine reviews for some helpful insight, but don’t take everything you read at face value.

5. Make Your Decision

After testing things out for a bit, you’ll need to make a decision on which service to move forward with.

But don’t be too stressed out about making the wrong decision. It’s typically pretty easy to move your information over to a new SMS platform provider if things don’t work out.

Special Considerations of Text Marketing for Small Business That You May Not Realize

Now there are a few more considerations of text marketing for small businesses that you’ll want to make sure you’re aware of.

1. If You’re a Solopreneur, You May Have Some Friction with Registration

The mobile carriers have some regulations for sending messages, one of which is that you should register your brand ahead of time.

However, registering your brand ahead of time can present problems if you’re a sole proprietor without an LLC or officially registered business.

If this is the boat you’re in, there are still options for you, but it’s something to keep in mind as you get started.

2. Most SMS Platforms Charge Carrier Fees

As you’re researching text marketing platforms, if you’re a small business with a limited budget, you’ll want to be aware that most platforms charge carrier fees on top of their listed subscription fees.

So what you see as the pricing may not be all that there is.

Make sure you get clarity on what you’ll actually be paying before you jump into something that doesn’t end up fitting your budget.

3. Make Sure Your Audience Is Sizeable Enough to Warrant the Expense

“Small business” is a broad category that can cover everything from a one-man or one-woman show to a business with hundreds of employees.

That being acknowledged, if you’re reading this as a business owner who has just a handful of clients or customers, investing in an SMS platform may not be worth your time quite yet. If your audience is that small, you may not see the ROI you’re hoping for.

That being said, you don’t need a huge audience in order to get a return, because texting has high read rates and view rates.

Common Small Business Text Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

If you’re thinking about getting started with text marketing as a small business, here are some mistakes you’ll want to avoid.

Overtexting

Small business owners may see the potential for texting and think that the more messages they send, the better.

Unfortunately, that’s not quite true.

You can easily tire out your audience if you’re constantly sending them texts.

For example, we used to have several retail-based customers whose primary method of selling was to do live videos on Facebook. Some of them would go live several times per week, and they would send a text message each of these times.

Receiving multiple text messages per week will likely leave your audience numb to your messages—or make them unsubscribe.

Jumping Right in without a Plan

Although initiative and action are good, your action should be thought-out.

You don’t necessarily want to just jump right in without any kind of plan as to how you’re going to go about your text marketing efforts.

Before you jump, just take some time to hash out your goals and the strategies you’ll use to try to reach those goals.

Ignoring Replies

There are many businesses that want to “turn off” replies so that their audience can’t respond to their text messages.

Their concern is that they don’t have the systems in place to monitor and reply back to responses.

But it’s much better if you can use those responses as an opportunity to really engage with your audience—to foster that relationship and gain valuable feedback for your business.

What Is Text Marketing for Small Business?

If you’re reading this article, you probably have an awareness of the concept of what text marketing means for small businesses.

But in case you don’t, here’s a basic explanation.

Text marketing, otherwise known as SMS marketing, allows businesses to promote their products and services via text messages.

Text marketing for small businesses, then, applies the concept of SMS marketing to small businesses as they take advantage of SMS to reach people directly on their phones.

Benefits of Text Marketing for Small Business

Text marketing can be beneficial for any business due to its high read rates (55%) and view rates (100%).

In other words, people are more likely to check and view their text messages than many other forms of marketing.

This can be particularly beneficial for small businesses who may have a smaller audience to begin with—SMS can pack a more powerful punch with fewer people to work with.

Some other benefits of text marketing include:

• More direct communication
• More immediate communication
• More likely to yield responses

What’s the Future of Text Marketing for Small Business?

So what’s text marketing going to look like for small businesses in the future?

Here are a few of my predictions…

1. More and more small businesses will adopt text marketing

Text marketing has been surprisingly slow to catch on with small businesses, but I predict that more and more small businesses will adopt text marketing.

What this means is that text marketing, like email marketing, may actually become gradually less effective as time goes on and the sphere becomes more saturated—so the best time to implement it is sooner rather than later.

2. RCS will be integrated

Since Apple has recently implemented support for RCS messages, it seems only a matter of time before RCS gets integrated into text marketing.

When that happens, small businesses will have yet another way to engage with audiences on their phones.

3. AI options will expand

AI was such a hot topic for so long that it seems people are getting a bit AI-fatigued.

Nevertheless, AI’s not going away anytime soon. And as time goes on, AI options for small business SMS marketing will expand and include even more efficient and helpful solutions.

What might that look like? One item already in the works is AI-powered A/B testing. AI has so many possibilities that the limit is the human (and artificial) imagination.

Small Business Text Marketing FAQ

Here are a couple other answers to questions regarding text marketing for small businesses.

How strict is text marketing compliance for small businesses?

In previous years, compliance laws were pretty strict for all SMS marketing—whether for small businesses or enterprise businesses. Explicit opt-in consent was absolutely required or else you risked hefty fines.

But in more recent years, those requirements laxed. However, you still want to follow basic compliance rules in order to get the best delivery for your messages.

What makes small business text marketing platforms different from each other?

Small businesses text marketing platforms can be quite similar to each other and it can sometimes be difficult to find powerful differentiators. But a couple things you can look out for would include:

• Customer service that responds quickly and advocates for you, even if you’re “just” a small business
• An easy-to-use platform that doesn’t require too much training

Take That First Easy Step Now

This article has walked you through all the in’s and out’s of getting started with text marketing for your small business.

As you look ahead to the future of your business, could embracing text marketing be the game-changer you’re looking for?

At the very least it could be a simple way to promote your products and services to customers and prospects—and to engage with them personally and directly.

Interested in taking that first step? Just create a free trial account here (no card needed) and you can see for yourself how it works.