SmallBusinessNewz

Have you ever considered the power of the call-to-action? How about in a television commercial? Have you ever considered the impact the growing trend of text messaging can have on your business? One Chicago tourism spot found out recently.

A spokesperson for Mobile Commons shared an interesting case study with SmallBusinessNewz, which found that a simple call-to-action for an SMS response made a huge difference for Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. The aquarium and Mobile Commons teamed up for an experiment to test effectiveness and consumer preferences of calls-to-action in TV ads - SMS vs. web URLs.

"This summer, the Shedd Aquarium, one of the most popular aquariums worldwide and Chicago’s top-attended tourist destination with 2 million guests per year, endeavored to drive awareness and visitors to the premiere of its new aquatic show, Fantasea," the spokesperson says.

A TV commercial was aired on four major networks (NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX), advertising a contest to win tickets to the premiere. Each commercial was exactly the same except that one of the calls-to-action to enter the contest asked viewers to text in their entry.

The SMS call-to-action generated 325% more responses than the web URLs. In fact, SMS entries made up over 52% of the total contest entries, despite only running in 25% of the ads. SMS converted at a 3:1 ratio over the URLs.

This is something to think about when you begin your next marketing campaign. There is no reason this has to be limited to television either. You may consider it whether you are advertising on TV, radio, or newspapers. The URL probably makes more sense online since they're already browsing the web, but you may throw in an SMS option anyway. They may do it later.